One Day More to Revolution...

It was interesting being in New York this past week. Not just because I saw five really brilliant musicals and hung out with some of my favorite theatre people, but also because I can see so clearly the world of musical theatre fundamentally changing in front of me (mirroring, I think, our sociopolitical world), and that's so exciting to watch! We are at a historical turning point. It's part of what my last book is about. And I see these arguably massive changes happening in two areas -- the transition from the world that venerates Rodgers and Hammerstein to a new world that values originality and authenticity and relevance above all; and parallel to that, the widening gap between the commercial musical theatre world and the more artsy, more ballsy nonprofit musical theatre world.

The commercial theatre apparently doesn't have room in it for the miracle that is The Blue Flower (its run is being cut short by Second Stage), and that's a shame.

After I saw Follies last Friday night, I thought a lot about the Sondheim and Prince revolution of the 1970s and the mixed reception for Follies in 1971 -- it was too dark, too sad, too nihilistic, blah, blah, blah. Yet here is this forty-year-old show feeling as fresh today as any new work on Broadway. I think it's because the musical theatre is in a very dark, sometimes nihilistic period now, reflecting (as it always does) our real world. Think Urinetown, Bat Boy, American Idiot, Jersey Boys, Taboo, The Color Purple, The Scottsboro Boys, Next to Normal, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson...

This new Follies, under Eric Schaeffer's loving and skillful hand, is darker than any Follies I've ever seen before, darker I think than even the original. And the acting is much more raw, more naked, much closer to the bone. Heavier. If you ever want to see a Sondheim show done really right, this is it. I recently wrote a letter to Sondheim, asking him if he'd let New Line take a stab at the original version of Merrily We Roll Along, because I think its relentless darkness (not to mention its structural rebellion) is finally right at home in the contemporary musical theatre. (Sondheim said no, which I totally understand.)

Many folks will bitch and moan about how dark the musical theatre has gotten (they wouldn't like Bonnie & Clyde much) and they'll pine for the days of Damn Yankees and Mame. These are the folks who don't want our art form to keep moving forward, to stay fresh and relevant, to mirror the world around us as the musical theatre always has. They think musical theatre should have stopped evolving a few decades ago. They think the pinnacle of the art form is the Rodgers and Hammerstein model, so our rejection of that model today seems like a tragedy to them. This is the same sort who denounced the rock musical as the ruination of the art form in the 70s.

I bet it drove them crazy when Rent and Next to Normal won Pulitzer Prizes...

But "these are very difficult and dangerous times" we're living through right now. America is having a nervous breakdown of sorts (which I think is what makes Follies, Bonnie & Clyde, and The Blue Flower, not to mention Next to Normal, so potent right now) and is redefining itself in so many fundamental ways. Lysistrata Jones really struck me as a compelling exploration of this new America 2.0, a neo-musical comedy with its very racially integrated cast (mirroring the real-world "browning of America"), its strong hip-hop influences, and its joyous reclaiming of what made the American musical comedy such a cultural juggernaut a century ago -- the brashness, the aggressiveness, the vulgarity, the playfulness, and the sly cultural criticism that goes all the way back to the father of the American musical, George M. Cohan, who was literally inventing the American musical comedy exactly a century ago. Just as the classic musical comedy was once replaced by the modern musical drama, then the concept musical, then the pop opera, then the more cynical postmodern musical, now those forms are giving way to the neo-musical comedy (some of which are also postmodern musicals) and the now fully mature rock musical.

No more are musicals required to imitate the "well-made play" that came over from Europe in the nineteenth century. No more do musicals suffer their uncomfortable relationship with "the Fourth Wall," imposed on them by the disciples of the European Enlightenment; musicals don't do naturalism very well and it's silly to make them try. No more do musicals aspire to the form of grand opera, which was endowed with some faux superiority during the 20th century. No more are musicals in a choke-hold to middle-class, 20th century morality, as encoded in the Rodgers and Hammerstein canon -- now characters in musicals can say fuck and shit just like real people do. Now musicals can talk about sex openly, without clumsy metaphor or awkward euphemism.

There's a whole new generation of artists creating new musicals now and they don't suffer from the hang-ups and nostalgia the Boomers inherited from the Depression Generation. I find that I can't watch Lysistrata Jones or The Blue Flower without feeling overwhelming joy and optimism for the future of my art form.

And finally, for the first time in its history, the musical theatre is no longer defined by commercial success. Now there are literally hundreds of musicals being written and produced all over our country every year (try a Google search and prepare to have your mind blown). The monopoly is broken. The requirement that a musical be inoffensive enough to appeal to the least literate tourist is dead. Today the most exciting shows to open on Broadway do not start there. Of the five shows I saw in New York last week, Follies started at the nonprofit Kennedy Center in DC; Lysistrata Jones was first produced by the nonprofit Dallas Theatre Center and then by The Transport Group in the nonprofit Gym at Judson down in Greenwich Village (where some of the coolest experiments of the 1960s and 70s happened); Bonnie & Clyde started at the nonprofit La Jolla Playhouse in California; and both The Blue Flower and Rent were playing off Broadway houses, one of which is nonprofit.

Today, commercial viability isn't always the central concern for people creating new shows. The art form itself has finally become more important than its commercial prospects. That's partly a product of history -- in the first half of the 20th century, Broadway really was the only place to produce a new musical, and for much of the second half of the century, new musicals had only Broadway and off Broadway as options. But since the "new wave" of the 1990s (with New Line Theatre at the forefront, by the way), nonprofit "art" musical theatre has steadily grown in power and influence across our country and now rivals New York's commercial theatre, offering an alternative to Broadway and touring shows for millions of theatre-goers. High Fidelity, bare, and Passing Strange were all rejected by New York's commercial theatre but are now being embraced all over America by the nonprofit theatre world.

Money no longer drives the musical theatre. Now the artists do.

Come join the Revolution!

