The musical is not a dying form, it's virtually extinct. As yet more rock pseudo-musicals flood the West End, David Benedict and Stephen Sondheim count the reasons why. -- Page 2

[Plum]

Posted: 8/11/04 at 8:03pm

Why is it that Broadway audiences are something like 70% tourist now? Is it entirely because of an increase in tourism, or is it partly because of a decrease in locals attending theatrical productions? And I wonder how much the "Disneyfication" of Times Square has to do with it.

[LadyGuenevere]

Posted: 8/11/04 at 8:06pm

Spider- I agree about Sondheim, for most people, he can be hard to stomach. I like him, but some of his shows don't stay in my head as MFL does, like you said.

But I'm not just talking about Sondheim in general, there are tons of other good musicals that won't get the audience today- not just Sondheim ones. I know that the article mostly revolves around Sondheim, but I can also think about other musicals that aren't his that are also under-recognized and watched.

[spiderdj82]

Posted: 8/11/04 at 8:06pm

The reason tourists are so high in the "broadway going audience" is because they don't have anything close to it in their home town. I mean, it is like an unwritten law that YOU MUST GO SEE A BROADWAY SHOW IF YOU GO TO NEW YORK. And generally people pick musicals that they know or are familiar with (a lot of money for tickets).

[spiderdj82]

Posted: 8/11/04 at 8:08pm

I understand Lady, don't get me wrong. And there are musicals out there that go unappreciated (PARADE, LAST FIVE YEARS, etc.) I am just in a argumentive mood for some reason. I still heart you though.

[LadyGuenevere]

Posted: 8/11/04 at 8:10pm

Don't worry, I didn't take any of your responses to be nasty or such. :)

I just remembered that earlier in the thread you mentioned how the article glorifies Sondheim, and I thought that you might have assumed that I was talking about just Sondheim. (And yes, outside of the theater-lover community, JRB doesn't get much recognition w/Parade in L5Y)

[insomniak]

Posted: 8/11/04 at 8:11pm

There is a law here in Suburbia that you have to go see a show when you go to NYC. It's required. If you don't do it, they take away your minivan and then you can't get your kids to soccer practice. It's all about the kids, and the kids don't want to see Caroline, they want to see the Lion King.

[M J R]

Posted: 8/11/04 at 8:28pm

So.....any solutions?

[insomniak]

Posted: 8/11/04 at 8:32pm

Not that I can think of. The megamusicals can afford more flashy advertising, and that's what tourists pay a hundered bucks to see.

[LadyGuenevere]

Posted: 8/11/04 at 8:33pm

If I ever win the lottery, I'd help in the solution...

[M J R]

Posted: 8/11/04 at 8:35pm

I think lots of more recent shows (Batboy, SFANW, Floyd Collins, New Brain, Parade, etc, etc...) owe so much to their cast recordings. I think that just EXPOSURE to new work will change people's pre-conceived notions about anything "NEW"...

[Plum]

Posted: 8/11/04 at 9:07pm

So if tourists feel it's a requirement to see a Broadway show when they go to NY, and they'll always see the big splashy shows because there's nothing that big back home, I guess the culmination of the trend will be that more progressive and artistic shows will stay in regional, Off-Broadway, etc. theaters while Broadway will become uniformly razzle-dazzle and revivals. Updated On: 8/11/04 at 09:07 PM

[kissmycookie]

Posted: 8/11/04 at 10:54pm

Well, I'm sure that Sondheim is glorified as much as he is in the article because he's one of the few remaining members of that Golden Age who is still composing and doing new things. Of course, he's not the only one who can't get a show into NY anymore. Kander and Ebb can't get The Visit to come to NY either.

