Everything about Musical Theatre totally explained
Musical theatre is a form of
theatre combining
music,
songs, spoken
dialogue and
dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole.
Musical theatre works, usually referred to as
musicals, are performed around the world. They may be presented in large venues, such as big budget
West End and
Broadway theatre productions in
London and
New York City, or in smaller
Fringe Theatre,
Off-Broadway or regional productions, on tour, or by amateur groups in schools, theatres and other performance spaces. In addition to Britain and North America, there are vibrant musical theatre scenes in many countries in Europe, South America and Asia.
Some famous musicals include
Oklahoma!,
West Side Story,
The Fantasticks,
Hair,
Les Misérables,
The Phantom of the Opera,
Rent, and
The Producers.
Definitions
The three main components of a musical are the music, the lyrics, and the book. The
book of a musical refers to the "
play" or story of the show – in effect its spoken (not sung) lines; however, "book" can also refer to the dialogue and lyrics together, which are sometimes referred to (as in opera) as the
libretto (
Italian for “little book”). The
music and
lyrics together form the
score of the musical. The interpretation of the musical by the creative team heavily influences the way that the musical is presented. The creative team includes a
director, a
musical director and usually a
choreographer. A musical's production is also creatively characterized by technical aspects, such as set,
costumes, stage properties, lighting, etc. that generally change from production to production (although some famous production aspects tend to be retained from the original production, for example,
Bob Fosse's choregraphy in
Chicago).
There is no fixed length for a musical, and it can range from a short one-act entertainment to several acts and several hours in length (or even a multi-evening presentation); however, most musicals range from one and a half hours to three hours. Musicals today are typically presented in two acts, with one
intermission ten to 20 minutes in length. The first act is almost always somewhat longer than the second act, and generally introduces most of the music. A musical may be built around 4-6 main theme tunes that are reprised throughout the show, or consist of a series of songs not directly musically related. Spoken dialogue is generally interspersed between musical numbers, although the use of "sung dialogue" or
recitative isn't unknown, especially in so-called "sung-through" musicals such as
Les Misérables and
Evita.
Musical theatre is closely related to another theatrical performance art,
opera. These forms are usually distinguished by weighing a number of factors. Musicals generally have a greater focus on spoken dialogue (though some musicals are entirely accompanied and sung through, such as
Jesus Christ Superstar and
Les Misérables; and on the other hand some operas, such as
Die Zauberflöte, and most operettas, have some unaccompanied dialogue), on dancing (particularly by the principal performers as well as the chorus), on the use of various genres of
popular music (or at least popular singing styles), and on the avoidance of certain operatic conventions.
In particular, a musical is almost never performed in any but the language of its audience. Musicals produced in London or New York, for instance, are invariably sung in English, even if they were originally written in another language (again,
Les Misérables, originally written in French, is a good example).
While an opera singer is primarily a singer and only secondarily an actor, a musical theatre singer is usually an actor first, who can at least hold a tune and "put over" a song, but is often not a professional singer as such. Composers of music for musicals often have to take the limitations of such performers into account, and theatres staging musicals generally use
amplification of the actors' singing voices in a way that would normally be disapproved of in an operatic context.
In isolation, at least, none of these features is truly "defining", and in practice it's often difficult to distinguish among the various kinds of light musical theatre, including "
operetta", "
comic opera", "
light opera", "
burletta", "musical play", "musical comedy", "
extravaganza", "
burlesque", "
travesty", "
music hall", and even "
revue". Some works (for example by
Leonard Bernstein and
Stephen Sondheim) have received both "musical theatre" and "operatic" treatment. Similarly, some older operettas or light operas (such as
The Pirates of Penzance by
Gilbert and Sullivan) have had modern productions or adaptations that treated them as musicals.
Sondheim said:
"I really think that when something plays Broadway it's a musical, and when it plays in an opera house it's opera. That's it. It's the terrain, the countryside, the expectations of the audience that make it one thing or another." This article primarily concerns musical theatre works that are distinctively "non-operatic", but there inescapably remains some overlap between lighter operatic forms and the more musically complex or ambitious musicals: a grey area, in which production styles are almost as important as actual musical or dramatic content in defining into which art form the piece falls.
As with a well-crafted operetta or opera, a "book" musical's moments of greatest dramatic intensity are often performed in song. Proverbially, "when the emotion becomes too strong for speech (or
recitative) you sing; when it becomes too strong for song, you dance." A song is ideally crafted to suit the character (or characters) and their situation within the story; although there have been times in the history of the musical (for example the 1890s and 1920s) when this integration between music and story has been tenuous. As
New York Times critic Ben Brantley described the ideal of song in theatre in reviewing the 2008 revival of
Gypsy, "There is no separation at all between song and character, which is what happens in those uncommon moments when musicals reach upward to achieve their ideal reasons to be."
A show often opens with a song that sets the tone of the musical, introduces some or all of the major characters, and shows the setting of the play. Within the compressed nature of the musical, the writers must develop the characters and the plot. Music provides a means to express emotion. However, typically, many fewer words are sung in a five-minute song than are spoken in a five-minute block of dialogue. Therefore there's less time to develop drama than in a straight play of equivalent length, since a musical usually devotes more time to music than to dialogue.
Many familiar musical theatre works have been the basis for popular
musical films, such as
The Sound of Music,
West Side Story, and
My Fair Lady or were adapted or even written for
television presentations (for example
Rodgers and Hammerstein's
Cinderella). Recently, some popular television programs have set an episode in the style of a musical. There has also been a recent revival of the movie musical, such as the 2002 film,
Chicago, based on the 1975 stage musical. Similarly, India produces numerous musical films, referred to as "
Bollywood" musicals, and Japan produces a considerable number of
Anime musicals. Conversely, there has been a trend in recent decades to adapt musicals from the screen to the stage, both from popular animated film musicals, such as
Beauty and the Beast and
The Lion King, and live-action films, such as
The Producers and
The Color Purple.
History
Ancient Greece and middle ages
Musical theatre in Europe dates back to the
theatre of the
ancient Greeks, who included music and dance in their stage comedies and tragedies as early as the 5th century B.C.
Aeschylus and
Sophocles even composed their own music to accompany their plays. The Third Century B.C.
Roman comedies of
Plautus included song and dance routines performed with orchestrations. The popularity of theatre declined somewhat in the
Roman Empire, but some innovations were made: to make the dance steps more audible in large open air theatres, Roman actors attached metal chips called "sabilla" to their stage footwear – the first tap shoes. During the Middle Ages, performers travelled from town to town trying to find an audience. At times, they were barred, as it was feared that they brought the plague.
Renaissance to the 1700s
The
Renaissance saw these forms evolve into
commedia dell'arte, an Italian tradition where raucous clowns improvised their way through familiar stories, and from there,
opera buffa.
Molière turned several of his farcical comedies into musical entertainments with songs (music provided by
Jean Baptiste Lully) and dance in the late 1600s. Arts of all kinds became widely popular, including musical theatre.
The first recorded long running play of any kind was
The Beggar's Opera, which ran for 62 successive performances in 1728. It would take almost a century before the first play broke 100 performances, with
Tom and Jerry, based on the book
Life in London (1821), and the record soon reached 150 in the late 1820s.
New York (and so, America) didn't have a significant theatre presence until 1752, when
William Hallam sent a company of twelve actors to the colonies with his brother Lewis as their manager. They established a theatre in
Williamsburg, Virginia and opened with
The Merchant of Venice and
The Anatomist. The company moved to New York in the summer of 1753, performing ballad-operas such as
The Beggar’s Opera and ballad-farces like
Damon and Phillida. By the 1840s,
P.T. Barnum was operating an entertainment complex in lower Manhattan (theatre in New York moved from downtown gradually to midtown beginning around 1850, seeking less expensive real estate prices, and didn't arrive in the Times Square area until the 1920s and 1930s). Broadway's first "long-run" musical was a 50 performance hit called
The Elves in 1857. New York runs continued to lag far behind those in London, but Laura Keene's "musical burletta"
Seven Sisters (1860) shattered previous New York records with a run of 253 performances.
Development of musical comedy
The first theatre piece that conforms to the modern conception of a musical, adding dance and original music that helped to tell the story, is generally considered to be
The Black Crook, which premiered in New York on
September 12 1866. The production was a staggering five-and-a-half hours long, but despite its length, it ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. The same year,
The Black Domino/Between You, Me and the Post was the first show to call itself a "musical comedy."
This run wasn't equalled on the musical stage until
World War I, but musical theatre soon broke the 500 performance mark London, most notably by the series of long-running
Gilbert and Sullivan family-friendly
comic opera hits, beginning with
H.M.S. Pinafore in 1878, whose runs were exceeded by
Alfred Cellier and
B. C. Stephenson's record-breaking 1886 hit,
Dorothy (a show midway between comic opera and musical comedy), with 931 performances, which was chased (but not equalled) by several of the most successful London musicals of the 1890s. The most popular of these shows also enjoyed profitable New York productions and tours of Britain, America, Europe, Australasia and South Africa. These shows were fare for "respectable" audiences and starred
respectable girls, a marked contrast from the risqué burlesques, melodramas, bawdy music hall shows and badly translated French operettas that dominated the stage earlier in the 19th century and drew a sometimes seedy crowd looking for easy entertainment.
Charles Hoyt's
A Trip to Chinatown (1891) was Broadway's long-run champion (until
Irene in 1919), running for 657 performances.
Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas were both pirated and imitated in New York by productions such as Reginald DeKoven's
Robin Hood (1891) and
John Philip Sousa's
El Capitan (1896).
A Trip to Coontown (1898) was the first musical comedy entirely produced and performed by
African Americans in a Broadway theatre (largely inspired by the routines of the
minstrel shows), followed by the
ragtime-tinged
Clorindy the Origin of the Cakewalk (1898), and the highly successful
In Dahomey (1902). Hundreds of musical comedies were staged on Broadway in the 1890s and early 1900s comprised of songs written in New York's
Tin Pan Alley involving composers such as
Gus Edwards,
John J. McNally,
John Walter Bratton, and
George M. Cohan (
Little Johnny Jones (1904),
45 Minutes From Broadway (1906), and
George Washington Jr. (1906)). Still, New York runs continued to be relatively short, with a few exceptions, compared with London runs, until
World War I.
Meanwhile, musicals had spread to the London stage by the
Gay Nineties.
George Edwardes had left the management of
Richard D'Oyly Carte's
Savoy Theatre, perceiving that theatregoers' tastes had turned away from
Savoy-style comic operas and their intellectual, political, absurdist satire. They wanted breezy music, snappy, romantic banter, and stylish spectacle. He revolutionized the London stage by presenting musical comedies at the
Gaiety Theatre,
Daly's Theatre and other venues that delivered these elements, borrowing others from Harrigan and Hart and adding in his famous
Gaiety Girls to complete the musical and visual fun. The success of first of these,
In Town in 1892 and
A Gaiety Girl in 1893 (which played at other theatres), confirmed Edwardes on the path he was taking.
His early Gaiety hits included a series of light, romantic "poor maiden loves aristocrat and wins him against all odds" shows, usually with the word "Girl" in the title, including
The Shop Girl (1894) and
A Runaway Girl (1898), with music by
Ivan Caryll and
Lionel Monckton. These shows were immediately widely copied at other London theatres (and soon in America), and the
Edwardian musical comedy swept away the earlier musical forms of comic opera and operetta. At
Daly's Theatre, Edwardes presented slightly more complex comedy hits.
The Geisha (1896) by
Sidney Jones with lyrics by
Harry Greenbank and
Adrian Ross and then Jones'
San Toy (1899) each ran for more than two years and also finding great international success. Other British musical comedy composers of the period included
F. Osmond Carr and
Edward Solomon.
The British musical comedy
Florodora (1899) by
Leslie Stuart and
Paul Rubens made a splash on both sides of the Atlantic, as did
A Chinese Honeymoon (1901), by British lyricist
George Dance and American-born composer
Howard Talbot, which ran for a record setting 1,074 performances in London and 376 in New York. The story concerns couples who honeymoon in China and inadvertently break the kissing laws (shades of
The Mikado).
The Belle of New York (1898) ran for 697 performances in London after a brief New York run, becoming the first American musical to run for over a year in London. After the turn of the century,
Seymour Hicks (who joined forces with American producer
Charles Frohman) wrote popular shows with composer
Charles Taylor and others, and Edwardes and Ross continued to churn out hits like
The Toreador (1901),
A Country Girl,
The Orchid (1903),
The Girls of Gottenberg (1907),
Our Miss Gibbs (1909), and
The Boy (1917). However, only three decades after Gilbert and Sullivan broke the stranglehold that French operettas had on the London stage, European operettas came roaring back to Britain and America beginning in 1907 with the London hit production of
The Merry Widow.