Don't get me wrong -- Broadway does still hold some magic for me. But we're not living in the 1950s anymore, when Broadway was the only game in the country (in the world?) for a musical theatre artist. If some New York producer called me tomorrow and wanted to produce Johnny Appleweed or wanted me to direct a revival of Bat Boy (that's our 2006 production in the photo), I doubt I'd be able to say no. But until that day comes, I get to keep doing the most exciting work of my life -- working with amazing artists on amazing shows like Passing Strange, Love Kills, High Fidelity, bare, The Wild Party, The Robber Bridegroom, Forbidden Planet, the masterpiece that is Bat Boy, and so many others that the moneyed folks in New York would never let me produce there.

And that's alright, to quote Stew...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Rent

Last night I saw my last show before coming home today, the off Broadway revival of Rent.

I was a little wary of this one. I saw the original production just a few weeks after it moved to Broadway in 1996, and it was one of the most thrilling theatre experiences of my life. This was before a recording had been released, so I knew very little about the show. And it blew my freaking mind. It was so defiantly unlike anything else in the musical theatre, even though (on closer inspection) it uses many traditional musical theatre devices.

Its rawness and naked honestly was amazing. (I still think had Larson not died, and had he gone on to further polish the show, it might have ended up less than it is now.) Rent quickly became one of my favorite shows ever.

This is the baggage I brought with me to the performance last night.

And you know what?
I loved it.

It's incredibly different from the original -- the only piece of staging that remains is "Seasons of Love," which was the perfect moment to pay tribute to the original. But every other moment and every character interpretation was so different.

And yet, it gave me exactly the same thrill, the same profound emotions, the same joy. It's as if the original production was a 1990s musical capturing the zeitgeist and this revival is a 21st century musical about the 1990s. It really feels like a different show now. This Rent speaks to this moment just like the original Rent spoke to its moment. This creative team found a way to tell this story in today's terms without violating it for a second. And here's the real shocker -- both productions were directed by Michael Greif!

After so many years of the original memory fading a bit, after seeing too many other productions reproduce the original but with lesser results, I think my love for Rent had waned a bit. But this new production fixed that. I can't count the number of times tears welled up in my eyes, only a few times in sadness, but more often in the kind of pure fucking joy that only great theatre can supply.

And on reflection, with time admittedly obscuring the original a bit, it seems this production may have better acting, more subtle, complex characterizations than the original. These characters also seem younger than the originals did, more vulnerable, which makes their stories much more powerful and the stakes higher, and I think that supercharges both the sadness and the joy of this beautiful story. Maureen is funnier and realer, Mark (Michael Wartella at this performance) is more vulnerable and even more the emotional outsider, Roger is more damaged, Joanne is stronger, Mimi is more aggressive. It's as if the original production hired great rock singers who could act, but this one hired great actors who could sing rock and roll. The difference is subtle, but it's real.

Like the set for Bonnie & Clyde, the Rent set looks simple but isn't. It performs some cool stage tricks but never pulls the focus away from the actors. It's a full-stage sculpture of scaffolding, some pieces moving from time to time, with fire escape stairs, a wrap-around balcony, and other cool stuff, clearly discarding the fierce physical minimalism of the original. And they use a lot of projections, video, etc. (which, I gotta say, I could do without). But not only did it look cool, it sounded cool whenever they moved it or used it, giving the whole thing a very urban, downtown, rock club kind of vibe.

I've never directed Rent because I always thought there was essentially just one way to approach it -- the original seemed so fucking perfect. I didn't want to imitate it but i didn't want to lessen its perfection either. But this new approach is perfect too. Maybe this production will finally rescue Rent from a million lesser reproductions of the original. And maybe, just maybe, I might be ready to tackle it soon...

Not next season, but soon...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

P.S. Here's my background and analysis essay about Rent, from my 2001 book Rebels With Applause.

P.P.S. See also my thoughts on Follies, Lysistrata Jones, Bonnie & Clyde, and The Blue Flower.

The Blue Flower

I just had one of the greatest artistic experiences of my entire life. A musical called The Blue Flower, by Jim and Ruth Bauer. It's beautiful and weird and thrilling and powerful and incredibly original, as if Kurt Weill and Jacques Brel were still alive and decided to write a new rock musical.

It's about the artist Max Baumann and his circle of friends in Europe at the end of the 19th century and into the 20th, as they grapple and struggle with the tumultuous waves in the tides of history. But it's also about art making. And when the show ends, we realize that this musical is a collage like the ones that Max makes, a rush of images, colors, film, movement, and some of the most gorgeous music and most poetic lyrics I've ever heard.

It's almost more performance art than conventional musical, defiantly breaking one rule after another -- not just for the sake of breaking rules, but because it's a story about artists who were testing boundaries, breaking rules, throwing off the conventions of past generations, trying to break through to something new. And though its aggressively Brechtian style seems to hold us at arm's length, it's still one of the most emotional shows I've seen in years.

The profoundly high-energy, versatile cast almost never leaves the stage, but at the center of it all is Broadway veteran Marc Kudisch who gives a fearless, reveletory performance as Baumann, in glorious voice and with the weight of history on his shoulders and his heart.

It's one of those shows that's so stylized, so specific in its physicality, and director Will Pomerantz and choreographer Chase Brock have created some of the most intense, most interesting, most beautiful staging I've ever seen.

It's so rich and so smart and so all-around amazing that as much as I loved it -- and Jesus, did I love it -- I don't know that I'd want to direct it myself. Not only does it use a ton of film and projections (and you know me, I hate tech), but also, I just can't imagine anyone equaling the brilliance of this staging. It seems so perfect, as if the gods of theatre brought together these writers, this production staff, and these actors for this one perfect moment, never to be repeated. It's a show that reminds us how magical great works of the theatre can be in the right hands.