[feinstein9]

Posted: 8/12/04 at 2:51am

>> I think lots of more recent shows (Batboy, SFANW, Floyd Collins, New Brain, Parade, etc, etc...) owe so much to their cast recordings. I think that just EXPOSURE to new work will change people's pre-conceived notions about anything "NEW"...

this is true- in the shows you listed there, i listened to the cast recordings far before i ever saw the show. i hadn't thought about that before. i think certain songs from certain shows could reach popularity in the non-theatre world, if only they were *exposed*. i think the problem here is that we have 8,900,210 cable channels, and none of them are paying any attention the theatre. i had to get XM radio just so i could have a few decent stations, that play music i find meaningful (broadway 28, frank's place 73). people like varied music, i think, but it's just not being *pushed* enough. i think another problem might be that we live in a very macho culture (just go to a local high school and ask) and tv is constantly throwing out the message that theatre is gay. and they joke about it. theatre = gay. which isn't a problem except when straight guys are far too concerned about being called effeminite and are scared to get involved with theatre (or music or dance). i think if i were a straight guy, i'd feel pressured to make excuses for diggin showtunes. and it shouldn't have to be that way- theatre should be considered just as "cool" as you know... drag racing or something. we just gotta get the kiddies into the tent, you know what i'm saying? gotta get them in, and thhhhhhen entrance them.

[rockfenris2005]

Posted: 8/12/04 at 6:03am

This is a load of ****!


Dead on its feet
The musical is not a dying form, it's virtually extinct. As yet more rock pseudo-musicals flood the West End, David Benedict and Stephen Sondheim count the reasons why...
08 August 2004


Which album holds the record for the most weeks on the Billboard Top 40? Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon? No, My Fair Lady.



FENRIS:
Both are likely stage-material. Both are works of art. The writer is a snob in that he assumes My Fair Lady is better, because, 1) it's a completely different deal than Pink Floyd and 2) Dark Side and My Fair are masterpieces in their own right! The only difference is the stats! This started me thinking this writer was a snob.


The 1956 original-cast album - Julie Andrews, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway - may only have held the number one slot for a seriously impressive 15 weeks, but it sat resplendently in the Top 40 for an unrivalled 292 weeks and in the top 100 for 480. That's more than nine years.

That one show bankrolled CBS for years. They produced not just the album but the entire show having stepped in with the total budget of $400,000, then a huge sum, when earlier financing collapsed. The Broadway run lasted six-and-a-half years, the London one five-and-a-half. Musicals have always been about popular entertainment but the monster bucks generated by such a perfectly constructed artistic success as My Fair Lady represents a high-water mark.

Cats too hasn't done badly - it has taken more money than Titanic. Shows like these, however, don't grow on trees and the ratio of flops to success is terrifyingly steep. So much so, that the musical as a living, breathing artform is dying. Correction: it's virtually dead.


FENRIS:
Correction: it's probably dead on Broadway. What about Germany? What about London? WHat about the rest of the world? This snobby writer cannot see that there are hundreds, thousands, millions of new works being produced EVERY day! Not EVERYTHING is defined in Broadway! Not everything SHOULD be defined in America!


You want proof? Even the name Stephen Sondheim doesn't guarantee success. His latest show Bounce never made it to New York.


FENRIS:
Because it was flawed. The music, book and lyrics were flawed. That's the only reason... it has nothing to do with popularity!


The recent revival of his 1991 show Assassins - a glittering, jet-black study of American idealism seen through the men and women who have shot or attempted to assassinate American presidents - closed within weeks of winning five Tony awards.


FENRIS:
Ah, gee, I wonder why. Musicals about classical terrorists? If I opened Usama the Musical, in New York, would you be surprised if it closed also?


In its initial limited engagement it hadn't suffered a single loss-making week but the producers weren't confident of sustaining even a show as strong as this in a financially hostile environment.

Sondheim, never one to bandy about false praise, believes the production was as good as anything he himself has ever been connected with. There's a hint of rancour as well as sadness in his voice. "I am much more upset about this production closing than any I can recall."


FENRIS:
Well, if he'd write a more appealing show. All the Broadway classics were appealing. What's so appealing about 'Assassins' years after the attack on the World Trade Center?



He is, however, notably clear-eyed about the context. "It is about a change in the audience. If Assassins had opened 20 years ago it would have run. The former New York Times critic Frank Rich told me that 10 years ago,


FENRIS:
Frank Rich was a snob.



two-thirds of the Broadway audience came from the New York tri-state area and only one-third was tourist. That core New York audience could guarantee you a run of at least four to six months. But that audience no longer exists - the equation has been reversed."

Worrying about the make-up of the audience is not snobbery. "If two-thirds are tourists, they'll take what they know, a familiar product - whether that's Mamma Mia! or Fiddler on the Roof. Theatre is so expensive, you have got to expect they'll want to go to Disney. For the future life of the musical, that's deplorable: young writers don't get their work heard, which means they don't get experience, which means they don't get better."


