#1
Posted: 8/25/09 at 8:50am
Interesting piece from The times
'Why Musicals Work'
For an art form that started as long ago as 1866 ? The Black Crook is
generally thought of as the original ? musicals are not doing at all badly.
Put that another way: for a genre that supposedly had its heyday in the
1950s and 1960s with the likes of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe
and the rest, and which routinely faces accusations that it is singing on
its deathbed, producers? wallets are surprisingly fat. This month the
Society of London Theatre reported that the West End box office is up 8 per
cent year on year to more than ?483 million, with musicals accounting for a
whopping 61 per cent of all tickets sold (and given that they tend to charge
more than plays, it is likely that their earnings percentage is considerably
higher). Over time, a hit musical?s grosses can be every bit as spectacular
as its outsize sets or falling chandeliers ? Phantom of the Opera has taken
?1.7 billion worldwide. Whether you think that these figures deserve
brickbats or ovations will entirely depend on your reaction to musical
theatre. Because, as much as millions of people are addicted to musicals,
others cannot stand them. I?ve always been an addict, never happier than
when thrilling to a great show from the stalls or, failing that, belting out
a Valjean-Javert duet from Les Mis?rables (yes, both roles) in my car. Yet,
throughout a career of reviewing and writing about musicals, I?m not sure
that I?ve ever taken the time to penetrate their mysteries, to identify that
quality which compels so many and seems to repel others. So, I decided to be
in one.
Les Mis?rables is the propulsive staging of Victor Hugo?s epic novel that
first got me hooked (I?ll never forget the excitement when my father
surprised me, aged 11, with tickets for a return visit) and, now in its 23rd
year, is still pulling in full houses at the Queen?s Theatre in Shaftesbury
Avenue. I approached the producer, Cameron Mackintosh, who agreed that my
idea made sense, and a date was set, complete with an audition to determine
whether I?d be allowed to sing or, better yet, have a solo. Here was I,
having done no acting since university, having never sung in front of an
audience except at my wedding, presuming to step in at short notice to one
of the more complicated productions in the West End.
I sought advice from David Babani, one of the most enterprising young
producers of musicals (with two shows running in Theatreland, La Cage aux
Folles and A Little Night Music). He was not reassuring. ?Musical theatre is
one of the most complex art forms to pull off. It is infinitely more
difficult to get right than straight theatre.? What really annoys Babani,
though, is that musicals don?t get the credit he feels they deserve. ?They
are still generally seen as a lesser art form than plays.?
According to Stephen Schwartz, the composer-lyricist of shows such as
Godspell and Wicked, there is a historical reason for this. ?The
intelligentsia, including reviewers, always viewed musicals as second-rate
entertainment. The audience has always been ahead of them. They?ve always
wanted musicals to be deeper and more meaningful than have the critics,
who?ve generally liked them to be flip and fun so they can look down their
noses. This is in reverse to straight plays, where critics have often
championed writers that audiences then had to catch up with. That said, it
has got better. The critics have evolved.?
Surely it?s not all the critics? fault? Might as well admit it, the West End
is not the creative hothouse for new musicals that it once was. Amid some
distinguished revivals (Oliver!), and the long-runners, almost the only new
shows that are keeping the boxoffice tills ringing are rehashes of famous
movie titles, often with borrowed songs ? Dirty Dancing, Priscilla ? or
undisguised pop song catalogue shows such as Jersey Boys. There are
exceptions, among them Hairspray or Schwartz?s own Wicked, but generally
anything vaguely experimental or progressive ? such as this season?s New
York import Spring Awakening ? gets shut out. Yet, apparently, this is a
London thing. ?The West End does favour fluffier musicals,? says Schwartz.
?Broadway is on a creative upswing, and shows by new writers are attracting
younger and more varied audiences ? musicals like Next to Normal, about a
bipolar mother.?
Babani agrees: ?America is far head of the UK in developing new writers and
without them there is a danger that the West End could become tired and
unimaginative.?
One of the more conspicuous young writers to benefit from the American
system is Jeff Marx, co-author of the oddly touching swearing and puppet-sex
show Avenue Q. For him the problem goes deeper. ?The younger generation see
musicals as stilted and stodgy. So to do new work you have to find new ways
of reaching people.? It?s no accident that Avenue Q was originally designed
to be a South Park-style TV series. ?TV is a powerful way of making musicals
fashionable,? says Marx.
Fine. But in this rush to capture the young with the new, isn?t there a
danger of the old being lost? Of forgetting what made musicals great in the
first place? One of the father figures of musical theatre, Jerry Herman, has
stopped writing. He is 79 and in fragile health, but there are reasons why
Herman, whose oeuvre includes Mack & Mabel, Hello, Dolly and La Cage aux
Folles, laid down his pen after La Cage in 1983. ?The loss of melody saddens
me,? he says. ?When I saw my first musical, Annie Get Your Gun, I went home
and from memory played all the songs. Now people are afraid that if they
write a hummable melody they will be branded as old-fashioned. But for me,
musicals don?t as a form work without that central requirement.?
Interestingly, the one musical that Herman does credit with a wealth of
hummable melodies is Avenue Q. Did Marx feel that it was only OK to write,
say, a traditional torch song such as It?s a Fine, Fine Line because it had
inverted commas around it? ?You just have to find new ways of presenting
things,? he replies. ?The traditional show tune isn?t dead, but we deliver
them in a way that seems less antique.?
None of which answers the question as to why some people hate musicals. ?I
don?t understand those people,? says Herman. ?Words and music in combination
can be incredibly potent. In Mack & Mabel, when Mack sings, ?I won?t send
roses, or hold the door? to Mabel, the music tells you something else that?s
going on in his head. That he?s really in love with her and that he doesn?t
want her to know it. That double-whammy is the secret of why people get so
addicted to musicals.?
Schwartz says that musicals tend to wear their hearts on their sleeves.
?Perhaps some people are uncomfortable with that open emotionalism,? he
says. This tallies with my experience, with people telling me they feel
?manipulated? by musicals. Perhaps what they mean is that they?re not
comfortable with exposing their emotions to the music in such a bold way.
Schwartz?s solution? ?So why go to the theatre??
Babani says that musicals provide ?something for everyone. For every big,
emotional show there are other ?grown-up musicals? that challenge you in the
way that a play does. Stephen Sondheim?s Assassins, for instance, is
incredibly cerebral. But for many people, it usually comes down to some bad
experience they had early on with a terrible production.?
As to what it takes to hurl a show across the footlights, only a performer
can really know. With my Les Mis debut nearing, I ask the sometime Javert,
Philip Quast (currently starring in La Cage) for a masterclass. With immense
cheek I have chosen Javert?s great credo, Stars, as well as a scene where
the nasty fop Bamatabois attacks the fallen but saintly prostitute Fantine.
In Quast?s subterranean dressing room , I launch into the opening of Stars.
?There, out in the darkness,? I croon, in what I hope is a good
approximation of how a Javert should sound. I don?t get any farther. Quast
thinks for a moment, then says, ?The trouble is that there are too many
recordings. Les Mis has been going for so long that generations have grown
up on the recordings and they become obsessed with making ?a Les Mis sound?.
Your voice is fine. What the directors will want, what audiences will need,
is the original thought.?
He starts to pace and speaks one line, then abruptly changes direction.
Another line, another shift. ?This is a great rehearsal exercise. Change
direction whenever the thought changes, and it?s impossible to be
monotonous. Do this at home.? An hour with Quast is revelatory. At home, I
pace the evenings away, with jolting direction changes. I have my costume
fittings. I am given four outfits, one of which, the student, is flattering
and three which are ? characterful.
On performance day I get to the Queen?s Theatre early and am taken straight
up to meet the audition team, among them Adrian Sarple, the director, and
Adam Rowe, the music director. The pianist strikes up, Rowe cues me in and I
launch into the workers? chorus, At the End of the Day. I use my ?original
thought? for each line, carefully, moving from routine collection of wages,
to crushing sense of the debts that build up through to fear of what happens
when I can no longer ?graft till I drop?. ?Sing through the ends of the
lines, don?t drop the pitch,? instructs Rowe. ?More attack on the words,
diction is key,? says Sarple. But they seem happy. I am allowed to sing in
the chorus.
I give them my solo audition, Bamatabois. It goes well and they try me out
on the soldier?s warning to the revolutionaries ? ?You at the barricades
listen to this!? It lies terrifyingly high with an exposed top note.
?Relax,? says Rowe. ?It?s in your voice.? At least it is after four
attempts. At which point Sarple says: ?If this was a normal audition and you
had stage experience, I?d put you in.? he says. But. ?Wait until you get out
there with the audience. You might be fine, you might freeze. I?m not going
to risk the solo.?
He?s right. When I join the cast to rehearse it is all I can do to remember
my movement and my lines, never mind how the notes come out. In the inn
scene, where I am flirting atop a table, repelling a boisterous drunk, I
manage to forget my lines altogether. Back in my dressing room before the
performance, I give myself a stern talking-to. Waiting in the wings for my
first entrance, it?s exciting but there are no great revelations. Not until
I step out on stage. That?s when I sense it. The lights mean that you can?t
see the audience. What you see is an immense blackness. It?s as if the
so-called ?fourth wall? has become a gateway to, well, something. To a
different dimension, almost. It bristles with its own energy.
The performance is going well, everything coming together and it?s in the
inn scene where I finally feel part of the story we?re telling. At that
moment, I feel that same energy surging through me, carried by the music, by
the words, through that wall, and I feel a connection. And there, I realise,
is the true power and beauty of musicals ? the energy that music and words
combined can help to harness and project, in harmony with the audience. It
is, as Herman puts it, ?the power of the music to waft across the stage,
through the audience, and leave them stunned?.
'Why Musicals Work'
For an art form that started as long ago as 1866 ? The Black Crook is
generally thought of as the original ? musicals are not doing at all badly.
Put that another way: for a genre that supposedly had its heyday in the
1950s and 1960s with the likes of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe
and the rest, and which routinely faces accusations that it is singing on
its deathbed, producers? wallets are surprisingly fat. This month the
Society of London Theatre reported that the West End box office is up 8 per
cent year on year to more than ?483 million, with musicals accounting for a
whopping 61 per cent of all tickets sold (and given that they tend to charge
more than plays, it is likely that their earnings percentage is considerably
higher). Over time, a hit musical?s grosses can be every bit as spectacular
as its outsize sets or falling chandeliers ? Phantom of the Opera has taken
?1.7 billion worldwide. Whether you think that these figures deserve
brickbats or ovations will entirely depend on your reaction to musical
theatre. Because, as much as millions of people are addicted to musicals,
others cannot stand them. I?ve always been an addict, never happier than
when thrilling to a great show from the stalls or, failing that, belting out
a Valjean-Javert duet from Les Mis?rables (yes, both roles) in my car. Yet,
throughout a career of reviewing and writing about musicals, I?m not sure
that I?ve ever taken the time to penetrate their mysteries, to identify that
quality which compels so many and seems to repel others. So, I decided to be
in one.
Les Mis?rables is the propulsive staging of Victor Hugo?s epic novel that
first got me hooked (I?ll never forget the excitement when my father
surprised me, aged 11, with tickets for a return visit) and, now in its 23rd
year, is still pulling in full houses at the Queen?s Theatre in Shaftesbury
Avenue. I approached the producer, Cameron Mackintosh, who agreed that my
idea made sense, and a date was set, complete with an audition to determine
whether I?d be allowed to sing or, better yet, have a solo. Here was I,
having done no acting since university, having never sung in front of an
audience except at my wedding, presuming to step in at short notice to one
of the more complicated productions in the West End.
I sought advice from David Babani, one of the most enterprising young
producers of musicals (with two shows running in Theatreland, La Cage aux
Folles and A Little Night Music). He was not reassuring. ?Musical theatre is
one of the most complex art forms to pull off. It is infinitely more
difficult to get right than straight theatre.? What really annoys Babani,
though, is that musicals don?t get the credit he feels they deserve. ?They
are still generally seen as a lesser art form than plays.?
According to Stephen Schwartz, the composer-lyricist of shows such as
Godspell and Wicked, there is a historical reason for this. ?The
intelligentsia, including reviewers, always viewed musicals as second-rate
entertainment. The audience has always been ahead of them. They?ve always
wanted musicals to be deeper and more meaningful than have the critics,
who?ve generally liked them to be flip and fun so they can look down their
noses. This is in reverse to straight plays, where critics have often
championed writers that audiences then had to catch up with. That said, it
has got better. The critics have evolved.?
Surely it?s not all the critics? fault? Might as well admit it, the West End
is not the creative hothouse for new musicals that it once was. Amid some
distinguished revivals (Oliver!), and the long-runners, almost the only new
shows that are keeping the boxoffice tills ringing are rehashes of famous
movie titles, often with borrowed songs ? Dirty Dancing, Priscilla ? or
undisguised pop song catalogue shows such as Jersey Boys. There are
exceptions, among them Hairspray or Schwartz?s own Wicked, but generally
anything vaguely experimental or progressive ? such as this season?s New
York import Spring Awakening ? gets shut out. Yet, apparently, this is a
London thing. ?The West End does favour fluffier musicals,? says Schwartz.
?Broadway is on a creative upswing, and shows by new writers are attracting
younger and more varied audiences ? musicals like Next to Normal, about a
bipolar mother.?
Babani agrees: ?America is far head of the UK in developing new writers and
without them there is a danger that the West End could become tired and
unimaginative.?
One of the more conspicuous young writers to benefit from the American
system is Jeff Marx, co-author of the oddly touching swearing and puppet-sex
show Avenue Q. For him the problem goes deeper. ?The younger generation see
musicals as stilted and stodgy. So to do new work you have to find new ways
of reaching people.? It?s no accident that Avenue Q was originally designed
to be a South Park-style TV series. ?TV is a powerful way of making musicals
fashionable,? says Marx.
Fine. But in this rush to capture the young with the new, isn?t there a
danger of the old being lost? Of forgetting what made musicals great in the
first place? One of the father figures of musical theatre, Jerry Herman, has
stopped writing. He is 79 and in fragile health, but there are reasons why
Herman, whose oeuvre includes Mack & Mabel, Hello, Dolly and La Cage aux
Folles, laid down his pen after La Cage in 1983. ?The loss of melody saddens
me,? he says. ?When I saw my first musical, Annie Get Your Gun, I went home
and from memory played all the songs. Now people are afraid that if they
write a hummable melody they will be branded as old-fashioned. But for me,
musicals don?t as a form work without that central requirement.?
Interestingly, the one musical that Herman does credit with a wealth of
hummable melodies is Avenue Q. Did Marx feel that it was only OK to write,
say, a traditional torch song such as It?s a Fine, Fine Line because it had
inverted commas around it? ?You just have to find new ways of presenting
things,? he replies. ?The traditional show tune isn?t dead, but we deliver
them in a way that seems less antique.?
None of which answers the question as to why some people hate musicals. ?I
don?t understand those people,? says Herman. ?Words and music in combination
can be incredibly potent. In Mack & Mabel, when Mack sings, ?I won?t send
roses, or hold the door? to Mabel, the music tells you something else that?s
going on in his head. That he?s really in love with her and that he doesn?t
want her to know it. That double-whammy is the secret of why people get so
addicted to musicals.?
Schwartz says that musicals tend to wear their hearts on their sleeves.