The other shows I've seen this weekend, Bonnie & Clyde and Lysistrata Jones, are great shows, but The Blue Flower is something different. I'll never forget this show as long as I live. More proof, if I needed it, that my chosen art form has never been more vigorous, more alive, more inventive, or more thrilling. This is the Golden Age of the Ameican musical theatre. I've never been more convinced of that than I am right now.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

P.S. See also my thoughts on Follies, Lysistrata Jones, Bonnie & Clyde, and Rent.

P.P.S. A few weeks after I originally posted this, I was able to arrange an interview with Jim and Ruth Bauer about The Blue Flower, for a local radio show I co-host, Break a Leg: Theatre in St. Louis and Beyond. You can listen to the interview on the KDHX website.

Bonnie & Clyde

Let's start with the fact that I've never met a Frank Wildhorn musical I liked. Jekyll & Hyde is a mess of cliches, amateurish lyrics, silly direction, and nice pop music that can't do the job of good theatre music. Sure, there are some decent pop anthems in there, good music to skate to, but they're lousy theatre songs. The Scarlet Pimpernel is marginally better, only because it doesn't take itself too seriously, so its flaws are more forgivable. And let's just skip The Civil War -- one of only two musicals I've ever walked out on in my entire life.

Mom always said, if you can't say something nice...

All that said, I bought a ticket to Wildhorn's Bonnie & Clyde with some understandable trepidation. For $136.50, I want to be fucking impressed.

And holy shit, what do you know, I was!

Bonnie & Clyde has an excellent, dark, emotional book by Ivan Menchell (his first Broadway musical), interesting, dramatic, evocative lyrics by Don Black (who also did Song and Dance), and jazzy, aggressive, high-energy music -- nothing like the sometimes bland, often interchangeable pop tunes Wildhorn has burdened his other shows with. There's not a clunker anywhere in this score.



And the set is one of those "trick sets" Broadway loves that, for once, never becomes the star of the show and never gets in the way of the storytelling, with almost the whole set in rough-hewn wood -- exactly right for the period and the subject matter -- three large sliding panels that are used really effectively, and period projections that continually remind us that this is a real story, that these people were real, that these things -- these murders -- actually happened. The richly suggestive set seems minimalist, but it's actually fairly complex, with hidden trap doors, various ramps and such, all enhanced with some really cool lighting effects and projections that work beautifully with the wooden panels.

And there's gore -- lots of it, not just blood, but late in the show, one character's face half shot off. In fact, the first moments of the show assault us with deafening machine gun fire and a tableau of the doomed couple's assassination in their car. It announces the intensity of the show brilliantly.

This is an adult show about murderers, they're telling us, even if they are very charming murderers...

And then there's the cast -- Laura Osnes and Jeremy Jordan are just amazing in the leads, not just vocal powerhouses, but also sexy, scary, vulnerable, passionate, damaged, and so in love. Sure, the show romanticizes them to some degree -- I don't know who could tell this story without doing that, at least a little -- but it also doesn't shy away from their savage killing spree. And really, the entire cast is just as pitch perfect and just as fully committed to every moment. And Jeff Calhoun's direction is a study in restraint and the power of the tableau, without a misstep anywhere. It's a real joy to watch actors that good having that much fun.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that St. Louis' own John McDaniel is the conductor, music director, and orchestrator -- and god, are those orchestrations exciting!

And on another interesting note, at intermission I heard some really pretentious theatre people in front of me putting the show down in the most condescending terms. And as I eavesdropped, I realized one of them was the director of The Book of Mormon, and it took all my self-control not to lean forward and suggest to him that this was a more interesting, more adult, better crafted show than Mormon, which sounds like it was written by a creepy twelve-year-old with Tourette's... I'm just sayin'...

I never thought I'd be saying I loved a Frank Wildhorn musical, but god help me, I do. I guess that just goes to prove, the theatre is a never-ending parade of surprises. Maybe that's why I love it so much.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

P.S. See also my thoughts on Follies, Lysistrata Jones, The Blue Flower, and Rent.

P.P.S. A few weeks after I originally posted this, I was able to arrange an interview with John McDaniel about Bonnie & Clyde, for a local radio show I co-host, Break a Leg: Theatre in St. Louis and Beyond. You can listen to the interview on the KDHX website.

Lysistrata Jones

This afternoon I saw a rock/hip-hop musical comedy based on the classical Greek play Lysistrata (the one where the women go on a sex strike until their men give up war). It's called Lysistrata Jones and transplants the story to a college campus -- sort of now and sort of 411 BC -- and swaps war for a basketball losing streak.

You can see how I might be wary of this one...

But it's an absolute blast! With a wacky, fast-paced book by playwright Douglas Carter Beane (author of the brilliant As Bees in Honey Drown and The Little Dog Laughed), a pulse-pounding, hyper-high-energy hip-hop score by Lewis Flinn, and wacky fun-filled direction and thrilling hip-hop choreography both by Dan Knechtges. There are only a few musicals that deliver this much fun. (Bat Boy comes to mind.) Bucking my least favorite trend on and off Broadway, this is not a production that thinks bad acting is funny. These actors are 100% serious within this wacky world and the stakes are sky high, and that's what makes the whole crazy enterprise so utterly hilarious.

They have lots of fun with the double time period, existing both in classical Athens and also in the world of today, with smart phones and Joel Schumacher Batmam movies. But they never make the mistake of self-reference for its own sake. Everything here contributes to the wild fun of the world this awesome cast of 12 creates on stage.

I'd be lying if I said the considerable amount of bare chests and other beefcake didn't add to my enjoyment, but this is a really terrific, neo-musical comedy, using the energy and devices of George M. Cohan but in a relevant, modern way.

Its high spirits and silly seriousness reminds me a lot of awesome shows like Bat Boy, Urinetown, Forbidden Planet, and several other of my favorites. And though it's not long on substance, it is very smart and very literate, and it's the perfect musical comedy for this ironic age of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.

It's hard not to have a total blast when everyone onstage is having that much fun. What a joyful, wild, well-crafted piece of musical theatre! Bravo!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

P.S. See also my thoughts on Follies, Bonnie & Clyde, The Blue Flower, and Rent.