FENRIS:
I agree with this. But why does success have to be made on Broadway? What about Britain? What about your home-town? Did Shakespeare succeed in Broadway IN HIS LIFETIME? Noel Coward? Theatre is about theatre, not Broadway!



Unlike plays, musicals have several authors - composer, book writer, lyricist, director, choreographer - so making them mesh is seriously difficult. Experience is essential.


FENRIS:
Well, what are they doing about it? Whinging won't help



"I chair the Ascap [American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers] seminar and I'm always surprised that every year there are 60-70 people there who want to write musicals. They're all ages but the bulk are under 30. These are accomplished composers. I also chair a Richard Rodgers production award which gives money to help enhance new works to be performed. The trouble is there are endless workshops with good people involved but big money is needed to get a show beyond workshop. Producers are needed. That's where the gears grind to a halt."


FENRIS:
Well, what is he doing about it?? Whinging?? Whining?? Sitting on his bottom and not lifting a finger to help???!


You can see why. Andrew Lloyd Webber's forthcoming The Woman in White has £3m in advance ticket sales, but his recent shows (Whistle Down The Wind, The Beautiful Game) have failed as money-spinners. An endless succession of star names failed to turn Sunset Boulevard into a profit-maker.

Yet putting on a musical has always been costly - the wage bill alone is prohibitive to all but the supremely confident - so why are producers only now running for the exit? Because not only do spiralling production costs mean that chances to recoup have disappeared for all but the safest of bets, but musicals are now a museum form.


FENRIS:
What about Tanz der Vampire? What about Producers? Hairspray? Rent? Thoroughly Modern Millie? What about the hundreds of successful musicals OUTSIDE Broadway? This critic has got a narrow mind!


From the 1930s onwards, talent crossed back and forth from Broadway to the movies. By the Fifties, the Broadway musical's heyday, there was a complete synchronicity of tone, and musicals were at the centre of popular culture. Hollywood poured money into technicolour screen versions of Broadway greats, even going so far as to spend eight months in Nogales, Arizona making it look like Oklahoma! After almost five years on Broadway, the movie version of South Pacific became the highest-grossing film of 1958 with its soundtrack staying in the charts for 262 weeks and making it the best-selling LP of the second half of the Fifties.


FENRIS:
How does discussing the past help things??



All of which pales beside West Side Story. The groundbreaking Broadway show - a perfect synthesis of drama, music and dance - was only a moderate success and only bagged Best Choreography and Scenic Design at that year's Tony awards. Just about everything else went to The Music Man, a conservative, down-homey celebration of Americana, albeit with two knock-out performances and a real one-hit-wonder of a score. The absolute antithesis of the urban anger of West Side Story, The Music Man celebrated innocent American boyhood. With its climactic multiple-body-pile-up West Side Story killed it off.


FENRIS:
It didn't kill anything. It was a masterpiece. It was an advancement in art. Surely one couldn't expect Broadway to remain as it was? Would you expect Baroque to remain???



Hollywood filmed both. But successful though The Music Man movie was, it simply couldn't match the film of West Side Story the previous year which walked away with 10 Oscars including Best Picture. And its album sales? Well, if you thought Michael Jackson's Thriller held the record for the longest stay at number one in the Billboard album charts - a flabbergasting 37 consecutive weeks - you'd be wrong. It's only the runner-up. Nothing shifted West Side Story from the top for a mindbending 54 weeks. What America was watching and listening to were one and the same.

But not for much longer. This is the crossover point. The traditionally toned bonanza that was The Sound of Music was still to come, but West Side Story is Janus-faced, looking back to Broadway's Golden Age while simultaneously looking forward to the cult of youth. Where are the parents in this story of youth on the loose? Nowhere.

Teenagers arrived in 1953 with Brando in The Wild One and in 1955 with James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause, but they were just warning shots. McCarthyism had mythologised America. On screen, and even more so on stage, straitjacketed artists sold safety and happy endings: suburbia was the ideal. It was the Sixties which gave us the war on parents and their conservative values, AKA the generation gap. Mainstream gave way to the maverick and the studio system slid into terminal decline. Movies grew up? Yes, but only by ageing down and that meant a new soundtrack.

Throughout the Sixties, guitars replaced keyboards and the pop of the past - the Great American Songbook largely written by Broadway and Hollywood's finest - was replaced by rock. That, in turn, meant that the musical's secondary support systems dropped away. TV variety shows had traditionally hosted selections from Broadway musicals but they began to disappear. Worse, radio no longer gave old-fashioned-sounding musicals serious airplay and that meant album sales plummeted. Rock had arrived.

As Sonny Bono wrote in the song title that now adorns his headstone, "the beat goes on". And that's the trouble with rock as a theatrical form: it's slave to the rhythm. Of course, there are rock songs which powerfully express an intelligent lyric, but most rock musicians are interested in things other than using music to develop narrative or to dramatise theatrical ideas.


FENRIS:
But rock DOES dramatise theatre. If used correctly, it HEIGHTENS it. Has anyone seen Hair? Jim Steinman's Dream Engine? Tommy? Jesus Christ Superstar? Phantom of the Paradise? Rocky Horror Show?? Why is this critic so BIASED?? I knew of these 'rock musicals' before any of Sondheim's. I didn't even know who Sondheim was until I saw "Hey Mr Producer"



In the oh-so-ironic Nineties, Pet Shop Boys Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe proved to be seriously smart and smooth pop operators partly because everything in their work is about ironic distance. But, as their grisly musical Closer to Heaven (than what?) proved, irony is the quality least useful when attempting to dramatise character and action. Theatre is about presence, not detachment and you cannot be at one remove about standing there and singing. Voicing emotions, vigorously committing to something is seriously uncool. The energy involved doesn't fit in a world dominated by soaps where most actors merely do low-energy behaving.


FENRIS:
You call ROCK low-energy? This guy is on drugs!




Sondheim is clearer still on the restrictions of contemporary music. "The power of pop music is not suited to telling stories that last two hours. The style may be fine for stories lasting three or four minutes, but that music isn't suited to variety or development of character. Occasionally, a work like Rent appears which bridges the worlds of pop and theatre. But its writer, Jonathan Larson [who died prior to the opening], would be as surprised as anyone that it went the way it did. He saw it as a work in progress." And despite throwing Stevie Wonder on to the cast album, it still didn't sell.


FENRIS:
OK. What about Andrew Lloyd Webber? Frank Wildhorn? Jim Steinman? They use pop music, in the theatre, and its ****ing extraordinary! Boublil and Schonberg used pop in Les Mis, and that's one of the most successful musicals of all time. Phantom had pop, Jekyll and Hyde had pop... How SUCCESSFUL are they?? They're probably even more successful than My Fair Lady! Now this critic is contradicting himself!




Rock also presents a problem of scale. The size of amplified sound is great for bombast but lousy for subtlety or quiet accretion of detail. And while the rock shows we have may make money, are they musicals?


FENRIS:
Um... Jesus Christ Superstar... Hair... Rocky Horror Show... Tanz der Vampire.... They heighten music more than anything from the classic Broadway era. And, honestly, how BORING can Sondheim get? Sweeney Todd and Into the Woods were his only good shows, IMHO. I enjoyed everything by Lloyd Webber, etc. And I am not a dumb idiot who knows nothing about the theatre!



Queen's vast sound was perfect for its stadium-sized anthems and antics. But the Ben Elton/Queen vehicle We Will Rock You only works as a Greatest Hits on legs. With its cast strewn about the hangar-sized stage dwarfed by state-of-the-art projections, it's a techno trade-fair, not a musical. Mind you, Tonight's the Night, Elton's subsequent shameless, cynical strut through Rod Stewart's back catalogue makes We Will Rock You look like The Cherry Orchard. (Next up is Elton's take on the Tina Turner hit list.)


FENRIS:
What does rock have to do with revue-shows? These are RADIO shows! Has nothing, whatsoever, to do with ROCK MUSICALS! They're entertainments... revues... Jesus Christ Superstar are REAL rock musicals!


Mamma Mia! has much to answer for. Umpteen times wittier and more joyous than anyone could have imagined, it never makes you feel you are being fleeced, which is more than can be said for opportunistic, drama-free events like Tonight's the Night or Saturday Night Fever. But the other downside of the compilation show is that they make audiences lazy. You don't have to pay attention to the music because, hey, you're going in humming the tunes. Every one of those shows pushes musical invention and experiment further away.


