The Perfect Musical? — Page 5

I would say go with South Pacific.

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Scrolling back to page one or two I discovered that I already weighed in half a year ago with choices that i happily still find quite acceptable--

7. ONCE ON THIS ISLAND
6. FIDDLER ON THE ROOF
5. SHE LOVES ME
4. HELLO DOLLY
3. CAROUSEL
2. GUYS AND DOLLS
1. A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC

My criterion basically comes down to indestructibility as well as how much pleasure the show gives me. WEST SIDE STORY may be the most gorgeous score ever composed, but a poor production of the show is disastrous, and several of those have made it to Broadway over the years. HELLO DOLLY, on the other hand, has worked in summer stock on a shoestring, and on Broadway with it's original star 30 years past her prime. It flies from overture to finale without a false beat or dull note. In a word, perfect.

I kind of, sort of, have to agree with HELLO, DOLLY! Even though I'd much rather attend MAME or MACK AND MABEL. (Perhaps we're all underestimating some of the warhorses--I'd include DOLLY, MY FAIR LADY, FIDDLER and the best of R&H--because we feel as if they've been running on a loop throughout our lives.

In fact it occurs to me that given the right set of criteria, one might correctly argue that NIGHT MUSIC is "perfect" but other musicals are "better"! Isn't English a swell language?

Also from the Come to Think of It Department, Bertolt Brecht quite literally argued that the well-made play was a waste of time because it was "well-made". (Actually, he said it in German, but it was in line with what we are discussing here.)

All this discussion of the unsatisfying wrap-up to the end of Guys and Dolls made me think about it and analyze it in a way I had brushed off before.

When the girls sing "Marry the man today, and change his ways tomorrow," we jump forward an unspecified amount into the future, when they are then married. Sarah has "domesticated" Sky Masterson into a devoted member of the Salvation Army (or its generic substitution). Given that Sky is our protagonist, this is treated as a punch line- look at him! He's whipped! The silliness of it is heightened by the fact that throughout the play to this point, it has been Sarah Brown who has softened, grown less conservative.

But what becomes of Nathan says a lot to me about how arbitrary the ending can sometimes be. Adelaide is marrying Nathan finally, but (in the standard licensed script) unlike Sky, his ways have not changed yet. He's still a two-bit hood running a newspaper stand, strongly implied to still be operating his crap game.

Now here is something you're not going to hear often: the 2009 revival made one good choice by changing a single line. Instead of the policeman saying "Hey, Nathan, gimme a newspaper," he says "gimme a hot dog." Nathan then slaps the hot dog in the man's hand and closes up shop... revealing the now-famous "Nathan's Hot Dogs" logo. It's a silly sight gag, but at the same time it gives us an unexpected sense of closure: Nathan is on the verge of big success and will soon give up being a gangster in favor of being a legitimate businessman.

Many of the textual changes in that production I felt were unwarranted, but the way the show was "opened up" slightly instead of the use of "in ones" for every other scene didn't necessarily hurt. Then again, that's more a directorial/set design choice than a textual one.

THE KING AND I.

I think the sight gags overall were the best part of the recent revival. As someone who played Joey Biltmore/Nicely-Nicely Johnson in a production around that time, I was extremely amused by the staging of Biltmore's Garage.

Putting the garage in plain sight, and having Joey dispose of a hood in the trunk of one of his cars was not only funnier than an offstage gunshot, but it highlighted one of the neglected themes of the show (a theme that, I always believed, was so glossed over in "Guys and Dolls" that there's probably another musical or movie to be written on the topic): gun-shy, relatively harmless and ineffectual gangsters, out of their element in a genuine conflict with authentic wise-guys.

Agreeing with Sweeney Todd - Sondheim, a few times here and there, has said he could never through-compose a musical by himself, like an opera, because he doesn't know how to hold an audience's attention for more than ten or fifteen minutes, and I think with Sweeney Todd he was sort of tricked into doing that. The dialogue is so minimal, and the music basically carries the entire show (is there any dialogue left out of the OBC recording?), and it proves that Sondheim is more than capable of holding an audience's attention for way more than fifteen minutes. It's such a perfectly plotted and paced show, the juicy setup leading into a series of revelations that lead to revelations, everything churning forward incessantly. I've seen it time and time and time again and it's still impossibly thrilling - I can't wait to see the recent Philharmonic taping.

As for straight play, everything I love about Sweeney applies to Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Another show I've seen and read over and over (I've worn out two printed copies) and it still consumes me.

However, if I'm going to state a perfect stage piece - one that I've seen - I'd have to be loyal to my avatar and call it Einstein on the Beach, which was perfectly enthralling and absorbing for its entire four-and-a-half hour length. I've never been so wholly enchanted by a show, and it makes me wish more than anything else that I could see the rest of Robert Wilson's productions (some, thankfully, have been filmed, though the two I've been able to find - The Black Rider and Shakespeare's Sonnets - are in German). I'd give just about anything to see The Life And Times of Joseph Stalin.

No perfect musical exists. A musical can be one's "favorite," but it cannot be perfect.