Follies

So last night I saw the new, utterly transcendent revival of Follies, which I kept hearing was the best production of this brilliant postmodern musical since the original in 1971.

And I think they may be right.

It was my third Follies, having seen the show on Broadway in 2001 and in London in 2002, and though the other two were very good, this one leaves the others in the dust.

The cast is uniformly amazing, the production design is gorgeous, and the direction is excellent. My only real complaint is that they stuck an intermission into it. Once more, friends -- if a show is written without an intermission, it's structured very differently from a two-act show, so just cramming an intermission into the middle of a one-act show (which people do to Pippin, Man of La Mancha, Assassins, and other shows) doesn't make it a two-act show.

But letting that go for the moment...

Not only were the four leads outstanding, but every one of the secondary leads, most of whom get one song and a smattering of lines, were also wonderful. Among those secondary leads were Broadway veterans like Elaine Page, Teri White, Don Correia, Susan Watson, Florence Lacey, and others.

And then there are those four leads. Ron Raines as Ben was really good, and yet he was the weakest of the four. I'd never seen Jan Maxwell (Phyllis) before but she's a remarkable actor and she made a lot of choices I've never seen from Phyllis before. As an example, as much as I loved Alexis Smith's bitterly cold "Could I Leave You?", Maxwell plays the song as a rage-filled breakdown, almost a mad scene, and it really works!

Danny Burstein (most recently seen in a brilliant performance as Luther Billis in the South Pacific revival) is Buddy, and I've never seen anyone do it better -- such sadness, such heart, such love, such rage, such conflict crippling him and ripping him apart inside. It's a brilliant, thrilling performance, exactly the way Buddy should be approached, so honest, so flawed, so human...

And then there's Bernadette. As much as I love her, I don't always love her acting, but here Bernadette the Broadway Star utterly disappears in the fragile, damaged, profoundly depressed Sally. It's by far the best work I've ever seen her do. Her performance is so raw and honest it's almost painful to watch her. She and Burstein are incredibly believable as this fucked-up couple, married thirty years, who should have never been married to begin with. And it's not just honest, it's really subtle and detailed.

And because the acting was so outstanding, the characters so complex and nuanced, the last third of the show -- the fantasy Follies numbers -- had more resonance than I've ever seen before. And in all four cases, at the end of each song, the sadness, the loneliness creeps back in.

I think this is the darkest production I've seen of the show, but also the most honest. After all, this is about the pain and regret of middle-age. Stressing the considerable amount of pure entertainment over the acting lets both the characters and the audience off the hook. Director Eric Schaeffer wasn't about to let that happen this time.

It's truly one of the most emotional, most powerful productions I've ever seen on stage, and I got choked up any number of times. I'm so glad I finally got to see Follies done absolutely perfectly. Not a flaw to be found.

Oh yeah, did I mention the twenty-eight piece orchestra? How often do you ever get to hear that live?

All in all, a magnificent evening with a true masterpiece of the theatre. It makes me want to produce and direct this show more than ever -- and all we need is an old proscenium house, a full orchestra, a huge cast, and a huge set and costume budget. That's all...

C'mon, who's gonna write me a check to cover all that...?

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

P.S. See also my thoughts on Lysistrata Jones, Bonnie & Clyde, The Blue Flower, and Rent.

A Helluva Town

So here I am, back in the big bad apple for my annual Broadway trip. As much I hate travel, I do enjoy seeing new Broadway and off Broadway shows. Quite a few of the shows I've seen here soon after became New Line productions.

Last night, after I settled into my hotel, I met up with my buddy Doug Storm (in the background in the picture) -- native St. Louisan, performer on Broadway, off Broadway, and in national tours, and closest to my heart, an original cast member of Bat Boy. Doug left New York a while back, moved back to St. Louis for a bit, tried his luck in Los Angeles and Las Vegas (where he has also performed) and Chicago, and is now back in New York. It was interesting talking to him about how incredibly difficult it is for an actor to make enough money to live on. I think some people think that's only a problem in St. Louis and it's not.

I've got tickets to see five shows while I'm here, but I started today at Lincoln Center, in the Theatre on Film and Tape Collection of the New York Public Library. I saw three things. First, I thought I was gonna see excerpts from the 1969 musical Promenade, but it turned out to be something else with the same title. Shit.

Then I saw excerpts from Carrie, the infamous Broadway muscial flop. As the librarian put it, "We didn't get a chance to tape it" -- in other words, it closed too fast (16 previews and 5 performances). I've always wondered about Carrie, whether it was really as bad as they said it was. Well, now I think it was. What they had on video was a press reel, portions of 7 or 8 songs. Some of them were really wonderful. Betty Buckley (as the crazed mother) was brilliant and powerful. Linzi Hateley in the role of Carrie was very good. I was surprised to see "Leroy" from the original film version of Fame in some of the clips. But many of the songs were awful. And the choreography was by far the blandest, stupidest, and clumsiest I have ever seen in a musical. And not just on Broadway. From what I what I could tell in these clips, the direction was also terrible. No wonder it was such a flop!

And then I watched something really cool -- the recent off Broadway musical The Burnt Part Boys, which is kind of a cross between Floyd Collins and Stand be Me.

It's about a mining town where a bunch of men were killed in a mining accident ten years earlier. With the news that the mine is about to be re-opened, five kids make a pilgrimage to the "burnt part" of the mountain where it happened. The one kid, the central character, brings along dynamite to close the mine up once and for all, accidentally trapping them all inside, and as their air runs out, the dead miners appear and these kids are able to finally say goodbye to their fathers. And the main character's older brother gets his father's blessing to leave the mining life before he's killed as well. Some of Act I was a little slow, but overall, it's a very entertaining show and the last half hour or so is really powerful. You'll be happy to know a cast recording of the very cool bluegrass score is now on Amazon for pre-order.