FENRIS:
What about Hair? That's rock. That pushed experiment to the max! Tanz der Vampire was rock and that's the most eclectic piece of work EVER!



We're left with revivals or re-treads: nostalgia is king. Mary Poppins has taken £10m in advance sales, not (alas) because it has an A-list creative team in Richard Eyre, Matthew Bourne, Stephen Mear and Bob Crowley, but because all those homsesick parents who grew up on the film are taking their own kids to its reincarnation.


FENRIS:
What about the hundreds of musicals OUTSIDE Broadway? Has this guy visited 21st Century Musicals.com?!


But the bottom of the barrel is being scraped. Aside from the odd one-off like Susan Stroman's forthcoming sensational staging of Mel Brooks's The Producers - a deliriously funny spoof of Broadway excess - and the few remaining classics like Guys and Dolls which Michael Grandage will revive in 2005, there's little from the past left to do. Worse, the pre-eminence of dance music and the infantilisation of pop don't suggest there's exciting theatre talent around the corner.


FENRIS:
Ehem... Tanz der Vampire... This guy should get out more



Sondheim, now 74, jokes that he likes going to matinees: "I'm the youngest person in the audience - it feels like spring! But that's no good for the future. It's the same as what is happening for symphonic music. The grey-haired audience is dying off and not being replaced."


FENRIS:
At least not on Broadway. Out here, in the real world, I see them all the time at the theatre. There are great musicals out there and they don't need Broadway for SUCCESS! If they want to promote it, they have one option: THE INTERNET. The Internet is the best thing to happen. Any show can be done anywhere and be promoted, online, from West End to Timbuktu!



I hate to toll the funeral bell - and I'd love to be proved wrong - but with the exception of rich entrepreneurs like Lloyd Webber who can produce their own work, it's a case of no future and occasional glimpses of a once-glorious past. John Doyle's current, thrillingly intimate production of Sondheim's masterpiece Sweeney Todd is shocking not for its blood and gore, but for the genuinely astonishing power and depth of the writing it reveals. These we have lost.


FENRIS:
They are lost to the critic, because he's caught between eight blocks on Broadway. My advice to him is: get a plane-ticket, take a trip to Germany, or France, or Australia, or anywhere in the world - stop being an ignorant bastard - and really 'look' before he 'tells'. New theatre is out there, it just hasn't been found. If we can use the internet, we can make our own Broadway... we can promote shows from our cities... and get success THAT way. On this merit, the musical is not dead. On the merit of hundreds, thousands, millions of musicals IN THE WORLD the musical is not dead. It's just dead on Broadway


Fenris

Updated On: 8/12/04 at 06:03 AM

[eyeonbroadway]

Posted: 8/12/04 at 7:23am

This is why I LOVE this message board!! Where else will you find people this insightful about the subject that brings us all together here...musical theatre. I learn things everyday. Thanks for your thoughts, Fenris! I'm especially intrigued by your "8 blocks of Broadway" comment. There are wonderful shows that didn't make it on Broadway, or never made it there in the first place, and, you're right...there is a smugness attached to that which usually implies "not good enough". Unfair and untrue! Though most of us are pretty "nostalgic" about Broadway being "Broadway", there are too many economic dynamics at work to hold that up as the only benchmark of quality.

[rockfenris2005]

Posted: 8/12/04 at 7:36am

Your right. I have heard hundreds of scores in my time, and many of them unknown. I probably prefer them over everything in Broadway in the last 20 years

[EddieVarley]

Posted: 8/12/04 at 8:01am

Best Thread Ever. Wonderful and informative postings Rock!

[beachie]

Posted: 8/12/04 at 8:07am

"And generally people pick musicals that they know or are familiar with (a lot of money for tickets)."

Well, that is part of the problem isn't it? At
$75-100 per ticket plus transportation and food, you're talking about a large chunk of change even for McMansion owners. So yes, if I'm going to take the whole fam into town for a show for $600 (and that's a daytrip) I'm going to go with the sure thing. If I'm staying overnight, that's when I wander over to the TKTS booth for "Kiss Me Kate' or "Caroline or Change' at half price. The last time I was in the TKTS line, I talked with a couple who fly in every year to see shows. They buy tickets in advance to one or two 'hot' shows, then fill in with half-price tickets. So this seems to be a common strategy.