Operetta and World War I
Probably the best known composers of operetta, beginning in the second half of the 19th century, were
Jacques Offenbach and
Johann Strauss II (usually played in bad, bawdy translations in London and New York). In England,
W. S. Gilbert and
Arthur Sullivan created an English answer to French operetta, styled British
comic opera, that became family-friendly hits in Britain and the U.S. in the 1870s and '80s. Although British and American musicals of the 1890s and the first few years of the 20th century had virtually swept operetta and comic opera from the stage, operettas returned to the London and Broadway stages in 1907, and operettas and musicals became direct competitors for a while. The winner of this competition was the theatre going public, who needed escapist entertainment during the dark times of
World War I and flocked to theatres for musicals like
Maid of the Mountains,
Irene, and the astonishing hit
Chu Chin Chow (whose run of 2,238 performances, more than twice as many as any previous musical, set a record that stood for nearly forty years until
Salad Days) as well as popular revues like
The Bing Boys Are Here.
In the early years of the 20th century, translations of 19th century continental operettas, as well as operettas by a new generation of European composers, such as
Franz Lehár and
Oscar Straus, among others, spread throughout the English-speaking world. They were joined by British and American operetta composers and librettists of the 1910s (the "Princess Theatre" shows) by
P. G. Wodehouse,
Guy Bolton and
Harry B. Smith, who paved the way for
Jerome Kern's later work by showing that a musical could combine a light popular touch with real continuity between story and musical numbers, and
Victor Herbert, whose work included some intimate musical plays with modern settings as well as his string of famous operettas (
The Fortune Teller (1898),
Babes in Toyland (1903),
Mlle. Modiste (1905),
The Red Mill (1906), and
Naughty Marietta (1910)). These owed much to
Gilbert and Sullivan and the composers of the 1890s.
The legacy of these operetta composers continued to serve as an inspiration to the next generation of composers of operettas and musicals in the 1920s and 1930s, such as
Rudolf Friml,
Irving Berlin,
Sigmund Romberg,
George Gershwin, and
Noel Coward, and these, in turn, influenced the Rodgers, Sondheim, and many others later in the century.
Gershwin's
Porgy and Bess (1935) was a step closer to
opera than
Show Boat and the other musicals of the era, and in some respects it foreshadowed such "operatic" musicals as
West Side Story and
Sweeney Todd.
The Cradle Will Rock (1937), with a book and score by
Marc Blitzstein and directed by
Orson Welles, was a highly political piece that, despite the controversy surrounding it, managed to run for 108 performances.
Kurt Weill's
Knickerbocker Holiday brought to the musical stage New York City's early history, using as its source writings by
Washington Irving, while good-naturedly satirizing the good intentions of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt.
British writers such as Noel Coward and Ivor Novello continued to deliver old fashioned, sentimential musicals, such as
The Dancing Years. Similarly,
Rodgers & Hart returned from Hollywood to churn out a series of lighthearted Broadway hits, including
On Your Toes (1936, with
Ray Bolger, the first Broadway musical to make dramatic use of classical dance),
Babes In Arms (1937),
I'd Rather Be Right, a political satire with
George M. Cohan as President
Franklin D. Roosevelt, and
The Boys From Syracuse (1938), and
Cole Porter wrote a similar string of hits, including
Anything Goes (1934) and
DuBarry Was a Lady (1939). He later would go on to write scores for such classics as
Can-Can (1953) and
Silk Stockings (1955). But the longest running piece of musical theatre of the 1930s was
Hellzapoppin (1938), a revue with audience participation, which played for 1,404 performances, setting a new Broadway record that was finally beaten by
Oklahoma!
Despite the economic woes and the competition from film, the musical survived. In fact, the move towards political satire in
Of Thee I Sing,
I'd Rather Be Right and
Knickerbocker Holiday, together with the musical sophistication of the Gershwin, Kern, Rodgers and Weill musicals and the fast-paced staging and naturalistic dialogue style created by director
George Abbott showed that musical theatre was finally evolving beyond the gags and showgirls musicals of the
Gay Nineties and
Roaring Twenties and the sentimental romance of operetta.
The Golden Age (1943 to 1968)
The Golden Age of the Broadway musical is generally considered to have begun with
Oklahoma! (1943) and to have ended with
Hair (1968).
1940s
The 1940s would begin with more hits from Porter,
Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hart, Weill and Gershwin, some with runs over 500 performances as the economy rebounded, but artistic change was in the air.
Rodgers and Hammerstein's
Oklahoma! had a cohesive (if somewhat slim) plot, songs that furthered the action of the story, and featured dream ballets which advanced the plot and developed the characters, rather than using dance as an excuse to parade scantily-clad women across the stage. Rodgers and Hammerstein hired ballet choreographer
Agnes de Mille, who used everyday motions to help the characters express their ideas. It defied musical conventions by raising its first act curtain not on a bevy of chorus girls, but rather on a woman churning butter, with an off-stage voice singing the opening lines of
Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'. It was the first "blockbuster" Broadway show, running a total of 2,212 performances, and was made into a hit film. It remains one of the most frequently produced of the team's projects. The two collaborators created an extraordinary collection of some of musical theatre's best loved and most enduring classics, including
Carousel (1945),
South Pacific (1949),
The King and I (1951), and
The Sound of Music (1959). Some of these musicals, including
Oklahoma!,
Carousel,
South Pacific and
The Sound of Music, treat more serious subject matter than most earlier shows.
Americana was displayed on Broadway during the "Golden Age", as the wartime cycle of shows began to arrive. An example of this is
On the Town (1944), written by
Betty Comden and
Adolph Green, composed by
Leonard Bernstein and choreographed by
Jerome Robbins. The musical is set during wartime, where a group of three sailors are on a 24 hour shore leave in New York. During their day, they each meet a wonderful woman. The women in this show have a specific power to them, as if saying, "Come here! I need a man!" The show also gives the impression of a country with an uncertain future, as the sailors also have with their women before leaving.
Oklahoma! inspired others to continue the trend.
Irving Berlin used sharpshooter
Annie Oakley's career as a basis for his
Annie Get Your Gun (1946, 1,147 performances);
Burton Lane,
E. Y. Harburg, and
Fred Saidy combined political satire with Irish whimsy for their fantasy
Finian's Rainbow (1947, 1,725 performances); and Cole Porter found inspiration in
William Shakespeare's
Taming of the Shrew for
Kiss Me, Kate (1948, 1,077 performances). The American musicals overwhelmed the old-fashioned British Coward/Novello-style shows, one of the last big successes of which was Novello's
Perchance to Dream (1945, 1,021 performances).
1950s
Damon Runyon's eclectic characters were at the core of
Frank Loesser's and
Abe Burrows'
Guys and Dolls, (1950, 1,200 performances); and the
Gold Rush was the setting for
Alan Jay Lerner and
Frederick Loewe's
Paint Your Wagon (1951). The relatively brief run—289 performances—of that show didn't discourage
Lerner and Loewe from collaborating again, this time on
My Fair Lady (1956), an adaptation of
George Bernard Shaw's
Pygmalion starring
Rex Harrison and
Julie Andrews, which at 2,717 performances held the long-run record for many years. Popular Hollywood movies were made of all of these musicals.
The Boy Friend (1954) ran for 2,078 performances in London, briefly becoming the third-longest running musical in West End or Broadway history (after
Chu Chin Chow and
Oklahoma!), until it was demoted by
Salad Days. It marked
Julie Andrews' American debut. Another record was set by
The Threepenny Opera, which ran for 2,707 performances, becoming the longest-running off-Broadway musical until
The Fantasticks.
As in
Oklahoma!, dance was an integral part of
West Side Story (1957), which transported
Romeo and Juliet to modern day New York City and converted the feuding Montague and Capulet families into opposing ethnic gangs, the Sharks and the Jets. The book was adapted by
Arthur Laurents, with music by
Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by newcomer
Stephen Sondheim. It was embraced by the critics but failed to be a popular choice for the "blue-haired matinee ladies," who preferred the small town River City, Iowa of
Meredith Willson's
The Music Man to the alleys of
Manhattan's Upper West Side. Apparently
Tony Award voters were of a similar mind, since they favored the former over the latter.
West Side Story had a respectable run of 732 performances (1,040 in the West End), while
The Music Man ran nearly twice as long, with 1,375 performances. However, the film of
West Side Story was extremely successful.
Laurents and Sondheim teamed up again for (1959, 702 performances), with
Jule Styne providing the music for a backstage story about the most driven stage mother of all-time, stripper
Gypsy Rose Lee's mother Rose. The original production ran for 702 performances, and was given four subsequent revivals, with
Angela Lansbury,
Tyne Daly,
Bernadette Peters and
Patti LuPone later tackling the role made famous by Ethel Merman.
Automotive companies and other types of corporations began to hire Broadway talent to write
corporate musicals, private shows which were only seen by their employees or customers. The 1950s ended with
Rodgers and Hammerstein's last hit,
The Sound of Music, which also became another hit for Mary Martin. It ran for 1,443 performances and shared the Tony Award for Best Musical. Together with its extremely successful
1965 film version, it has become one of the most popular musicals in history.
1960s
In 1960,
The Fantasticks was first produced off-Broadway. This intimate allegorical show would quietly run for over 40 years at the Sullivan Street Theatre in
Greenwich Village, becoming by far the longest-running musical in history. Its authors produced other innovative works in the 1960s, such as
Celebration and
I Do! I Do!, The first two-character Broadway musical. The 1960s would see a number of traditional blockbusters, like
Fiddler on the Roof,
Funny Girl,
Hello, Dolly! and
Camelot, and some more risqué pieces like
Cabaret, before ending with the emergence of the
rock musical. Two men had considerable impact on musical theatre history beginning in this decade:
The first project for which Sondheim wrote both music and lyrics was
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962, 964 performances), with a book based on the works of
Plautus by
Burt Shevelove and
Larry Gelbart, and starring
Zero Mostel. Sondheim moved the musical beyond its concentration on the romantic plots typical of earlier eras; his work tended to be darker, exploring the grittier sides of life both present and past. Some of his earlier works include
Anyone Can Whistle (1964, which—at a mere nine performances, despite having star power in
Lee Remick and
Angela Lansbury—is an infamous flop),
Company (1970),
Follies (1971), and
A Little Night Music (1973). He has found inspiration in the unlikeliest of sources—the opening of
Japan to Western trade for
Pacific Overtures, a legendary murderous barber seeking revenge in the
Industrial Age of London for
Sweeney Todd, the paintings of
Georges Seurat for
Sunday in the Park with George, fairy tales for
Into the Woods, and a collection of individuals intent on eliminating the
President of the United States in
Assassins.
While some critics have argued that some of Sondheim’s musicals are less popular with the public because of their unusual lyrical sophistication and musical complexity, others have praised these features of his work, as well as the interplay of lyrics and music in his shows. Some of Sondheim's notable innovations include a show presented in reverse (
Merrily We Roll Along) and the above-mentioned
Anyone Can Whistle, in which Act 1 ends with the cast informing the audience that they're mad.
Jerry Herman played a significant role in American musical theatre, beginning with his first Broadway production,
Milk and Honey (1961, 563 performances), about the founding of the state of
Israel, and continuing with the smash hits
Hello, Dolly! (1964, 2,844 performances),
Mame (1966, 1,508 performances), and
La Cage aux Folles (1983, 1,761 performances). Even his less successful shows like
Dear World (1969) and
Mack & Mabel (1974) have had memorable scores (
Mack & Mabel was later reworked into a London hit). Writing both words and music, many of Herman's showtunes have become popular standards, including "
Hello, Dolly!", "We Need a Little Christmas", "I Am What I Am", "Mame", "The Best of Times", "Before the Parade Passes By", "Put On Your Sunday Clothes", "It Only Takes a Moment", "Bosom Buddies", and "I Won't Send Roses", recorded by such artists as
Louis Armstrong,
Eydie Gorme,
Barbra Streisand,
Petula Clark and
Bernadette Peters. Herman's songbook has been the subject of two popular musical revues,
Jerry's Girls (Broadway, 1985), and
Showtune (off-Broadway, 2003).
The musical started to diverge from the relatively narrow confines of the 1950s.
Rock music would be used in several Broadway musicals, beginning with
Hair, which featured not only rock music but also nudity and controversial opinions about the
Vietnam War.
Racial and religious tolerance
After
Show Boat and
Porgy and Bess, and as the struggle in America and elsewhere for minorities'
civil rights progressed, Hammerstein,
Harold Arlen,
Yip Harburg and others were emboldened to write more musicals and operas which aimed to normalize societal toleration of minorities and urged racial harmony. Early Golden Age works that focused on racial tolerance included
Finian's Rainbow,
South Pacific, and the
The King and I. Towards the end of the Golden Age, several shows tackled Jewish subjects and issues, such as
Fiddler on the Roof,
Milk and Honey,
Blitz! and later
Rags. The original concept that became
West Side Story was set in the
Lower East Side during Easter-Passover celebrations; the rival gangs were to be Jewish and
Italian Catholic. The creative team later decided that the Polish (white) vs.
Puerto Rican conflict was fresher.
Tolerance as an important theme in musicals has continued in recent decades. The final expression of
West Side Story left a message of racial tolerance. By the end of the '60s, musicals became racially integrated, with black and white cast members even covering each others' roles, as they did in
Hair. Casting in some musicals is an attempt to represent the community at the subject of the drama, as in
Rent. Homosexuality has been explored in such musicals, beginning with
Hair, and even more overtly in
La Cage aux Folles and
Falsettos.
Parade is a sensitive exploration of both
anti-Semitism and historical American
racism.
More recent eras
1970s
After the success of
Hair,
rock musicals flourished in the 1970s, with
Jesus Christ Superstar,
Godspell,
Grease and
Two Gentlemen of Verona. Some of these rock musicals began with "
concept albums" and then moved to film or stage, such as
Tommy. Others had no dialogue or were otherwise reminiscent of opera, with dramatic, emotional themes; these sometimes started as
concept albums and were referred to as
rock operas. The musical also went in other directions. Shows like
Raisin,
Dreamgirls,
Purlie, and
The Wiz brought a significant African-American influence to Broadway. More varied musical genres and styles were incorporated into musicals both on and especially
off-Broadway.
1975 brought one of the great contemporary musicals to the stage.
A Chorus Line emerged from recorded group therapy-style sessions
Michael Bennett conducted with Gypsies — those who sing and dance in support of the leading players —from the Broadway community. From hundreds of hours of tapes,
James Kirkwood, Jr. and
Nick Dante fashioned a book about an audition for a musical, incorporating into it many of the real-life stories of those who had sat in on the sessions — and some of whom eventually played variations of themselves or each other in the show. With music by
Marvin Hamlisch and lyrics by
Edward Kleban,
A Chorus Line first opened at
Joseph Papp's
Public Theater in lower
Manhattan. Advance word-of-mouth— that something extraordinary was about to explode - boosted box office sales, and after critics ran out of superlatives to describe what they witnessed on opening night, what initially had been planned as a limited engagement eventually moved to the
Shubert Theatre uptown for a run that seemed to last forever. The show swept the Tony Awards and won the
Pulitzer Prize, and its hit song,
What I Did for Love, became an instant standard.
Clearly, Broadway audiences were eager to welcome musicals that strayed from the usual style and substance.
John Kander and
Fred Ebb explored pre-
World War II Nazi Germany in
Cabaret and
Prohibition-era
Chicago, which relied on old
vaudeville techniques to tell its tale of murder and the media.
Pippin, by
Stephen Schwartz, was set in the days of
Charlemagne.
Federico Fellini's autobiographical film
8½ became
Maury Yeston's
Nine. At the end of the decade,
Evita gave a more serious political biography than audiences were used to at musicals, and
Sweeney Todd was the precursor to the darker, big budget musicals of the 1980s like
Les Misérables,
Miss Saigon, and
The Phantom of the Opera, that depended on dramatic stories, sweeping scores and spectacular effects. But during this same period, old-fashioned values were still embraced in such hits as
Annie,
42nd Street,
My One and Only, and popular revivals of
No, No, Nanette and
Irene.
1980s and 1990s
The 1980s and 1990s saw the influence of European "mega-musicals" or "pop operas," which typically featured a pop-influenced score and had large casts and sets and were identified as much by their notable effects—a falling
chandelier (in
Phantom), a helicopter landing on stage (in
Miss Saigon)—as they were by anything else in the production. Many were based on novels or other works of literature. The most important writers of mega-musicals include the French team of
Claude-Michel Schönberg and
Alain Boublil, responsible for
Les Misérables, which became the longest-running international musical hit in history. The team, in collaboration with
Richard Maltby, Jr., continued to produce hits with
Miss Saigon (inspired by the Puccini opera
Madame Butterfly). The British composer
Andrew Lloyd Webber, saw similar mega-success with
Evita, based on the life of
Argentina's
Eva Perón;
Cats, derived from the poems of
T. S. Eliot;
The Phantom of the Opera, derived from the novel "Le Fantôme de l'Opéra" written by
Gaston Leroux; and
Sunset Boulevard (from the classic film of the same name). Several of these mega-musicals ran (or are still running) for decades in both New York and London. The 90s also saw the influence of large corporations on the production of musicals. The most important has been
The Walt Disney Company, which began adapting some of its animated movie musicals—such as
Beauty and the Beast and
The Lion King—for the stage, and also created original stage productions like
Aida, with music by
Elton John. Disney continues to create new musicals for Broadway and West End theatres, such as,
Tarzan, a stage adaptation of the classic
Mary Poppins, and, most recently, a stage version of 1989's
The Little Mermaid.
With the growing scale (and cost) of musicals, style was sometimes emphasized in favor of substance diromg the last two decades of the 20th century. At the same time, however, many writers broke from this pattern and began to create smaller scale, but critically-acclaimed and financially successful musicals, such as
Falsettoland,
Passion,
Little Shop of Horrors,, and
Blood Brothers. The topics vary widely, and the music ranges from rock to pop, but they often are produced off-Broadway (or for smaller London theatres) and feature smaller casts and generally less expensive productions. Some of these have been noted as imaginative and innovative.
The cost of tickets to Broadway and West End musicals was escalating beyond the budget of many theatregoers, and the trend was for these musicals to be viewed by a smaller and smaller audience.
Jonathan Larson's musical
Rent (based on the opera
La Bohème) attempted to increase the popularity of musicals among a younger audience. It features a cast of
twentysomethings, and the score is heavily rock-influenced. The musical became a hit, even with its composer dying of an
aortic aneurysm on the night of the final dress rehearsal at
New York Theatre Workshop, before he could see it reach Broadway. A group of young fans, styled
RENTheads, line up at the
Nederlander Theatre hours early in hopes of winning the lottery for $20 front row tickets, and some have seen the show more than 50 times. Other writers who have attempted to bring a taste of modern rock music to the stage include
Jason Robert Brown.
Another trend has been to create a minimal plot to fit a collection of songs that have already been hits. These have included
Buddy - The Buddy Holly Story (1995),
Movin' Out (2002, based on the tunes of
Billy Joel),
Good Vibrations (
the Beach Boys),
All Shook Up (
Elvis Presley),
Jersey Boys (2006,
The Four Seasons),
Daddy Cool—The Boney M Musical, and many others. This style is often referred to as the "
jukebox musical". Similar but more plot-driven musicals have been built around the canon of a particular pop group including
Mamma Mia! (1999, featuring songs by
ABBA),
Our House (based on the songs of
Madness), and
We Will Rock You (based on the works of
Queen).
2000s
Recent trends
In recent years, familiarity has been embraced by producers anxious to guarantee that they recoup their considerable investments, if not show a healthy profit. Some are willing to take (usually modest-budget) chances on the new and unusual, such as Urinetown (2001), Bombay Dreams (2002; about the Bollywood musicals churned out by Indian cinema), Avenue Q (2003; utilizes puppets to tell its adult-themed story), and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (2005; people watching the show can become "spellers" in the show). But the majority prefer to hedge their bets by sticking with revivals of familiar fare like Wonderful Town or Fiddler on the Roof, or proven hits like La Cage aux Folles. Today's composers are finding their sources in already proven material, such as films (roughly one-third of current Broadway musicals, including The Producers, Spamalot, Hairspray, Billy Elliot, The Color Purple, and Grey Gardens) or classic literature (such as Little Women, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Dracula, and Wicked) hoping that the shows will have a built-in audience as a result. The reuse of plots, especially those from The Walt Disney Company, has been considered by some critics to be a redefinition of Broadway: rather than a creative outlet, it has become a tourist attraction. Likewise, the Society of London Theatre reported that 2006 set a record for attendance, revenue and advance booking in London. Total attendees in the major commercial and grant-aided theatres in Central London were 12.4 million, and total ticket revenues were just over £400 million. Also, as noted above, the international musicals scene has been particularly active in recent years.
However, Stephen Sondheim has been less than optimistic: » "You have two kinds of shows on Broadway – revivals and the same kind of musicals over and over again, all spectacles. You get your tickets for The Lion King a year in advance, and essentially a family... pass on to their children the idea that that's what the theater is – a spectacular musical you see once a year, a stage version of a movie. It has nothing to do with theater at all. It has to do with seeing what is familiar.... I don't think the theatre will die per se, but it's never going to be what it was.... It's a tourist attraction."
But the success of original material like Avenue Q, Urinetown, Wicked, and Spelling Bee, as well as creative re-imaginings of film properties, including Thoroughly Modern Millie, Hairspray, Billy Elliot and The Color Purple, and plays-turned-musicals, such as Spring Awakening prompts Broadway historian John Kenrick to write: "Is the Musical dead? ...Absolutely not! Changing? Always! The musical has been changing ever since Offenbach did his first rewrite in the 1850s. And change is the clearest sign that the musical is still a living, growing genre. Will we ever return to the so-called "golden age," with musicals at the center of popular culture? Probably not. Public taste has undergone fundamental changes, and the commercial arts can only flow where the paying public allows."[
] Musical theatre in East Asian traditions
China
India
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