Tonight I see the revival of Follies, which they say is the best production of this masterpiece since the original. I can't wait.

I'll check in again soon.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

They say the neon lights are bright...

Tomorrow I head off on my annual pilgrimage to the Big Bad Apple, to see what's going on in the commercial musical theatre. I really hate to travel, but I love seeing friends and shows in New York, so it balances out. And this time, I'm seeing five shows in three days. Well, six, actually. (More on that later.) And I'll be blogging while I'm up there...

I"m seeing the new Broadway revival of Follies, which I've been told is the best production of the show since the original. I've seen two production of Follies before, one on Broadway in 2001, and one in London in 2002. I thought both were excellent, but I'm extremely psyched to see this one. It's such a remarkable piece of theatre, like no other show ever written. Definitely a show I'd love to tackle someday...

I'm also seeing the new off Broadway revival of Rent. I saw the original production of Rent just a few weeks after it moved to Broadway back in 1996, and none of the actors were out with blown vocal cords yet, so I got to see the entire original cast. It was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had in the theatre, dead center, tenth row. I hadn't heard any of the music, just read a few things, so everything about it was a surprise. And since all the tours and even local productions since then have essentially replicated the original, it'll be interesting to see a new take on the show.

I'm seeing Lysistrata Jones, the new musical that takes the classical Greek play Lysistrata, about women going on a sex strike until their men give up war, and transplants it to a college campus where the girls go on a sex strike until the boys basketball team breaks their endless losing streak. The show was off Broadway and has moved uptown. Sounds like fun.

I'm seeing Bonnie & Clyde, which normally would be totally exciting, but this one has a score by Frank Wildhorn, whose scores I usually hate more than later Lloyd Webber. So I'm a little wary. But I heard a lot of the music on the show's website and it's pretty good (actually, Wildhorn always writes good music, just lousy theatre songs). Also, the lyricist is Don Black, who wrote lyrics for "Tell Me on a Sunday" (half of Song and Dance), which I really like a lot. And it's directed by Jeff Calhoun, who directed that amazing Deaf West production of Big River, which was one of the coolest things I've ever seen. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

And I'm also seeing The Blue Flower, which sounds wild. Here's what Playbill.com says about the show: "Spanning two continents and half a century, The Blue Flower explores the romantic and tumultuous relationships among four young friends -- three artists and a scientist --as they create a world of art, revolution and passion amidst the turbulence and destruction of the World Wars." It goes on to say, "Set in Germany at the end of World War I and the beginning of the Weimar Republic, The Blue Flower is inspired by the lives of historical figures Max Beckmann, Franz Marc, Hannah Höch, and Marie Curie. Influenced by the art movements -- particularly Dada and Surrealism -- and the political tenor of the day, Max, Hannah, Maria, and Franz try to make sense of the world in which they struggle to create, relate, and survive." That sounds a New Line show, doesn't it?

And of course, I always have to take A Trip to the Library (to reference one of my favorite show tunes), to the New York Public Library's Theatre on Film and Tape Collection, at Lincoln Center. This time, I'll be watching excerpts (that's all they have) from Promenade, a bizarre, absurdist musical from 1969 that I really want to produce, and the original Broadway production of Carrie. And then I'll also be watching a full tape of The Burnt Part Boys, a recent off Broadway musical that I heard a lot of good things about. Might be a New Line show...

Tomorrow and Monday are entirely travel days, so I'll essentially be in New York for three days and I'll see six shows. Not bad, huh? Go ahead and say it, I'm an addict. I don't care. I'm not ashamed of it.

At age 47, I don't have the same wide-eyed adoration for Broadway that I once had. Broadway is different now. I'm different now. Now that I get to work directly with the writers on some of our shows, I can see how often commercial considerations on Broadway ruin otherwise wonderful shows. Sure, Broadway still sometimes turns out great new musicals, but the truly interesting new shows (the ones I want to work on) almost never start on Broadway, even though sometimes they eventually get there. Still, tarnished as the Great White Way may be for me, it's still Broadway, and since before I could remember, that word has always carried with it more magic than any other word I can think of.

Come on along and listen to 
The lullaby of Broadway, 
The hi-de-hi and boop-a-doo, 
The lullaby of Broadway. 
The band begins to go to town 
And everyone goes crazy...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Life is Like a Musical Comedy

I just finished a great biography about George M. Cohan, the father of American musical comedy, called George M. Cohan: The Man Who Owned Broadway. It's a really fun read, and at the end, the author quotes the last song Cohan wrote, for his last show, The Musical Comedy Man. Cohan died before the show could be produced. But his lyric is so much fun...

Life is what you make it,
It's just the way you take it,
Life can be a tragedy
Or life can be a song.
Scientific teachers,
Philosopher and preachers,
Have forty different themes on the way to get along.
But when all is said and done, why do they worry so?
To me, to look on life is just like looking at a show.

Life is like a musical comedy,
Life is like a travesty show.
Nobody seems to know just what it's about,
Yet ev'rybody's trying to figure it out.
Life, with all its girls and comedians --
Life is like a blackout revue.
Unexpected scenes, all the way through.
Life is make-believe and spectacular.
Life will hand you just a few laughs.
A little dialogue, then somebody sings,
Just like those Gilbert and Sullivan things.
Life is just the same over distant seas,
Life's a serious of inconsistencies.
Lights on, lights out -- before you know;
Life's just a great big musical show.

Hmmmm.... sort of the same sentiment we encountered at the end of Passing Strange --

The universe is a toy
In the mind of a boy,
And life is a movie, too,
Starring you.
Your whole family’s the cast and crew.
That’s a little secret between God and you.

Remember what Stew told us in Passing Strange -- "Some people feel like art is more real than life. And that really gives you something to think about..."

Yes it does.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Meta-Musicals

Thinking some Deep Thoughts about musicals, with due thanks to God's Goofy Green Goodness for setting the psychic stage for me...