Another thing about those breeders and their offspring flocking to 'The Lion King' and 'Beauty and the Beast': there is a massive number of youngsters who are being exposed to Broadway at a young age. I can vouch that they become teens who actually ask to go into town to see JF in Little House, 'Hairspray' and 'Movin'Out'. When this young theatre-going generation grows up they're going to ready for more substantial fare.

[joeyjoe]

Posted: 8/12/04 at 8:14am

"I can vouch that they become teens who actually ask to go into town to see JF in Little House..."

JF in Little House??? boy-bands invading the Ingalls household???

[rockfenris2005]

Posted: 8/12/04 at 8:23am

And furthermore... if Sondheim wants the answer to why no young people are coming to the theatre, he should look at his recent musicals. What would teenagers find in that? Unless they were avid fans of theatre... The answer is in front of him, in front of all of them. The musical theatre is NOT dead!

P.S.
Furthermore, if it was, why would all these people be here??

Updated On: 8/12/04 at 08:23 AM

[eyeonbroadway]

Posted: 8/12/04 at 8:42am

As someone said before, all of this is just part of evolution. Sondheim himself was part of evolutionary change emphasizing witty, challenging lyrics at the expense of memorable music. That's ok because the net effect had a positive impact on the evolution of musical theatre. Some of Sondheim is great theatre and he set standards for lyricists that will have lasting impact. Not all Sondheim is great theatre, though, and I sure wouldn't want his "style" to be the only "acceptable" standard.

[rockfenris2005]

Posted: 8/12/04 at 8:52am

I ageee. Musical theatre should have good lyrics. All of Wildhorn's shows have 'grotesque' book and lyrics... and the music 'just' gets away with it (though I haven't seen Dracula to comment further). Sondheim definitely sets a standard, lyrically, and audiences shouldn't have to accept the drivel of Wildhorn and Lloyd Webber's lyricists (excluding Rice, Ayckbourn and Steinman from Webber's list). Shows should have GOOD lyrics. What's the best LYRICS from ANY show you've heard in the past year? Don't say WICKED. I thought they were awful

[beachie]

Posted: 8/12/04 at 8:59am

"JF in Little House??? boy-bands invading the Ingalls household???"

That will teach me to post before my second cuppa!

Hmmm...although when you think of it...a musical based on 'Little House' starring ex-boy banders and former teen queens? Why, I do believe it could make a fortune. Updated On: 8/12/04 at 08:59 AM

[joeyjoe]

Posted: 8/12/04 at 9:09am

quite possibly true!!! imagine, it could have the musical stylings ranging from late 1800s, all the way to the turn of this century!!! something for everyone!!!

[robbiej]

Posted: 8/12/04 at 10:20am

What no one is getting is why Sondheim was chosen for this article.

You all are making a great deal of assumptions about this article. You keep lambasting this writer for treating Sondheim like a god. But that's not why he chose to speak with him. Sondheim is the only...I repeat...THE ONLY writer qualified to talk about what this article is trying to say. Why? Not because he is a god, but because he is there...for all of it. He worked as a PA on Carousel. He learned his lyric-writing craft from Oscar Hammerstein II. He created musicals with the biggest names of the Golden era...musicals that have come to define the musical play. He then went on to completely deconstruct the form and, in some ways, is responsible for what the musical plays of today have become...diffuse and without any sort of proper framework. A deconstruction of something already deconstructed leaves audiences confused and hostile (except for me...I LOVE those types of musicals).

Beachie said something earlier about leaving a show with the songs stuck in your head because they're great songs. But, ever since Rogers and Hammerstein popularized what Hammerstein began doing with Show Boat, that is not the point of the musical. Great songs are different from great scores. Great scores tell you a story. Great songs leave you humming and happy. But great scores leave you changed emotionally. The story is the most important part of any musical (or indeed any play). When the story is sacrificed, you get where we are today.

As for Rent, I'd like to offer one thing. I haven't heard a more classically-constructed score in a long time. Although it's played by rock instruments and the people who sing it all have nodes it's still remarkably faithful to the constructs and forms of the classic musical.