?Perhaps some people are uncomfortable with that open emotionalism,? he
says. This tallies with my experience, with people telling me they feel
?manipulated? by musicals. Perhaps what they mean is that they?re not
comfortable with exposing their emotions to the music in such a bold way.
Schwartz?s solution? ?So why go to the theatre??
Babani says that musicals provide ?something for everyone. For every big,
emotional show there are other ?grown-up musicals? that challenge you in the
way that a play does. Stephen Sondheim?s Assassins, for instance, is
incredibly cerebral. But for many people, it usually comes down to some bad
experience they had early on with a terrible production.?
As to what it takes to hurl a show across the footlights, only a performer
can really know. With my Les Mis debut nearing, I ask the sometime Javert,
Philip Quast (currently starring in La Cage) for a masterclass. With immense
cheek I have chosen Javert?s great credo, Stars, as well as a scene where
the nasty fop Bamatabois attacks the fallen but saintly prostitute Fantine.
In Quast?s subterranean dressing room , I launch into the opening of Stars.
?There, out in the darkness,? I croon, in what I hope is a good
approximation of how a Javert should sound. I don?t get any farther. Quast
thinks for a moment, then says, ?The trouble is that there are too many
recordings. Les Mis has been going for so long that generations have grown
up on the recordings and they become obsessed with making ?a Les Mis sound?.
Your voice is fine. What the directors will want, what audiences will need,
is the original thought.?
He starts to pace and speaks one line, then abruptly changes direction.
Another line, another shift. ?This is a great rehearsal exercise. Change
direction whenever the thought changes, and it?s impossible to be
monotonous. Do this at home.? An hour with Quast is revelatory. At home, I
pace the evenings away, with jolting direction changes. I have my costume
fittings. I am given four outfits, one of which, the student, is flattering
and three which are ? characterful.
On performance day I get to the Queen?s Theatre early and am taken straight
up to meet the audition team, among them Adrian Sarple, the director, and
Adam Rowe, the music director. The pianist strikes up, Rowe cues me in and I
launch into the workers? chorus, At the End of the Day. I use my ?original
thought? for each line, carefully, moving from routine collection of wages,
to crushing sense of the debts that build up through to fear of what happens
when I can no longer ?graft till I drop?. ?Sing through the ends of the
lines, don?t drop the pitch,? instructs Rowe. ?More attack on the words,
diction is key,? says Sarple. But they seem happy. I am allowed to sing in
the chorus.
I give them my solo audition, Bamatabois. It goes well and they try me out
on the soldier?s warning to the revolutionaries ? ?You at the barricades
listen to this!? It lies terrifyingly high with an exposed top note.
?Relax,? says Rowe. ?It?s in your voice.? At least it is after four
attempts. At which point Sarple says: ?If this was a normal audition and you
had stage experience, I?d put you in.? he says. But. ?Wait until you get out
there with the audience. You might be fine, you might freeze. I?m not going
to risk the solo.?
He?s right. When I join the cast to rehearse it is all I can do to remember
my movement and my lines, never mind how the notes come out. In the inn
scene, where I am flirting atop a table, repelling a boisterous drunk, I
manage to forget my lines altogether. Back in my dressing room before the
performance, I give myself a stern talking-to. Waiting in the wings for my
first entrance, it?s exciting but there are no great revelations. Not until
I step out on stage. That?s when I sense it. The lights mean that you can?t
see the audience. What you see is an immense blackness. It?s as if the
so-called ?fourth wall? has become a gateway to, well, something. To a
different dimension, almost. It bristles with its own energy.
The performance is going well, everything coming together and it?s in the
inn scene where I finally feel part of the story we?re telling. At that
moment, I feel that same energy surging through me, carried by the music, by
the words, through that wall, and I feel a connection. And there, I realise,
is the true power and beauty of musicals ? the energy that music and words
combined can help to harness and project, in harmony with the audience. It
is, as Herman puts it, ?the power of the music to waft across the stage,
through the audience, and leave them stunned?.