I'm thinking about "meta-musicals." According to Wikipedia, meta-theatre is theatre that "comments on itself, drawing attention to the literal circumstances of its own production, such as the presence of the audience or the fact that the actors are actors, and/or the making explicit the literary artifice behind the production." A meta-musical is one that goes beyond (the Greek meaning of meta) the normal confines and rules of the stage to comment more broadly on the experience of theatre itself. It's theatre about theatre. We do that a lot at New Line.

When New Line produced The Cradle Will Rock, we recreated the show's historic opening night in 1937 when it was performed from the audience because the union wouldn't allow the actors to appear onstage. We could have just produced Cradle as a regular show, but in creating that historical moment around that first performance, by making the audience itself part of the performance, our production went beyond the normal performance experience to create a larger "meta" event. The audience's presence and their watching of the show became part of the show -- they literally played the part of the original 1937 audience -- and our actors were playing actors in 1937 who were playing roles in The Cradle Will Rock.

The most obvious recent examples of meta-musicals are [title of show] and Silence!, neither of which really worked for me. Jeremy McCarter did a great job of explaining [title of show]'s misfires and shortcomings in his New York magazine review. The other recent show which is an on-again-off-again meta-musical is the excessively lauded The Book of Mormon, which is funny, but not as funny as it thinks it is, or as smart as we know its creators are. One blogger's review gets exactly right why Mormon doesn't totally work...

But not all meta-musicals are just about the cheap, easy laughs that come from repeated self-reference. Some meta-musicals are rich, complex, smart, thrilling pieces of theatre written by artists at the height of their powers, like Bat Boy and Urinetown. And that's what I've been thinking about...

Exhibit A. Passing Strange the musical is itself the thing the Youth in Passing Strange is seeking. The unusual force and power of the show comes from the fact the performance of the show itself, the sharing of it, is what the show is about. In the story, the Youth -- the younger self of the writer Stew -- is seeking The Real, in other words, authenticity, his own personal Great Truth, his place in the universe, his path. And what he discovers is that his Real is the expression of himself through art. And the art he (Stew/Youth) makes is Passing Strange. So through the entire story, we're going on this journey to find the experience we're in the midst of experiencing. Because art is expression, art needs an audience. So not only are we watching Passing Strange, we're necessary to its existence. We are of it.

The same is true of Chicago. It's a story about how the press and the public turn crime into entertainment and criminals into celebrities. The most brilliant moment in this brilliant show is at the end when Velma and Roxie thank us -- the audience -- and tell us, "We could not have done it without you." And we realize suddenly that we've gone along with it all night. We are complicit. We sat and watched murderers and we laughed with them, applauded them, got to like them, even root for them to get acquitted. They can't turn crime into entertainment without a public to sell it to, and we suddenly realize we're the public they just sold it to. The show becomes about us as much as the actors onstage. (To a lesser extent, the same thing happens at the end of Pippin.)

But let me digress for a moment. This analysis doesn't apply to the long-running Broadway revival of Chicago. Unfortunately, the producers of the revival stripped it of two of its most essential ingredients, its time period and its central metaphor. Setting the show in the 1920s is important because it lets the audience feel distance between them and these murderers. They can laugh at them because they're safely locked away in the past (and yes, Velma and Roxie are based on two real women murderers) -- until the end of the show when they spring the trap on us. When we get to those thank-yous in the last few moments of the show, Velma and Roxie aren't thanking an audience in the 1920s. They're thanking us, now. We're the problem.

When the producers discarded the show's 1920s period, they lost that amazing trap and a potent expression of the show's central point.

Likewise, Chicago was written so that every scene and every song are in the style of a common or famous vaudeville act -- the sister act, the ventriloquist act, the opera singer, the tableau vivant, the flash act, the exotic dance, the comedy sketch, the torch singer, the specialty dance acts, the comedian, the kid act... So literally, in front of our eyes, every moment in the story of these crimes is transformed into popular entertainment. We aren't watching a story about turning crime into entertainment; we are actually watching it happen. The show itself is what the show criticizes. (The same thing is at work in Oliver Stone's film Natural Born Killers.) This all pays off so strongly at the end when that trap is sprung. When the revival discarded the vaudeville metaphor, the show lost even more of its original power.

There's a good rule of storytelling -- the more specific the details, the more universal the appeal. It's the reason why Fiddler on the Roof was such a massive hit in Japan. The Japanese saw their culture portrayed so vividly in this Jewish-American musical. But the revival producers took away the specifics from Chicago and made it less universal and less powerful.

Like Passing Strange and Chicago, Cabaret also becomes the thing it's about. We watch this story and slowly understand its point over the course of the evening, that there is a cost to doing nothing in the face of evil. Being passive is as much a choice as taking action, the show argues. And we watch as Fraulein Schneider does nothing in the face of evil and perhaps we judge her for a moment, but then after her searing anthem "What Would You Do?" we wonder if maybe we'd do the same. It's a powerful message. But at the end of the show, when the freaky Emcee returns to end the story, we are brought back to the creepy cabaret, and we realize we've just spent an evening watching evil and doing nothing. Some of us may go further and think about all the evil we see on the evening news every night, and the trivial evils we see committed in the world every day. And we do nothing. And as we realize that, we become part of Cabaret. That's why the Emcee talks directly to us at the beginning and end of the show. The story may be set in Berlin in the 30s but this show, this performance of Cabaret, is here and now and tonight. We are part of what's going on and part of what's to be judged. After all, you can't sit and watch and do nothing, unless you're sitting and watching to begin with...

So I guess my point is that all meta-musicals are not created equal. When the meta-theatricality is the point, when the writers are lazy or bereft of any real ideas beyond mere self-reference, the joke wears thin pretty fast. When meta-theatricality is a tool to better illuminate an idea or central theme, that's smart, rich, interesting theatre. Even in 2011, people still tell me they don't like musicals (what most of them mean, of course, is that they don't like Rodgers and Hammerstein), and that musicals are dumb and trivial. Sure, [title of show] is, but Passing Strange, Chicago, Cabaret, Bat Boy, and Urinetown aren't.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

P.S. To check out my newest musical theatre books, click here.

P.P.S. To donate to New Line Theatre, click here

Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, and Musicals

I was in junior high when the movie version of Grease was released. I remember that a high school kid in the neighborhood took a bunch of us to see it in his Trams Am! I saw it four times in the theatre. I already loved musicals, but this eclipsed everything else. Thinking back now, it was a hugely pivotal moment for me. And maybe it explains why I've directed Grease three times.

I remember vividly the way the movie started with "Love Is a Many Splendored Thing" in the background and then it busts into that driving, high energy title song. Today, I prefer the parallel opening songs in the stage version (the "Alma Mater" and the "Alma Mater Parody," both of which also turn up in the film), but seeing the movie back then for the first time, that transition thrilled me. This was not The Sound of Music.

I was already the musical theatre freak I am today. I already knew by heart entire "Golden Age" theatre scores -- My Fair Lady, Camelot, Carousel, Hello, Dolly!, West Side Story, Brigadoon, The Sound of Music, The Music Man, and I had even memorized the "Trouble" speech from The Music Man when I was nine. Just because.

And here I was watching a musical that used rock and roll and four-letter words, and it was entirely about sex! I knew I had found home when I heard Danny sing, "You know that ain't no shit, I'll be gettin' lots of tit in Greased Lightning," and in the next verse, "You know that I ain't braggin', she's a real pussy wagon!" Are you kidding me? In a musical? This was a universe away from Laurie singing, "Don't sigh and gaze at me. Your sighs are so like mine. Your eyes mustn't glow like mine. People will say we're in love!" Ack!

To this day, I do not understand why high schools produce Rodgers and Hammerstein shows.

The emotions weren't simplistic in Grease like they were in Oklahoma! Rizzo's eleven o'clock number, "There Are Worse Things I Could Do" is full of subtext and irony and social context and moral gray area, and complicated, unconscious character revelation. Even though the song is in the first person, the whole lyric is about Sandy, at least as Rizzo sees her -- a tease, a virgin, a judge, and a thief. To Rizzo, Sandy represents the oppression of mainstream morality and conformity (and its seduction of Danny), which Rizzo's probably been fighting against for years. So she dismantles the myth of Sandy's morality, piece by piece. It's such a strong theatre song, and it's also authentic period rock and roll.

There's nothing that rich in Oklahoma! When New Line produced Grease in 2007, I did a ton of research and discovered not only that the score is a brilliant evocation of authentic, early rock and roll, but also that the script is chock full of social and emotional authenticity. And even though I wasn't conscious of all that back in 1978, still I knew that Grease was something very different and very exciting. Not just dirty (although I loved that!), but also Real. I knew those kids. They talked like we talked. Their social pressures were my social pressures.

I didn't know Dolly Levi or Harold Hill.

The companion moment to that experience came my freshman year in high school (1979), after opening night of our spring show, Anything Goes (which has been one of my favorites ever since). A bunch of the cast drove down to University City to see the midnight show of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Varsity (now Vintage Vinyl). And I was thrilled again. In Rocky I saw everything that I had loved about Grease but here even more fearless, more aggressive, more raw, more unapologetically sexual. And it thrilled me like nothing ever had before. Yes, this soft-porn fable was a musical. I'll never forget the first time seeing Frank flirt with the nearly naked Rocky as Frank sings "The Charles Atlas Song," and later seeing Janet sing "Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me" while Rocky enthusiastically massages her tits. And the song actually ended with Janet's orgasm! And then those scenes where Frank seduces both Janet and Brad! And then there was the floor show...!

Holy fucking shit!

I became totally obsessed, like many before me had. I listened to the Rocky movie soundtrack constantly. But while most of the other fans were drawn more to the message of individuality and sexual freedom, I was drawn to the artistic adventurousness, the kind of creative wildness that came out of the experimental theatre movement in New York and London in the 1960s and early 70s. I had grown up with the Sexual Revolution and here was my beloved art form finally exploring what all that meant. (I hadn't yet discovered Hair, but that was coming about a year later.) In 2002, when New Line produced Rocky, I discovered that, as weird and subversive as the film may be, the stage show is even less conventional than the movie.

Like Grease, there is something undeniably honest and authentic at the core of Rocky Horror, and I recognized that even as a high school freshman. I'm not sure I could have put it into words back then, but I felt that these two musicals were about real life in a way that Hello, Dolly! and Brigadoon just weren't. These shows had guts, substance, politics. (If you doubt me, take a look at my essays about them.)

But both those movies -- and later on, even more so their stage versions -- really shaped the way I think about theatre. It taught me the second most important lesson of my professional life: never be afraid of your audience (a lesson many theatre artists have not learned). If you worry about whether your audience will be offended or whether they'll "get it," you've already lost the battle. If you're wondering what's the first most important lesson I've learned, it came in a letter from actor Larry Luckinbill in 1985. He wrote, "Go broke if you must, but always over-estimate the public's intelligence. They will thank you for it." Fucking A, dude!

This was six years before I started New Line, but it became our company's fundamental philosophy and, along with a few other experiences, it has shaped everything I've done in the theatre since then.

I'm just starting to recognize the power of my early influences -- note the title of my newest book, which was released last week, Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, and Musicals.

The Sexual Revolution coincided exactly with my childhood and people during that time talked about sex a lot more freely (Love American Style was also a favorite of mine), and the films of Grease and Rocky Horror came along just after I hit puberty, as I was beginning to navigate my teenage years. I think these two musicals really shaped who I am today. It was an amazing, pivotal time in American culture and I've been trying to figure it all out ever since through a lot of the shows I've directed. It's a rare New Line show that doesn't include both sexual content and plenty of four-letter words.

Luckily for New Line, most companies that produce musicals are still afraid of sex (like much of America) and uncomfortable honesty. Even when they produce Grease or Rocky Horror, they tame them down and back away from the awesome bite both these shows have when they're done as their creators intended. That's fine with us. Leave the crazy, vulgar, scary, authentic stuff to us and we'll continue to thrive for years to come...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

P.S. If you're interested, here are other posts about my artistic life and journey...
Portrait of a Boy
Suddenly There is Meaning
And as for Fortune and as for Pain
Only by Attempting the Absurd Can You Achieve the Ridiculous
Funny Girl, Whistle, and Fiddler, Oh My!

I Call the Bastard "Art"

Once again, the critics have fallen in love with our work....

FOUR STARS! “New Line Theater Founder and Artistic Director Scott Miller has chosen the ideal show to launch their new season, a production that totally matches the charter of his young, energetic and sometimes feverish theater. It’s called Passing Strange, and it is the familiar story of a young man in a search for himself and his future. . . . The energy and emotion of this production is potent. This cast displays enormous versatility and talent, and an obvious passion for the material. It is very involving for the audience. New Line knows what it’s doing and it shows. This is a terrific little show about a very personal journey that makes a night at New Line a very charged and involving experience.” – Harry Hamm, KMOX

“New Line’s season opener rocks. Literally. Never letting you forget you’re watching a play, Passing Strange challenges the preconceptions about what a musical is – a musical for people who don’t think they like musicals. It’s a high-octane, allegorical, semi-autobiographical account of a musician, Mark Stewart, who goes by the single name, Stew, and his journey of self-discovery. . . It’s a brilliant show with memorable performances and amazing songs. Actually, I’m buying the cast recording the second I post this entry. In short, go see it. I’m not kidding.” – Andrea Torrence, St. Louis Theatre Snob 

“Passing Strange is its own show, and an excellent one. . . It’s an exciting mélange of musical styles, with seven outstanding performers sizzling across the stage. . . It’s an interesting, fast-paced evening of musical theater with an exciting score, typical of the off-beat, difficult-to- characterize New Line productions.” – Joe Pollack, St. Louis Eats and Drinks

“This production by New Line Theatre provides a passionate experience, emboldened by excellent performances and top notch direction, and driven by superb work from the musicians playing the tuneful score. . . Passing Strange is a must-see for all young artists, but it’s equally worthy of attention by the entire theatre-going crowd, since it’s incredibly captivating and involving, and filled with great music.” – Chris Gibson, BroadwayWorld

“New Line Theatre has once again put a strong cast and a surprisingly good story on stage and makes us fall in love with musical theatre we may not be familiar with. In other words, Passing Strange is no Sound Of Music and the audience is better for it. . . You won’t find a more daring, unexpected or entertaining evening of theater anywhere else in St. Louis.” – Steve Allen, Java Journal 

“The musical Passing Strange takes the audience on a wild ride through sex, drugs and rock and roll. . . In director Scott Miller’s very capable hands, the show is poignant at times, angry at others, sometimes warm and very often hilarious.” – Christopher Reilly, The Patch 

“New Line rocks on in Passing Strange! Theater artists are almost useless in isolation. It takes at least a few people to put on the simplest and smallest of shows. That’s true even when a theater artist has a big personality and big hand in the work on stage. Stew is that kind of theater artist, and so is Scott Miller. Stew (aka Mark Stewart) wrote (and won a Tony for writing), co-composed (with Heidi Rodewald) and originally starred in Passing Strange, the exhilarating, hard-rocking musical that just opened here at New Line Theatre. Miller, who founded New Line in 1991 and remains its artistic director, has directed every show that it has staged, including this one. You can see their influences in this production, shimmering with Stew’s wit and shaking with Miller’s style. But it wouldn’t matter if not for the other artists who contributed their talents, notably the band and the ensemble.” – Judith Newmark, St. Louis Post-Dispatch 

“Passing Strange is an intoxicating, invigorating and beguiling piece as whimsical in its writing as in its lively and spirited music. . . A critical smash [on Broadway] but lukewarm box-office draw, it closed after just 165 performances. Perhaps if the incomparable Charles Glenn had been belting out Stew’s free-wheeling tunes as the Narrator on the Great White Way, as he is in New Line Theatre’s sparkling presentation, it might still be playing there. Glenn has a masterful, multi-textured voice, an instrument he utilizes with utmost finesse under Scott Miller’s loving, carefully crafted direction. From the high-flying starting number, “We Might Play All Night,” to the bouncy, jaunty “Blues Revelation” to the beautiful ballad “Amsterdam” and the scintillating show tune, “The Black One,” Glenn takes control of this breezy romp and fills its two hours and 30 minutes with bravado and syncopated gusto.” – Mark Bretz, Ladue News

“New Line is off to a flying start with the first local production of the musical Passing Strange . . . it has a marvelous score that comes to life with irresistible energy in the New Line production. Director Scott Miller is completely in tune with the show’s quest for artistic identity. . . There’s more in Passing Strange than I could take in, in one sitting. I hope this show won’t be a stranger to St. Louis theatres.” – Gerry Kowarsky, Two on the Aisle

“In his program notes, director Scott Miller offers that he opted for a technically minimalist production to allow for the “rich, rowdy music and lyrics.” Set by Todd Schaefer and costumes by Amy Kelly do their duty to stay out of the way. The little that’s present does a lot to gently accentuate the show and its cast – a swirling psychedelic blue brick road underlies the journey, actors clothed in gray basics become colorful characters as they toss around bright accessories. Most importantly, Miller’s minimalism accentuates the talent of his cast. With little to distract in the intimate theatre, the space is quickly filled with the finest wrist flick or arched brow. The actors also have all the room they need to play, and easily fill the stage as they acid trip in LA and riot in Berlin.” – Emily Piro, KDHX

“Everyone around me was raving about the singing, the story, everything. . . Overall, there is a lot to like here.” – Rosiland Early, St. Louis Magazine

Not bad, huh? It's been a wonderful, difficult, crazy ride.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott