The Worst and Most Perverse

I finally saw The Book of Mormon, the new Broadway musical from the South Park guys.

It feels sorta like if Andrew Dice Clay had written The Music Man. Tons of vulgarity but all in the form of an old-school 1950s musical comedy. But with shows like Next to Normal, American Idiot, The Scottsboro Boys, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, and other incredibly exciting new shows in our recent memory, it's hard to get excited about a 1950s musical comedy, even if you're a fan of over-the-top vulgarity, which I usually am (everyone remember Johnny Appleweed and The Wild Party?)...

There are some outstanding performances at the center of it, but it's still disappointing. About two-thirds of it is very funny and occasionally as satirically insightful as the brilliant South Park. But the other third (which is a pretty big chunk) is lame. Jokes that misfire. Sincerity that doesn't mesh with the running joke about maggots on one character's scrotum (I'm not kidding). And fairly bland music even when the lyrics are excellent...

And too many references to other musicals! That stopped being funny quite a while ago. Haven't we moved beyond that yet? It's a truism that to be funny something must be a surprise. If you see the punchline coming, you don't laugh. Even a running joke can be funny if the audience can be repeatedly surprised that it keeps coming back. But musicals referencing other musicals is no longer a surprise. The most obvious examples are [title of show], Spamalot, and The Musical of Musicals, but there have been dozens more recently.

Urinetown was different because it didn't just reference other shows; it referenced its own structure and narrative devices. It literally deconstructed itself before our very eyes. Urinetown was entirely about the subversion of musical theatre conventions -- plus it opened ten years ago when everybody wasn't doing it yet. The Book of Mormon is not nearly as smart or original as Urinetown. It repeatedly substitutes references for cleverness. In other words, though I don't think it's a "bad show," it's surprisingly old-fashioned and not nearly as clever as it thinks it is. (Full disclosure: I'm also one of those who thought [title of show] was wholly unoriginal and only marginally funny.)

Also, The Book of Mormon is set in Uganda, and some of the jokes at the expense of the African characters feel clumsy and even unintentionally racist. Sort of a re-hash of that indie film The Gods Must Be Crazy (1981), which I also didn't find terribly funny for the same reason. Satire has to get at truth to be truly funny. The show's creators need to cut a shitload, but they're getting pretty great reviews, so I doubt they will.

I have to wonder who their audience will be and if they can tour this show, with jokes about clitoral circumcision, scrotum maggots, and Jesus... While watching the show, I kept thinking about how the Fox audience would react, as I remembered the suburbanites sitting around me for the tour of Avenue Q at the Fox, all of them totally not amused because it was too dirty for them. Ack!

So I posted something on Facebook about my thoughts on Book of Mormon, and I immediately got attacked from someone working on the show, who told me I just wasn't getting the "nuances" in the show. Yeah, right, like the nuance of the running joke about scrotum maggots...? He rambled on and on about how there are so many references that "most of the audience doesn't get." So I asked him -- doesn't that mean the show and/or the production is doing a bad job of storytelling, if "most of the audience" doesn't get a lot of the show...?

He proceeded to tell me I'm just not "an informed New York theatregoer." Really? How about you make that argument again after you've written nine musicals, six books on musical theatre, and run a nationally respected musical theatre company for twenty years, fuckface? Whatever, dude.

I can't help but compare Book of Mormon to bare, which I'm currently working on and which is so entirely original. Yes, bare has been compared to Rent, and it does owe an artistic debt to Rent, but bare really is something new and utterly sui generis. And living inside the music of bare these last couple months makes Book of Mormon seem to me even clunkier and clumsier than it might have otherwise.

bare is difficult to pin down. In its form, it’s closer to an opera than a musical, but it’s not exactly either. Its musical vocabulary is closer to alternative pop than pure rock, but there’s plenty of both in this score. It’s a story about the breakdown of our institutions – religion, education, the family – and the moral hypocrisy that traps many of us behind masks of conformity. And it's a far more intelligent and insightful look at religion in America than Book of Mormon is.

Acting guru Stella Adler once said, "Unless you give the audience something that makes them bigger – better – do not act." (I love that quote!) Actor Ben Kingsley has said about actors, "The tribe has elected you to tell its story. You are the shaman/healer, that's what the storyteller is, and I think it's important for actors to appreciate that. Too often actors think it's all about them, when in reality it's all about the audience being able to recognize themselves in you."

That's what's missing from Book of Mormon and what bare has in abundance. Truth. Insight. Balls. As much as I love most of Trey Parker's work, The Book of Mormon has no balls -- it just talks about them a lot.

I've realized that over the years I've been so fortunate to get to work on the absolute best musicals ever created for the stage. And I'll include bare in that list. But I think it's made me less patient with and tolerant of mediocre work. I can't sit through crap like Spamalot or Dirty Rotten Scoundrels anymore. All I can see is what shows like that haven't achieved, the opportunities they've missed.

I guess it's like a master chef who eats only the best, most interesting food -- he probably won't be found at McDonald's very often...

bare opens a week from tomorrow. I cannot wait to share this beautiful, amazing show with our audiences!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Bear the Cross

I've been working on the background and analysis essay that I write about every show we do. Eventually my bare essay will end up in one of my books. And the more I think about and write about this show, the more impressed I am with it. This is remarkable, smart, artful writing. Here's just a taste, a look at the show's opening number, that will let you see how great this show is.

Throughout the show, Composer Damon Intrabartolo uses several musical themes (longer musical phrases that represent an idea or character) and leitmotifs (short phrases that do the same thing). The show begins with an instrumental quote of the melody of the song, “Bare,” which appears late in Act II. Since the audience hasn’t heard this music yet, the point isn’t merely to invoke the title song, as a musical overture of yesteryear would. No, this is music that means something, music that will represent raw, honest emotion – feelings that are literally bare, without artifice or protection. In Act II, it will accompany Peter and Jason’s most honest moment in the show and in their relationship. And here at the top of the story, it represents the truth that we’re about to see in Peter’s daydream. Though the audience won’t pick up that meaning this first time, the music will have a subliminal effect on them over the course of the evening, connecting these moments of honest emotion by making them sound alike.

Intrabartolo and lyricist Jon Hartmere begin their story, quite unconventionally, with the nonreality of a dream. Why not get the plot started instead? Why start by playing with notions of reality? There are several reasons. First, they are following Stephen Sondheim’s Ten Minute Rule, which says that they can employ any device, any convention, any rule-breaking, as long as it happens within the first ten minutes, to establish for the audience the rules for the evening. They use fantasy sequences three times in the show, and here they establish that device.

This scene also tells the audience that this story will be a mix of very funny and very dramatic moments. But also, it’s a very efficient way of getting us inside Peter’s head, seeing his hopes, dreams, fears, questions, confusion, and his relationships with adults, with his peers, and with his religion. The creators understand dreams, the way the unconscious mind takes elements of our waking lives and reconnects them in unexpected (though not random) ways. Things don’t make logical sense because the conscious mind isn’t involved, but the dream still reveals the concerns, worries, and insecurities that get pushed back out of the way in our waking lives. So all of the information we pick up in this very funny opening scene is important in understanding the story ahead.

After a brief Latin choral section to open this dream mass, underscoring returns, still the “Bare” theme, as the Priest talks about the arduous journey of the Three Wise Men of the Bible. Peter’s subconscious has made the connection to this sermon because Peter himself is on a journey, though it’s an interior one. The Priest says, it was “a journey resting entirely on faith that they would know where they were going once they arrived.” The Priest likens the journey to the kids’ four years at the school, but it’s also like the journey Peter will spend the show taking. And as soon as the idea of a journey establishes itself in this dreamworld, condemnation follows. Gay equals sin in this world. And so four of Peter’s friends come to life as his religious tormentors, labeled as “saints” in the script.

The rest of the dream sequence finds Peter arguing with his religion over what he feels. His friends mock him, accusing him, listing all the ways that Peter is sure everyone can tell he’s gay, the ways he knows he’ll bring shame to his family. His dream mind has brought his worst fears to big, singing life, and yet he stands up to them, arguing back, “But it doesn’t all make sense; what I feel is real.” We see Peter’s strength here and it tells us a lot about the road ahead. One “saint” sings, “He knows that his romance is doomed.” If this is a dream, than that idea must come from Peter’s own mind. He sees what’s ahead, but only subconsciously. And it’s also sobering foreshadowing for the audience.

Then Peter’s mother Claire appears to do a reading, and all his fears about his family finding out he’s gay come to life, along with more questioning of his masculinity, his maleness. Dreams don’t play fair. Then one of Peter’s friends steps up to lead a hymn, “There’s a Bender Among Us,” chock full of funny but ugly stereotypes about gay people. So Peter turns to God, asking for his help. But, as dreams often do, suddenly this is a funeral and Matt is delivering a eulogy, set to the music of the show’s finale, “No Voice.” Peter asks if he’s the one who’s died – or is that what he’s asking? He sings, “Is it I, Lord? Is it I?” quoting the Gospels, evoking Jesus’s disciples who ask if they will be the one who will betray him?

Betrayal is on Peter’s mind.

The whole church – all his friends – answers by turning on him and singing/screaming “Abomination.” The Catholic Church (and religion in general) is not about tolerance or gray area, both bare and Peter’s dream are telling both him and us. And as the number comes to a dramatic and freaky close, the congregation sings the phrase “Bear the cross,” but it’s set to music that holds out the word bear for measure after measure, unmistakably referencing the show’s title and its multiple meanings (and homonyms). This last line also delivers the “good Catholic” Peter a powerful message that can be read in two different ways, underlining the ambiguity at the heart of Peter’s dilemma.

In the Bible, in Luke chapter 14:27-33 Jesus says:

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, “This man began to build and was not able to finish.” Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

The message here is that a believer must know in advance the sacrifice of believing and he must accept that sacrifice in his life. The Geneva Study Bible explains the passage this way: “The true followers of Christ must at once build and fight, and therefore be ready and prepared to endure all types of miseries.”

But notice the reference to “his own cross” – each of us has a different, individual cross to bear, Jesus is saying. So for Peter, that message can also be read as a warning that being openly gay will have its costs too; Peter has to know what he’s getting into and has to be prepared to make the sacrifices it will require. That’s some pretty potent foreshadowing for those in the audience who know the reference. Surely Peter knows it or it wouldn’t show up in his dream. Peter’s friends and family are telling him he must accept the “cross” of being a Christian, but because this is Peter’s own mind challenging him, his subconscious is also telling him there will be a substantial cross to bear as an openly gay man. Will Peter be required to “renounce all that he has,” and as the story moves forward, we have to wonder if Jason is part of “all that he has”?

Peter wakes from this nightmare as the mass ends, disoriented and confused, his head swimming with all these coded, contradictory messages. It’s a brilliant way to start the show and it accomplishes so much storytelling.

See why we love this show so much?

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Note: the full essay that came from this blog entry is on our website here.

That Moment of Truth

People sometimes tell me they don't like serious musicals, that musicals are "supposed to be" happy and light. That always baffles me. Sure, that was true in the 1910s and 20s, but that was a long time ago -- like a century ago!

If you think about it, almost all the shows that people consider the great classics have very dark strains in them. Sure, there are exceptions, like Hello, Dolly!, but not as many as you'd think...

Show Boat, which most people think of as incredibly old-fashioned (though it was genuinely cutting edge when it first opened) is about interracial marriage (when it was still illegal), domestic abuse, gambling addiction, a deadbeat dad who abandons his wife and child... Sounds like one of today's rock musicals, doesn't it...?

But wait, there's more...!

Carousel is about an abusive man who accidentally gets a girl pregnant then gets himself killed in a failed robbery attempt. Oklahoma! isn't quite that dark, but a major plot point is Jud's attempted rape of Laurie and his attempted murder of Curly. South Pacific is about war and racism. The Sound of Music is about escaping the Nazis. West Side Story is about gang violence and it leaves three dead bodies on stage. Cabaret is about the anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust. Man of La Mancha is set in a dungeon of the Spanish Inquisition. The Music Man is about a con man who tries to swindle a town full of good people out of their money, using their children as pawns. Even the seemingly old-fashioned My Fair Lady is about an incredibly misogynistic man emotionally abusing a young woman.

I assume you get my point...

The idea that musicals are -- or even used to be -- silly, frothy, escapist nonsense is not supported by reality. Yes, there have always been silly musicals, but there have also always been silly novels, movies, and plays, and that doesn't make novels, movies, and plays silly art forms.

So yes, bare is a serious musical. It's certainly got its share of laughs (not least among them, a giant penis pinata), but the underlying story is very serious, with very high stakes. And that's not an anomaly; musicals have always taken on serious subjects.

Musicals reflect the world around them -- sometimes serious, sometimes funny, and quite often funny on the surface but serious underneath. By definition, the stories that make the best musicals are very emotional, because music conveys emotion better than spoken words can and so musicals tell emotional stories better. Sometimes the emotions involved are only romantic ones, but quite often the emotions are far more complicated and darker than just First Love. And the proof of that is the list of shows that people consider the great classics.

And further proof is the small number of new musicals that really are entirely lightweight. Sure, there are some (Sister Act, The Addams Family, etc.), but most new musicals today are both funny and very serious (Next to Normal, Jersey Boys, The Scottsboro Boys, etc.) because that's what life is.

Don't tell me people go to the theatre (or movies) for "escape." That's just not true. People go to connect, to make sense of the craziness of living life. They may not be conscious that's why they're there, but it is. As humans, we make art and tell stories because that's how we learn about ourselves and each other, and that's how we preserve the lessons we learn about being human. Actor Ben Kingsley has said about actors, "The tribe has elected you to tell its story. You are the shaman/healer, that's what the storyteller is, and I think it's important for actors to appreciate that. Too often actors think it's all about them, when in reality it's all about the audience being able to recognize themselves in you."

The emotions and problems presented in bare are as intensely human as anything you'll see. These are very real characters with very real emotions. Even before all the pieces of our production come together, we can see the profound truth being told in this show, and we can't wait to share it. Acting guru Stella Adler once said, "Unless you give the audience something that makes them bigger – better – do not act."

We agree with the fictional artistic director on the wonderful TV show Slings and Arrows: "The theatre is an empty box and it is our job to fill it with fury and ecstasy and revolution." Not comfort and mindless silliness.

bare is gonna knock your socks off.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Give Time a Chance

It's been fun this week watching our show take shape in an early, protoplasmic form. We haven't run the whole show at once yet, but we've run each act separately. And it's looking pretty cool. I'd say we're 80% in control of this beast. Nothing deep and profound happening here yet, but the actors know what they're doing. And the few things they're not sure about, they're figuring out pretty fast. I can see characters and relationships forming...

I feel a little bad for some of the leads. They're doing soooo great, they're off book, and totally on the right road. But I can tell some of them beat themselves up a little bit when they forget a line or a piece of blocking. They keep promising me they'll get it. I know they will. We've got a great cast and nine full run-throughs before we open. No worries here.

We changed one fairly big thing this week. The first scene of the show is a wild, funny, slightly disturbing dream sequence, and at the end of it, I had the cast in a big, musical comedy pose (since of course, Peter's dream is a musical). It was a fun, weird ending befitting a fun, weird dream. But it wasn't as clear as it could be in terms of storytelling. We want to make sure that the audience knows this is a dream; if some of them don't catch that, they'll be confused for the first ten or fifteen minutes and won't be focused on our story. So I went back to my first impulse, to have everyone in the exact same place at the end of the song as they were at the beginning (to show that nothing in this wacky dream actually "happened"), and to make a bigger deal out of Peter "waking up" at the end of it.

Sure, much of the audience probably would have gotten it anyway, but I'd like everyone to get it. As Sondheim likes to say, our most important job is to be clear. Does the audience understand the story we are telling them? If they don't notice that Peter "falls asleep" at the beginning, they'll get this impression of the show as a wacky, surrealistic comedy, which is totally wrong, and then when the tone shifts, they'll be confused and won't be engaged.

Once I saw our revised staging, it was so obvious this was a better choice. Now it's really clear. And now I see that this dream sequence works sort of like the dream ballet in Oklahoma!. It acts as a prologue, laying out Peter's emotional terrain for us, sort of a psychological profile of our hero. We get so much information about Peter that's important for the story, and it's delivered so efficiently and entertainingly (is that a word?), and almost without the audience consciously noticing it. It's a very cool device.

This opening number answers the question I always ask first: Who is the protagonist? Silly question? Not as silly as you might think. You might argue that there are five protagonists here, and I won't totally dismiss that. But a protagonist has to learn something, has to change and grow, has to take a journey/quest of some kind, even if it's an interior one. Jason doesn't do that; Peter does. (It's also true that Ivy and Matt change and learn as well, Nadia less so.) Sometimes it's not obvious who the protagonist is in a show, but once you know, it makes a lot of things much easier, resulting in better work. One good trick is to look at which character is the first we meet and the last we hear from -- that won't always identify the protagonist, but it often does (it does in bare), so it can be helpful.

Case in point: I surprised myself when I was writing my musical Johnny Appleweed a few years ago, and I realized after a while that Johnny wasn't the protagonist; a character named Mark was. Mark was the one who learned and changed and was a different person at the end. Johnny was still the same stoner Obi-Wan at the end that he was at the beginning. And once I realized that, I discovered big structural flaws in the script that were easy to fix. The result was that my quirky stoner narrative was much clearer (well, as clear as a stoner musical can be).

I think a lot of directors make a lot of easy -- and mistaken -- assumptions about shows they're working on. And it's often worse with musicals, because too many otherwise skillful directors turn their brains off when they work on a musical, because, after all, it's only a musical. But because we usually work on less mainstream, more adventurous pieces at New Line, the obvious answers are often wrong. Some folks might think Jason is the hero of bare, but he's not.

So yeah, it's been a cool week and I'm finally feeling immersed in bare. And we've still got three weeks before we open! Imagine the fun we're gonna have!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Running Together

Well, the parts of the process that I don't like as much are over and the part I love is upon us.

I don't much like music rehearsals because (depending on the show) they can be hard work but only vaguely creative. I don't particularly like blocking (i.e., staging) rehearsals because that's the hardest work I have to do during the process, and at that point, I only get a vague idea of whether we're on the right road or not. Blocking rehearsals involve not just figuring out where everybody goes, but also how to create compelling stage pictures, how to use physicality to make things clearer, and with most of our shows, how to use staging and light and the audience's imagination to take the place of concrete set pieces. Especially with a cast this big, traffic control by itself is quite a challenge.

But that part is done and now we just run the show. Tonight we run Act II, tomorrow night we run Act I again to get it back in everyone's brain, and then all that's left is running the whole show every night. This is the fun part for me.

It's always interesting to watch the new folks working with us. We've created our own working process over the years at New Line, in some ways exactly like the Rep's process, but in other ways more like an experimental company. The best of both worlds. Depending on the show, I tend to give the actors a ton of freedom as I block the show. A few things I stage in detail, where to move, on what word, which way their body is facing and which way their head is facing. Other things, I give them a general sense of where they're coming in, what area of the stage they have to work with, and where to exit. I leave it to them to fill in the details, to let the scene "find itself" over time. That terrifies some actors, while others love it.

Some directors (including one here in town, who shall remain nameless), will stage every micro-detail, every gesture, every step, throughout the entire show. Other directors sit behind a table the whole time and barely give the actors anything at all to help them. I'm smack dab in the middle of those two extremes. Sometimes, I think a moment needs precision; other times I think the end product will be infinitely more interesting if the actors on stage find their own way organically. After all, we usually get nine full run-throughs (a huge luxury) before we open, so there is time for that organic process to work.

With some shows (The Wild Party, Evita), almost every moment is staged, almost choreographed. With other shows (Hair, Two Gents), very few things are staged precisely, because that would kill the sense of authenticity shows like these possess. bare lies in the middle. I've staged small moments and solos pretty tightly, but I've left the "rehearsal" scenes and Ivy's party largely unblocked. If we run the show a few times, and those moments I didn't block in detail aren't finding their own way, we'll stop and fix them. But usually they find their way pretty well.

One of the reasons our company is different is that I direct shows from the piano. Which means I can sorta watch what's going on (I've gotten pretty good over the last thirty years at playing and watching at the same time), but I can't watch every second. At first, I thought that was a handicap. Now I know it's part of what works so well for us -- as long as we're working with great actors. It gives the actors more time and freedom than they would otherwise have to play and experiment and find their performances, before I start nitpicking. Some actors don't much like this "unsupervised play time;" they want me telling them if what they're doing is "right" or "wrong." Others thrive on it.

Next week, our accompanist Justin Smolik will join us and take over the piano from me. Then, after a few run-throughs without my meddling, hopefully the actors will have found their collective way, and I can start to edit what they've created, making sure the stage pictures are clear, making sure the characters and relationships are being communicated clearly, and fine-tuning the many tiny little moments that largely go unnoticed but which make the world of the show come to such vivid real life.

So this is my favorite part. We can really start to get a sense of the finished product. We still have three weeks till opening, but the really hardcore creative work starts now. Woo-hoo!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott