Fellini, Fosse, Woody, Sondheim, and Stew

I've got a great idea for a film festival. Five nights, five films.

8 1/2 (1963)
All That Jazz (1979)
Stardust Memories (1980)
Sunday in the Park with George (1984)
Passing Strange (2008)

And lucky for us, all five are on video.

All five works are surrealistic, existential, deeply personal, richly symbolic, autobiographical fiction, created by great artists at the peak of their powers about great artists at the peak of their powers. All five are about the difficulty of juggling life and art. And consequently, all five are about men who treat the women in their lives terribly and then blame it on their art.

Like the central character in Bukowsical (which New Line will produce this summer) all the protagonists in these works are misfits. They can't find their place in the world because they aren't like everybody else. They are the tribe shamans. They can observe our world and make sense of it because they stand outside of it, but the price of that clear-eyed objectivity is an inability to connect one-on-one. It's maybe the most ironic thing about each of these artists/characters -- they connect powerfully to their audiences yet cannot connect at all to the people in their lives. Or as All That Jazz puts it, "He allowed himself to be adored, but not loved." Yikes.

All five of these works are also self-referring, pieces of art about making pieces of art, and in the case of Passing Strange, a piece of art about the artist/narrator/hero making the piece of art we're watching. Passing Strange itself is its own hero's acquired "wisdom" through his hero quest, the answer to his existential questions, and it's also the show we're watching. Throughout his journey, the Youth seeks the expression that is the show itself; but he and we don't know that till the end.

All five of these works have twists and quirks like that, doubling back on themselves like a Brechtian Mobius strip, refracting reality like a funhouse mirror, making the autobiography both hidden and explicit. All five central characters are searching for what Passing Strange calls The Real, whether that's purity and meaning in art, or personal enlightenment, or both tangled together. But all five endings are ambiguous: do they find The Real? The underlying point in all five cases is that finding The Real is not the point; the search is what matters. As in all the great hero myths, it's not the destination; it's what you've learned along the way. And the ultimate lesson in Passing Strange -- that everyone has his own road to The Real, and that someone else's road will never lead to your Real -- also resonates within the other four as well. Just as each has his own artistic voice, he also has his own path, both to enlightenment and to art making.

Anything you do,
Let it come from you;
Then it will be new.

The critic in 8 1/2 says to Guido, "Such a monstrous presumption to think that others could benefit from the squalid catalog of your mistakes. And how do you benefit from stringing together the tattered pieces of your life?" Of course what the critic doesn't understand is that's the whole point of storytelling, to reveal the universal in the specific, to make order out of the chaos of the world. It's Fellini's dry sense of humor that places these clueless words in the mouth of a critic.

The side lesson in all this is that the way we move forward down our individual roads is by making choices, good ones and bad ones, and those choices become our story. As Sunday in the Park's "Zen" Dot sings to George in Act II:

I chose and my world was shaken,
So what?
The choice may have been mistaken;
The choosing was not.
You have to move on.

The secret to life, they all ultimately discover, is simply to stay on the road and embrace the journey. All just variations on the Zen philosophy, really. By the end of each piece, they -- and we -- realize that the classic hero story is just a human life in miniature. Art is life. Life in the form of a circus, a film, a painting, a musical, whatever the form. For each of these artists, his life is his art, and quite literally, his art is his life. And at the climax of each of these five works, the central character has a crisis of faith and has to confront his art -- in other words, himself.

Of course, there's another film that matches all the same criteria and maybe ought to be on the list -- John Waters' brilliant freak show Cecil B. Demented, autobiographical fiction about Waters' own "cultural terrorism." But Waters was born with his tongue in his cheek and it's sometimes hard to tell when he's saying something profound to us and when he's just fucking with us. Does Cecil B. Demented come from the same place as these other works? Or is it mocking them? Or both? Maybe the fact that we can't tell -- or that it might be both -- is a hint that the joke's on us. But it's always a good bet that there's a lot more going on in a John Waters movie than you first think or that he'll admit.

Maybe this all sounds like pretentious artsy bullshit. I might have even thought so when I was younger. But I learned a long time ago, when you're working with great works of art, any time you're sure you've seen everything there is to see, there's always more there. That's what makes them great works of art. They're simple and clear in some ways and infinitely complex and beautiful in others.

I remember the first time I saw 8 1/2. Blew my fucking mind. When it was over, I thought to myself, Movies can be THAT? It was like someone had just opened a giant door and light came streaming in. Suddenly all those mainstream studio movies I've seen over my lifetime seemed like the equivalent of finger painting. I felt the same way the first time I saw Hair, Company, and Bat Boy. It was while watching Fellini's masterpiece that I first understood how to just "go for the ride," and not insist on understanding every single micro-moment along the way. And that realization allowed me to fall in love with shows like A New Brain, Jacques Brel, and The Blue Flower, and at long last, David Lynch movies.

When you see my five (six?) film festival picks in chronological order, you can see deliberate echoes of 8 1/2 in every other piece, not just themes but visual moments, camera shots, dialogue. I wonder if an artist decides he's going to make his own version of 8 1/2? Or is there just some similar impulse in all these great -- and yes, fucked up -- artists that led them all down the same road? What's great for us as audience is that even though they're all going down a similar road, those roads like nothing alike.

All That Jazz has always been one of my favorite movies, such a powerful, complicated, beautiful piece of movie-making. It's like a Chinese puzzle box of self-reference -- Fosse referring (really specifically) to his own life and work, and also this autobiographical film showing us the making of this autobiographical film, with Fosse's stand-in Joe Gideon as both director and star. (In both Passing Strange and Stardust Memories, there's no stand-in; the artist plays himself.) I think All That Jazz easily measures up to 8 1/2, and if you watch them in order, you can clearly see lots of Fellini in Fosse. In the finale of All That Jazz, the mind-blowing "Bye Bye Life," Fosse did to movie musicals what Fellini did to filmmaking in general -- upended everything and changed all the rules. So complex, so visceral, so emotional, so expressionistic, so Brechtian, and all at once.

Sunday in the Park with George is unique among these pieces in that the hero is not just a fictionalized version of the creator, but here in the guise of another real-life artist working in another medium in another time and place. What's most interesting here, as in the other works, is to see how Sondheim thinks the world perceives him. I don't know if Stew and Fellini are/were fucked up, but we sure know that Fosse, Woody, and Uncle Steve were/are pretty fucked up. Look at how Sondheim thinks Dot thinks about George:

George's stroke is tender,
George's touch is pure.
Your eyes, George,
I love your eyes, George.
I love your beard, George.
I love your size, George.
But most, George, of all,
But most of all,
I love your painting.

She doesn't fully love him for himself, only for his art. Is this how Sondheim sees his personal relationships? By the end of this section, we realize Dot isn't talking about George's physical touch here, but the artistry of his brushstroke. We see this psychic damage most graphically -- but also most subtextually -- in the song "Finishing the Hat," in which George/Sondheim tries to justify the emotional abuse of others. Sondheim knows exactly what George is revealing here, even if George clearly does not: I'm allowed to be an asshole because I'm a tortured artist and you knew that's who I was when you met me.

As I wrote in my book Deconstructing Harold Hill and also in a blog post last year, this isn't a song about art; it's a song about blame. It isn't a celebration of the nobility of art making, as many people think; it's the justification of emotional terrorism by an emotionally crippled man. Sondheim is not stopping his story for a feel-good Think Piece on the Nature of Art. After all, this is Sunday in the Park with George, not Sunday in the Park with Art. My post about this song examines the lyric very closely, and there's enough there to suggest that Sondheim is far more clear-eyed and self-aware than George is and knows full well the complexity of the morality and emotion in this song. As it is with the other artists in my little film festival, this kind of naked self-examination seems to be easier in the form of surrealistic fiction, but truth is truth. All these artists admit their selfishness, their neediness, their tunnel vision, their inability to connect on a human level.

And after all, what's the point of art that does not reveal truth?

Connection is a theme running through most of the works of all these artists. After all, what more primal human need is there than connection? And what is the point of making art if not the powerful connection between artist and audience?

So watch all five of these videos (and throw in Demented too if you dare), and see if you don't see more than you did before. Dot asks George to "Give us more to see." These artists all do. Let me know if you have your own film festival and if it was as cool for you as it's been for me. I think it will be.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Barely "bare"

I'm just gonna say it. The new off Broadway revival of bare is an abomination, straight up. Can we all finally agree now that Stafford Arima, the hack director behind the cute but empty Altar Boyz, and the ham-handed revival of the godawful Carrie, was maybe the worst guy they could have chosen to bring bare back to New York? Why does this guy keep getting work?

The worst crime against this beautiful show is that they've cut 23 of the show's 36 songs! Yes, that's right, 23. They've literally thrown away two-thirds of the score that's been performed across the country and around the world with great success for more than a decade, and they've turned this searing pop opera into a superficial musical comedy. (As you might've guessed, composer Damon Intrabartolo has nothing to do with this production, and is deeply upset by the changes to his work.) Can you imagine someone reviving Rent or Jesus Christ Superstar and cutting two-thirds of the score to make them into conventional musicals? Arima says they turned songs into dialogue so they could get deeper into characterization, but they've done exactly the opposite -- almost all their changes have cut out complexity and nuance, and replaced it with cliche and stereotype.

The good news is I've learned that this new version will never be the licensed version everyone else produces. Other folks wanting to produce the show will be able to do only the show's original version that New Line produced in 2011. That is very good news.

Admittedly, I have not yet seen this rewritten version, and honestly, I hope I never do. But I've seen the script, I've heard from lots of friends who've seen it, and a few weeks ago, they released a preview video of the new production. And holy shit, does it look awful. New songs with really bad, generic lyrics, terrible choreography that looks like a teenage girl did it for a school assembly, bad new lyrics to existing songs, a really bad set, and a fundamental overhaul of all the characters. Instead of five leads, there are really only the two now. When we produced the show (the real version) here at New Line Theatre, we discovered that the show's considerable power comes from the fact that every single person in the audience has been one of those five kids, but I've been told the current off Broadway producers are gay and they wanted a gay story. So fuck the rest of the audience.

I know, I know, how can you criticize a show you haven't even seen? Well, I'm not talking about aspects of performance like acting or singing or staging. I'm talking about the material. I don't need to see the show onstage to know that they should not have rewritten the entire story, changed (or cut) all the characters, or cut two-thirds of the score.

Or else they shouldn't be pretending it's still bare. Because it's not. I have heard some of the new lyrics (and threw up in my mouth a little) and I have seen some of the choreography (more like an SNL parody). And then there are the reviews...

The reviews have been witheringly negative for the most part.

Backstage described the almost entirely new plot this way: "Jock Jason and artistic Peter fall in love for no particular reason and pursue a romance while on holiday at Jason’s family’s lake house. Their return to St. Cecilia’s School soon brings them back to reality, with the now-uncomfortable Jason moving on to sexy new girl Ivy in an attempt to go straight. This naturally upsets both Peter and the geeky Matt, Ivy’s current squeeze, who goes from worrying that she’s too good for him to a righteous determination to reclaim her. Hanging around observing (and facilitating the plot) is outcast Nadia, Jason’s angry sister, who is also the school drug dealer."

Yes, they've eliminated these kids' shared childhood and consequently lost a big part of the dramatic conflict among them. In this version, Jason and Peter haven't known each other since childhood. Ivy is now a transfer student and just misunderstood; so she's lost her shared past with Nadia. Matt is actually dating Ivy in this version, which undercuts their conflict. Nadia is no longer heavy and has been turned into a goth drug dealer. It's almost like they were trying to ruin the show. They've cut Claire entirely, so Peter's struggle with coming out to his parents is gone. They've turned the African American Sister Chantelle into the very white, Broadway-pretty Sister Joan -- that's her in the picture. I wish I were kidding.

The haunting ballad "Once Upon a Time" has been turned into an uptempo rock number, and the amazing "Touch My Soul" has been rewritten as "Kiss My Broken Heart." What does that even mean? The song "You and I" is gone (and turned into dialogue), the rave scene is gone and all the songs involved with that ("Best Kept Secret" survives but with a bad new lyric), Jason now sings "Role of a Lifetime" instead of Peter (which is idiotic because Jason shouldn't have that kind of self-knowledge that early in the story), and all the Shakespeare scenes are just dialogue now, so composer Damon Intrabartolo's cool "Elizabethan pop" is all gone. Also, both dream scenes are gone, and with them all the psychological depth they brought to the character of Peter. And they've added a hazing scene.

Again from Backstage, "Arima has instigated extensive revisions, the first of which are Hartmere’s book scenes, which get off a few snappy lines but also sap the extravagant sense of raging hormones once conveyed by the nonstop singing without compensating by establishing dimensional characters. Lyrics have been heavily rewritten due to plot changes and at least one song has been reassigned, from Peter to Jason. There are now no adults on view except for the possibly closeted Father Mike and rebellious drama teacher Sister Joan, whose Act 2 solo 'You’re Not Alone' sets a new standard for mawkishness. The other students are identified by single traits, much as they were in Carrie, and contribute little beyond their service as a chorus." But who cares if only pretty young gay boys can relate to the story now, right?

The New Yorker was particularly brutal -- "At the heart of this numbing pop opera, set at a Catholic boarding school, is a love triangle (our wry gay romantic hero, his closeted jock boyfriend, and the Lolita-like transfer student who steals him away) that goes horribly wrong, in every unsurprising way, during rehearsals for a production of Romeo and Juliet. There are two nice sweaters and a pair of really cute shoes onstage, but the list of remarkable things about this wrongheaded revision of the 2004 musical, written by Jon Hartmere (book and lyrics) and Damon Intrabartolo (music) and directed by Stafford Armia, ends there. If this were a show written by teenagers, you might excuse the clumsy set design, flat singing, melodramatic book, dull lyrics, and dated score, but unfortunately that isn't the case. A lot of young talent is being exploited in this show; someone might want to call their parents." Wow.

AM New York said, "It has been extensively revised and updated under the sanitizing direction of Stafford Arima. . . Much of Jon Hartmere and Damon Intrabartolo's original score has been replaced with inferior new material by Hartmere and Lynne Shankel. The few remaining original songs have been altered beyond recognition. . . With the exception of Alex Wyse, the young cast is mostly devoid of personality. In the lead role of Peter, Taylor Trensch can't even handle the show's vocal demands."

The New York Post said, "The show, clunkily staged by Stafford Arima, is fun for a while, but soon gives way to wearisome melodrama. The derivative, unmemorable pop-rock score and generic music video-style choreography don't help matters. The mostly youthful ensemble deliver energetic, committed performances. . . But the actors are unable to overcome their stereotypical roles. In the end, the show's title reflects not so much its troubled characters baring their souls as the material's essential hollowness."

In contrast, BroadwayWorld called New Line's production of the original bare “must-see theatre, providing the kind of experience that absolutely defines modern musical theatre.” St. Louis Magazine called it “a must-see.” TalkinBroadway called it “great storytelling and fun music, rich characters and very fine performances.” Ladue News called it “smart, humorous and sophisticated.” St. Louis Eats and Drinks called it “a strong, intelligent, interesting show.” In other words, the original show really does work.

So what can we learn from all this? A few things.

First, just because a show doesn't succeed on or off Broadway doesn't mean there's something wrong with it. Lord knows New Line has been proving that over and over again throughout our history. Second, success everywhere else outside of New York City ought to matter too. Third, New York commercial theatre is only one small sliver of the American musical theatre, and though the art form is moving ahead in leaps and bounds, it seems most New York directors have no idea how to direct the new American musical. The rules and aesthetics are different now, and they don't seem to know that. Just look at how badly the commercial theatre fucked up in fundamentally misunderstanding both High Fidelity and Cry-Baby.

An industry tailored to (often non-English-speaking) tourists is not well-suited for handling serious works of art intelligently. This is not the New York theatre of the 1960s and 70s. Today, some of those works will start elsewhere in an artist-friendly atmosphere and then move, largely intact, into the commercial realm. But it's rare now that really great musical theatre starts in commercial venues. The times, they are a-changin'.

But that means those of us across the country in regional theatres have an obligation to step up and make sure we're supporting musical theatre writers and the new works they're creating. Every season for the last 21 years, New Line has produced at least one local premiere, regional premiere, or world premiere, often more than one. We are the ones who must nurture the future of the art form and the artists who are shaping that future.

Because Stafford Arima and the producers of bare sure aren't gonna do it. Makes me wanna slap somebody. Maybe I could get Chantelle to do it for me.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Author's Note: This revival closed February 3, 2013, after only 21 previews and 65 performances. Composer Damon Intrabartolo took his own life on August 13, 2013. More info on bare, read Scott's analysis chapter about the show.

The Money Keeps Rolling In

People often ask me after a show closes if it made any money. I almost always stifle the impulse to laugh.

None of our shows make money, folks. Okay, that's not entirely true. I think two shows in our 21-year history have made money.

People are always so surprised to hear that, but that's the nonprofit model. If New Line had to raise ticket prices to actually cover the costs of production, our tickets would be about $40 right now instead of $20, and we would price half our audience out overnight. But we're not here to make money. When someone says to me, "Remember, it's show business," I almost always check my impulse to slap them. No, it's not business. What business do you know that loses lots of money on all its products and requires handouts to stay afloat? Only nonprofits.

Well, nonprofits and Too-Big-to-Fail banks.

We make up for that shortfall with grants and individual donations, so most seasons we break even, or end up ever so slightly in the black. Once in a while, a season ends in the red, but we're always able to make up for it within the following season, though sometimes that's hard.

A couple weeks ago, one of our regular donors offered us a $5,000 matching gift. The catch is we have to match it. So we launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise the match: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1815276634/meet-the-match-before-the-end-of-the-world/.  We have less than a week to go, and it's going pretty slowly, but I still have faith. I hope everyone reading this will make a pledge -- every dollar you pledge will be doubled. That's pretty cool.

New Line is a professional company -- everybody gets paid, though it's often fairly shitty pay -- but because of the kind of work we do, corporate and foundation support is limited. To be honest, I'm constantly amazed that we're still around after all these years. There have been so many times when I really thought we couldn't dig out of the hole we were in, but we always come back from our near death experiences as strong as ever.

When I worked at Dance St. Louis, I got into an argument with one of the staff about our mission. She believed DSL's primary goal was to sell tickets. I argued that DSL's primary goal was to bring dance to St. Louis and share it with the community. You may think that's a distinction without a difference, but you'd be wrong. In an ideal world, every performance would be free. In the real world, that's usually not possible. But it is the obligation of any performing arts nonprofit to keep their prices as low as possible while still keeping the doors open. Our raison d'etre is not to make money, but to make and share art. The money part is a necessary evil.

In a culture where most people measure success in dollars, that can be a hard case to make. But I make it anyway because it's true. I'm proud to say that New Line has never chosen a musical to produce because it will sell well. Art always trumps commerce. Sure, some of the shows we do are both good art and also commercial -- and that's great when it happens, believe me -- but the art always comes first. We're not a ticket seller; we're an arts organization.

And as we sit here in the middle of our 22nd season, I think New Line's success proves my case. We are frequently showered with praise and honors, but only occasionally with money. The truth is I hate having to raise money. I really wish we were big enough to have a development department to do it all for me. But if New Line had a big enough budget to do that, we couldn't do the kind of theatre we do now. We'd have to be producing Nunsense and The Sound of Music. Please just kill me now.

So the question is: Do you enjoy New Line shows? Do you think what we do is important? Do you think our community is better for the work we do? Do you think storytelling is as central to the life and health of a civilized society as we all do? Do you believe we have to feed the soul as well as the belly? Do you think live theatre is a really powerful way to talk about the big issues of our times?

I hope your answer is Yes.

Then step up and help us out. After all, the world is ending on December 21, so what good will your money do you then? If everyone who reads this blog would pledge $25, and then convince one friend to do the same, we'd hit our goal in a heartbeat.

I've never written a blog about fundraising before, but I think it's important for people to understand why we need contributions, why ticket sales aren't enough, how a company like New Line survives. Back in the 1930s, the Supreme Court ruled that arts organizations should be tax-exempt, like schools and churches, because they are an inherent social good. Not all nonprofits embrace that responsibility, but New Line does.

But being an inherent social good doesn't pay the bills.

So how 'bout it? Make your pledge today and watch it double!

Thank you in advance.

Long Live the Musical! And Long Live New Line!
Scott

Into the Woods You Go Again...

Back in February 1992, just a few months into New Line Theatre's existence, I wrote this column in our second newsletter. For those who don't remember the pre-internet world, New Line used to send out bi-monthly paper newsletters, called The Bottom Line, from our founding in 1991 through early 2000, when we created the St. Louis Theatre Discussion Group.

The Bottom Line included news about upcoming New Line shows and other musicals in town, musical theatre news from New York and London, reviews of new books, news about CD and video releases, brief background and analysis pieces (the precursors to my books) about musicals opening in St. Louis, anything having to do with musicals. And also a column by me (the analog precursor to this blog). It was a pretty cool newsletter, if I do say so myself. I'm going to try to scan all the issues and get them online at some point. It's really fun to read about The Early Days.

I re-read some of these newsletters the other night and this one really struck me, from Volume I, number 2. It amazed me how much it sounds like New Line today. Which is reassuring. We haven't lost our way...

So here it is...
______________________________

February 1992

Well, New Line Theatre is a reality. We're a legal not-far-profit corporation and we have a bank account filling quickly with contributions from loyal friends and supporters. It seems so long ago that I first considered starting a new company and leaving the group I co-founded eight years ago, but it's really only been ten weeks.

As with any big decision, there are a few who don't think I should've done it, who don't understand or trust my motivations, who want to see more "intrigue" than really exists. But thankfully, I have been blessed by many friends and others who believe in adventures, in human beings' need for them and ability to conquer them, and in the need to "move on" to new and better experiences with the knowledge gained from experiences gone by.

New Line Theatre will be our greatest creation yet, precisely because it is our latest And what we create ten years down the road will be greater still. As long as we can always learn from what is past and not repeat our mistakes, the future will always look bright. In Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim wrote:

Into the woods you go again,
You have to, every now and then.
Into the woods, no telling when,
Be ready for the journey.

The way is dark, the light is dim,
But now there's you, me, her, and him.
The chances looks small, the chances look grim,
But everything you learn there
Will help when you return there.

Into the woods, you have to grope,
But that's the way you learn to cope.
Into the woods to find there's hope
Of getting through the journey.
Into the woods --
Each time you go,
There's more to learn
Of what you know.

The turnout at auditions, the well-wishing notes and phone calls, the steady stream of generous contributions all prove to me that when you try your best to do what you believe in, others will believe too, and nothing can stop you.

My deepest thanks to those who helped me launch this new enterprise and who stood beside me when the road was rocky; and to all the wonderful people who join us now as New Line shifts into gear to become the only company of its kind in the area, probably in the whole midwest...

Thank you.
______________________________

Back here in 2012, I want to say thank you again, to all those people who helped get New Line up and running, who believed in the idea behind our company, of aggressive, intelligent, provocative, adult musical theatre, and to the thousands of people in the 20 years since then who have supported and shared our work with us, and also to the exceptional musical theatre artists who keep our art form evolving at such a thrilling pace, giving us amazing opportunity after amazing opportunity to work on some of the greatest pieces our art form has ever seen.

It's impossible for me to look at the shows we've produced over the years and not see that we are, right here, right now, in a new Golden Age of Musical Theatre, more so than any other period before, certainly more so than during the Rodgers and Hammerstein era. At our founding, we didn't know New Line was at the vanguard of a new, non-commercial musical theatre movement, but we were. And it's been an incredible ride.

It's interesting to me that I quoted that particular lyric from Into the Woods back in 1992, because it takes on a theme that has permeated so many of our shows recently, the idea of staying on the path, that the journey is more important than the destination, in other words, the classic hero story that is everyone's life. It seems Sondheim was always grappling with that. I gotta say, it's a little weird going back inside my own head twenty years ago, but it's also enlightening and more reassuring than I expected.

I predicted our future pretty accurately those twenty-plus years ago. As far as we know, we're the only alternative musical theatre company in the whole country, though that may not be true for long. I see some very cool new companies being born in the last few years, often doing the kind of alternative musical theatre we produce. Ten years after I wrote that newsletter we were doing really incredible work, like Hair, Anyone Can Whistle, A New Brain, Floyd Collins, and The Cradle Will Rock. And still today, more than twenty years out, we're doing the best, most adventurous work we've ever done -- Love Kills, The Wild Party, bare, Passing Strange, and so many other thrilling shows.

What a privilege it is to share our work with the amazing audiences of our region.

Thank you.

And long live the Musical!
Scott

Magic Shows and Miracles

I love a great movie musical, but my true love has always been the stage musical. And luckily, quite a few stage musicals have been captured on video. And no, seeing these shows on video is not the same as seeing therm live, but it is the next best thing. And if it's the only way you can see them...

I have a lot of musicals on video that I recorded off television, Ain't Misbehavin', Purlie, Show Boat, Pump Boys and Dinettes, and others; and I have a lot of bootlegs (shhhh! don't tell anyone!), but you have to find a good bootlegger to get hold of many of those. Luckily for musical lovers, more and more musicals are being released on DVD now. Some of the older shows that had been staged for TV are terrible (I'm looking at you, Bloomer Girl and A Connecticut Yankee), but some of them are really great.

So here's a list of cool stage performances captured on video, and commercially available, that I very much recommend. (Each title links to the DVD on Amazon.) Originally, I intended to make this another Top Ten list, but I know I won't be able to keep it to ten...

Rent -- We were all disappointed by the movie version of Rent, but luckily they filmed the final performance on Broadway. Not only is it an outstanding performance, but there are lots of close-ups, and it's cut like a rock video, so the editing totally matches the show's energy. I really love this video. I saw the original cast back in the 1990s shortly after the show moved to Broadway, but this is almost that wonderful.

Taboo -- I love this show. I mean, I love it. And if Rosie O'Donnell wasn't such a psycho bitch, maybe the production rights would be available. But she is and they're not. Luckily, someone has released the London production (before the New York rewrites) on commercial DVD. If you're a big Rodgers and Hammerstein fan, you'll hate this show. I mean, you'll hate it. But if you're as excited as I am about where the art form is heading, I think you'll love Taboo. It's a very honest, very well crafted, dramatic musical. The musical vocabulary is definitely Boy George pop, but it's good pop, it's utterly fearless theatre, and it's also serious, emotional adult storytelling.

Company -- There is a bootleg video floating around out there of the 1993 Company reunion concert with the entire original cast (minus "Larry" who had died), and it's truly amazing to get a taste of that history-making, rule-shattering musical, as close to the original production as we'll ever get. As part of that concert, they also did the birthday party scenes, and also all of Micheal Bennett's original choreography -- which is brilliant. Unfortunately, that video is not available commercially. (Yes, I am a tease.) But there is one commercial video that is arguably just as good. I'm talking about the 2011 "concert staging" starring Neil Patrick Harris, Patti LuPone, Stephen Colbert, Martha Plimpton, Jon Cryer, Craig Bierko, et al. (This is not that godawful 2006 production where the actors play their own musical instruments. Someone please lock John Doyle up for a while.) This 2011 production is technically just a concert, but it's so much more than that. They have minimalist furniture and they do all the dialogue scenes -- in some ways, it's almost exactly what the original Broadway production looked like. This concert staging could have moved to Broadway as easily as the Chicago revival did. And it would have been better. The style here is exactly right, they get the wry humor, they get the subtlety, they get the edge of it. And every actor is dream-casting for that character. Company has always been one of my all-time favorite shows. Almost everything I do today is built on the shoulders of Sondheim and Prince. If you've never seen Company, this is it.

Passing Strange -- This is one of the most brilliant, most original, most thrilling pieces of theatre to hit Broadway in a decade. And we're very lucky that Spike Lee fell in love with it and decided to film it before it closed. So now we have a really great record of this masterpiece of modern musical theatre. It's everything I love, it very much points the way toward the future of the art form, the score is utterly amazing, and every artist will find a great deal of resonance in this story. It was one of the great thrills of my life to work on this show with New Line last fall. If you only watch one of the shows on this list, make it Passing Strange.

The Pirates of Penzance -- Once again, the movie version of The Pirates of Penzance was such a huge disappointment. I had ssen the original 1981 cast on Broadway -- my first Broadway show ever -- and the movie sucked every drop of joy, rowdiness, and anarchy out of it. But now, the stage production is on DVD, filmed when it was still at the outdoor Delacorte Theatre in Central Park before moving to Broadway. If you've never seen -- or never liked -- Gilbert and Sullivan, give this one a try. It's absolutely pitch-perfect, exactly what G&S should be for a modern audience. And it literally changed the way I think about musical theatre. The rowdiness of it, the chaos of it, the sexuality, the physical humor, the genuine honesty and outrageous style all rolled up together. I think it's the most fun I'd ever had in a theatre up to that point. It opened up this whole new world of what a musical could be. So much of how I stage a musical comedy I learned in that one night on Broadway in spring 1981.

Pippin -- I first saw Pippin on Showtime, also in 1981, and fell madly in love with it. Now, all these years later, knowing so much more about the original production of Pippin, this version disappoints me a little bit. This was a Canadian reproduction of the original, with some of the original cast, restaged by Bob Fosse's dance captain Kathryn Doby. Without Fosse at the helm, Ben Vereen goes a bit too over-the-top, but this is pretty damn close to what the original was like. Personally, I hate the rewrites that Stephen Schwartz has done to the show recently, so it's good that the show was preserved in this video, more or less in its original form (though missing a couple songs). It's a remarkable piece of theatre created by a genuine genius at the height of his powers. And Stephen Schwartz's score is much stronger than the critics originally gave it credit for. If you haven't seen it, give it a shot.

Sweeney Todd -- Again, this was my first encounter with Sweeney Todd and it thrilled me. Since then, I've seen a bootleg video of the original production and I do prefer Len Cariou to George Hearn in the title role, but Hearn is still excellent if a little less subtle. But this is a solid production, with some of the original cast, including Angela Lansbury. As I understand it, this was the end of the national tour, in L.A. I wish some of the replacement cast were better actors, but it's an amazing show, so even in a B+ production, it's really powerful. And now that it's on DVD, they've solved a lot of the sound problems.

Kiss Me, Kate -- I never really liked Kiss Me, Kate. It always seemed so old-fashioned and bland. Then I saw the revival with Brian Stokes Mitchell and Marin Mazzie, which was really outstanding, and I softened a bit. Then I saw the 1958 TV production, just recently released on DVD, with the two original Broadway leads, Alfred Drake and Patricia Morison. And it completely changed my opinion about the show. This is a dark, nasty, brutal, very funny, but decidedly adult take on the show. Is this what the original production was like? Probably so. And it's a lot more interesting, a lot more fun, and a lot more cynical than any other Kate I've seen. So call me a convert.

Alice at the Palace - I stumbled upon this DVD on Netflix and was naturally curious -- a musical I had never heard of...???  This is a very different, more adult take on the classic story, using lots of stage devices borrowed (as many shows at the time were doing) from the experimental theatre movement, with Meryl Streep as Alice, and a great ensemble cast including Debbie Allen, Michael Jeter, and Mark Linn-Baker, and a score by Elizabeth Swados. It's not brilliant by any means, but it's really interesting and really fun. And if you're as big a musical theatre freak like me, you know you wanna see it now...

Barnum -- I saw the original production of this show on the same New York trip in 1981 that I saw Pirates for the first time. And it thrilled me almost as much. Once again, here's an incredibly original, emotional, smart piece of theatre, with a great score by Cy Coleman and the brilliant Michael Stewart, and a solid book by Mark Bramble, telling the life story of PT Barnum in the language of the circus. Don't worry -- it's not at all cute. I wish the original cast (Jim Dale, Glenn Close) had been preserved rather than this London production with Michael Crawford. But it's still a great way to see this amazing, original show.

Tintypes -- I first saw this show on cable in 1981, around the same time I first saw Pirates of Penzance and Pippin. It's a gentle little show, not really the kind of show you'd guess that I would like. But I really love it. It's a cast of just five actors (including future director Jerry Zaks), on a mostly bare stage, singing songs from the early decades of the 20th century, like "The Yankee Doodle Boy," "In My Merry Oldsmobile," "Hello Ma Baby," "Meet Me in St. Louis," "You're a Grand Old Flag," and others. In a way, the show is a character study of America in that moment, the immigrant experience, "melting pot" assimilation, the first World War. On one level, it's a revue, but like all the best revues, it's also much more. As simple and old-fashioned as it seems at first, it's a powerful portrait of our country at that moment, and the cast is flawless, both in singing and in acting. This is a fascinating, original, insightful piece of theatre, and once again, we're really lucky it's been preserved on video. I re-watch this show every couple years because it's a terrific lesson in saying a lot without saying a lot. So much of the dramatic content is subtextual, and that raises it up above most other revues.

Poe -- This one may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I LOVE IT. It's a very minimally staged pop/rock song cycle chronicling the life and career of Edgar Allen Poe, truly one of the most original shows I've seen in a long time. I first watched this earlier this year and absolutely fell in love with it. The music and lyrics are by the late Eric Woolfson, one of the creative forces behind the Alan Parsons Project, and this production was staged in London's famed Abbey Road Studio.

The Sondheim Musicals -- I'll group these all together -- Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, and Passion. It's so wonderful that several of the greatest works of one of the art form's greatest geniuses have been preserved for us. We're just lucky that technology advanced just enough, just in time, to capture his greatest works. I'll always wish they had captured the original casts of Company and Follies, but it's hard to complain when we have the shows we do have. I fully believe that we are in a new Golden Age of Musical Theatre, and I'm pretty eager to discard Rodgers & Hammerstein at this point, but there's no denying that none of the amazing things happening in our art form today would be happening without the work of Sondheim (and Prince and Lapine). We stand on the shoulders of giants.

And in the interest of equal time, I should at least mention the Andrew Lloyd Webber shows that are on video -- in very good productions -- Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, and Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Now they just need to start releasing all those hundreds of musicals they have in the Theatre on Film and Tape Collection at the New York Public Library. But until they do, you can always stop in there when you're in New York and watch some incredibly cool stuff...

So there's my list. If there are any here you haven't seen, give 'em a try. Every one of these videos has something to recommend it, and it's a great way to get a better glimpse into the history of our art form. Like I said, I hated Kiss Me, Kate until I saw the original leads and I realized the show itself was never the problem -- the productions of the show were. (I had the same experience with Show Boat.) Even for those of us who do this for a living, it's often hard to tell that the material's good when the production is bad. Just look at the reception High Fidelity and Cry-Baby got in New York -- we know now (thanks to New Line) that both shows are exceptionally well crafted but were distorted and ruined by clueless New York directors and designers. Now both shows are getting their due in regional theatres across the country -- again, thanks to New Line.

We're happy to help.

On a related topic, New Line's YouTube channel has collected more than 250 videos chronicling the entire history of the American musical theatre, from a historical recreation of the 1904 Little Johnny Jones right up to today's new works, including hundreds of original performances and original choreography. It's so cool that today's technology allows us to do this. So stop by. I think you'll have a blast watching this stuff and the other cool videos we've collected.

And if you're looking for even more musical theatre to fill up the dark, cold winter ahead, take a look at my lists of cool movie musicals, cool stage musicals, and cool musical theatre books. That'll keep you busy for a while...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Magic in the Making

I love reading musical theatre behind-the-scenes books and biographies. I'm in the middle of two really good books right now, Show Boat, Performing Race in an American Musical and Hard Times: The Adult Musical in 1970s New York City. I also love reading the novels that musicals are based on, to see how the adapters responded to the source material. I always want to better understand the great (even the merely good) works of our art form and also the influences that shape the artists whose work I love, how they work, what they value, because I think it gives me invaluable insight into their work.

Not long ago, I wrote a blog post listing ten really cool movie musicals I think everyone should see. I also wrote a post about how the movie musical has changed in recent years, in parallel to changes in the stage musical. Even though my first love is stage musicals, we can learn a lot -- and have a great time -- watching film musicals too.

So a fun idea occurred to me, to ask a few of the musical theatre artists I know what their favorite movie musicals are -- really with no idea if those picks would reveal anything of interest or just be fun to read. But even if only on a gut level, I figured I could learn something. And if nothing else, I'd have a great list of movies to watch for the next several weeks...

So anyway, here's what my quickie research turned up...

Damon Intrabartolo -- Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, West Side Story, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and Little Shop of Horrors

Jason Robert Brown -- Singin' in the Rain, Silk Stockings, Top Hat, Swing Time, and Easter Parade

Andrew Lippa -- West Side Story, The Wizard of Oz, The Government Inspector, Chicago, and Beauty and the Beast

John McDaniel -- Chicago, Funny Girl, Moulin Rouge, The Sound of Music, and Little Shop of Horrors

Stephen Gregory Smith -- All That Jazz, Chicago, Reefer Madness, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and Sweeney Todd

Jeff Calhoun -- Top Hat, The Wizard of Oz, Singin’ in the Rain, A Star Is Born, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and Moulin Rouge

Michael Friedman -- Swing Time, Meet Me in St Louis, Nashville, French CanCan, and 8 Mile, with honorable mentions for the classics Love Me Tonight, The Bandwagon, The Merry Widow, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Kyle Jarrow -- The Sound of Music, Hole, Dancer in the Dark, The Happiness of the Katakuris, and Moulin Rouge

Read into all this what you will. I notice a lot more older movies than I expected. I also notice there's only one film that gets more than two votes from this group, which is Hedwig. I guess if I had to pick my own Top Five, they'd be Absolute Beginners, 1776, Grease, Rocky Horror, and Moulin Rouge, with honorable mentions for The Music Man, All That Jazz, Nine, and Robin and the 7 Hoods.

If you're a longtime reader of this blog, you already know that I'm incapable of making a Top Five list that includes only five items. If it were a Top Ten list, no doubt I'd list twelve.

Is there a point to all this? I think so. Long ago, I read an interview with Michael Bennett, and he was talking about how much he borrows from film techniques in his staging. That really struck me, and I've learned over time how to create effective stage versions of pans, close-ups, over-the-shoulder shots, dissolves, split-screens, focus-pulls, dolly zooms, etc. The stage is different from film in that the audience chooses where to look. But if the staging is good (and the lighting!), it will almost force the audience to look at a particular spot -- almost like film.

Once I learned that film techniques can be translated to the stage, I really started studying how my favorite filmmakers work, directors like Woody Allen, Federico Fellini, Robert Altman, Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson, and more and more lately, David Lynch. I've learned so much from their work. And now I often find myself using cinematic terms when I'm blocking a show, telling the actors that we're doing a split-screen or a slow pan or a two shot.

There's so much I can learn as a director of stage musicals from films, from non-musical plays, and pretty much every other form of artistic expression. I'm in favor of musical theatre artists learning everything they can about our art form, about all the great works, about all the great artists, but we should never forget to explore outside our art form too. There's lots of treasure out there that will make our work better.

And though I do finally feel comfortable now as a stage director, I will never stop learning more. I hope.

Long Live the (Movie) Musical!
Scott

It's Turkey Lurkey Time

There was this thing my mother used to do. We don't let her do it anymore. I'm sure other mothers do it too.

Every year when we'd sit down for Thanksgiving Dinner, she'd suggest we go around the table and each say what we're thankful for. Usually the protests were loud enough to quash the idea, but some years enough of the family gave in and so we did it anyway. When pressed, I would give some cynical meta answer, like "I'm thankful we're almost done saying what we're thankful for." Smartass. And the years when we voted her down, my mother and aunt would both say what they were thankful for anyway. Same stuff every year. Yeah, we get it, you continue to be thankful for all the stuff you've been thankful for the last thirty years... Now will you pass the turkey?

But after years of hipster cynicism at the Thanksgiving table, I think I'm gonna betray my Ironic Age self, and think about what I'm thankful for.

In all serious, I frequently stop myself and take a moment to remember how lucky I am that I get to do exactly what I've always wanted to do, not just as my job, but for the majority of my waking hours. I still sometimes ponder why I love the musical theatre so deeply, but whatever the reason, it goes to the core of me. My love of musicals literally goes back to before my first memories. I cannot remember a time I wasn't crazy in love with musical theatre.

But the reason I get to do what I do is because a whole lot of people have stepped up to work with me, help me, support me, and encourage me. Literally, thousands of people over the years. I think part of the reason people are attracted to New Line is its unique artistic aesthetic and its collaborative work atmosphere. But I think the biggest part is that the thing I'm attracted to, the power and the joy of the musical theatre live in front of you, is something that a lot of theatre people are attracted to. It's not that they're following me; it's that I am able to lay a good road down in front of us, that we can all travel together, to really amazing destinations.

So I'm really thankful to all you people who've gone down this road with me... and there are a lot...

First on my list are the New Line actors -- talented, intelligent, imaginative, fearless theatre artists who follow me down whatever bizarre path I set out for us. I've spent my life thinking about musical theatre, writing about it, and making musicals (my first musical was Let George Do It in seventh grade), but none of my ideas, none of my experiments would be of any value whatsoever without artists onstage using my ideas and making our experiments succeed, show after show. Theatre is not a solo art, especially not musical theatre. I realized a while ago that I actually have very little control over a show -- the actors, designers, and musicians have to choose to follow my road, and the weirder the road, the more grateful I am for that agreement. Our actors trust me. And no matter how many times I test that trust, they keep trusting me. For a guy like me, that's the greatest gift anyone can give me.

Next on my list would be the New Line audiences. Just as I can't make theatre without actors, I also can't keep a theatre company in business without an audience. That's about ticket sales and donations, sure, but also that old but true theatre cliche that "without an audience, it's just a rehearsal." Art is about communicating. If nobody experiences that art, it's worthless. Hundreds and hundreds of people each season put down their hard-earned bucks because they think we'll have something of value to share with them. I have learned that audiences don't seek entertainment for escape, as conventional wisdom would have it; they seek connection. (People think love stories are escapist, but those are stories about human connection, which we all crave.) I'm so lucky that there are that many people in St. Louis who connect to the kind of storytelling I know how to do. My theatre friends in other cities are so jealous that we can do the work we do and find an enthusiastic, growing audience to share it with.

And for me personally, part of my audience is the people who read my books. As lucky as I am to get to run New Line, I'm even luckier that so many people want to read what I have to say about our art form. A couple of my books are in their seventh and eighth printings! Occasionally it hits me that tens of thousands of people have read what I think about musicals. And on top of that, over 100,000 people have read this blog. That's both wonderful and terrifying.

Next on the gratitude list are all the other artists and staff at New Line, our brilliant designers, all of whom are so easy to work with and deliver such thoughtful, intelligent, exciting work show after show; our brilliant choreographer Robin Berger; and our incredible musicians who tackle some of the most challenging music ever written for the stage and nail it every time (even when some of the orchestrations don't all arrive till opening night -- long story); and also our awesome staff who have mercifully taken a bunch of jobs off my hands.

And a special shout-out to Justin Smolik, our conductor and pianist. Since I did that job for years, I know how very difficult it is to do well, with not nearly enough rehearsal, often very difficult music, and because we do so many premieres, sometimes scores full of errors. And he has to hold the whole show together in performance. It is a godsend for me that I don't have to do it anymore, and it's a godsend for the actors and for New Line that Justin's as good at it as he is.

Also on my list is the amazing St. Louis press. Since our very first show, the local reviewers have treated us with such respect and have been so eager to do preview pieces and interviews. Our local reviewers write really thoughtful, intelligent reviews of our work, and that's so gratifying. I honestly believe that reviewers are part of the theatre community as much as the rest of us, and they have helped us so much over the years in finding and reaching our audience.

Last but not least are all my cyber friends, including all my new Facebook friends working in the theatre and our New York scout, Amy Francis Schott, who used to be our stage manager. And everybody across the country who has followed the New Line model, producing smart, interesting, original, adventurous, aggressive musical theatre. There is an audience out there for that. Believe me.

And that's what I'm grateful for. That was fun to write!

Finally, because I do it every year, I leave you with the greatest Thanksgiving song ever written, the amazing "Turkey Lurkey Time," sung and danced by Donna McKechnie, Baayork Lee, and the original cast of Promises, Promises, on the Tony Awards, with the original Michael Bennett choreography.

Long Live the Musical! And Happy Thanksgiving!
Scott

Ol' Man River

Sometimes first impressions are wrong. Especially when it comes to stage musicals. It's often hard to separate the strengths and weaknesses of the material from the production. Musicals are often very delicate creatures -- even the rowdy ones -- and one weak actor or a weak director can bring the whole show down. Very few shows are foolproof. But it's also hard sometimes when the most famous film version of a show really sucks...

I was watching Show Boat again the other night. Not that awful, maudlin, shitty 1950s MGM version, but the 1936 film. For anyone who thinks they hate Show Boat, it may be because most people do it very badly, usually because they're imitating the shallow, Technicolor 1951 Show Boat.

The 1936 film version (available on DVD at long last), features some of the original 1927 cast, some of the original London cast (including Paul Robeson, for whom the role of Joe was written), and a screenplay by Oscar Hammerstein, based on his own stage script. From everything I've read, I think this version is really close to what the original stage show was like. What sets this film apart from the MGM confection is honesty and balls. Like the stage show, the '36 film is about surviving the substantial obstacles life constantly throws at us, while the '51 film is about pretty costumes, lush orchestrations, and romantic widescreen close-ups. You can see the problem.

Sure, some of the acting in the older film is a bit excessive for modern tastes -- remember that in 1936 they weren't all that far away from the big miming style of the silent era -- but it's still a lot more honest than the glossy, icky acting in the later film. Also, the 50s version was much more skittish about the story's racial content, and that took most of the bite out of the story.

MGM even got the boat itself wrong. Show boats never traveled on their own power; there was always a smaller boat pushing the barge that held the show boat. The '36 movie got that right; the '51 didn't.

(BTW, I've been told for years that St. Louis' late, lamented Goldenrod Showboat was the actual boat Edna Ferber based her novel on; but I've recently been told by an historian that it's not true.)

What struck me most while watching the 1936 film again, was the character of Joe, the show's conscience, a kind of Greek chorus, a very zen-like everyman-philosopher. More than any Joe I've seen on stage, Robeson played him very happy, contented, easy-going. Not at all lazy or stupid, just very zen. Even when Queenie's bitching at him about chores and such, Joe always has this easy smile on his face. Perhaps because of his obvious outsider status, he understands Life in a more profound way than the other characters can. Joe is the Wise Wizard of Magnolia's hero myth, Show Boat's equivalent of Ben Kenobi, Glinda, and Linus. How striking it is for that period that a black man takes on that role!

The only time we see Joe's mood darken is when he sings, "Ol' Man River," which acts as a thematic spine for the entire show. But I realize now, that's not a song about the river just because they all live on the river. It's about the Mississippi River as the Tao.

According to Wikipedia:

Tao or Dao (/taʊ/, /daʊ/) is a Chinese word meaning 'way', 'path', 'route', or sometimes more loosely, 'doctrine' or 'principle'. Within the context of traditional Chinese philosophy and religion, Tao is a metaphysical concept originating with Laozi that gave rise to a religion and philosophy referred to in English with the single term Taoism. The concept of Tao was later adopted in Confucianism, Chán and Zen Buddhism and more broadly throughout East Asian philosophy and religion in general. Within these contexts Tao signifies the primordial essence or fundamental nature of the universe. In the foundational text of Taoism, the Tao Te Ching, Laozi explains that Tao is not a 'name' for a 'thing' but the underlying natural order of the universe whose ultimate essence is difficult to circumscribe. Tao is thus "eternally nameless” and to be distinguished from the countless 'named' things which are considered to be its manifestations. In Taoism, Chinese Buddhism and Confucianism, the object of spiritual practice is to 'become one with the tao' or to harmonize one's will with Nature in order to achieve 'effortless action.'

In all its uses, Tao is considered to have ineffable qualities that prevent it from being defined or expressed in words. It can, however, be known or experienced, and its principles (which can be discerned by observing Nature) can be followed or practiced. Much of East Asian philosophical writing focuses on the value of adhering to the principles of Tao and the various consequences of failing to do so. In Confucianism and religious forms of Taoism these are often explicitly moral/ethical arguments about proper behavior, while Buddhism and more philosophical forms of Taoism usually refer to the natural and mercurial outcomes of action (comparable to karma). Tao is intrinsically related to the concepts yin and yang, where every action creates counter-actions as unavoidable movements within manifestations of the Tao, and proper practice variously involves accepting, conforming to, or working with these natural developments. The concept of Tao differs from conventional (western) ontology : it is an active and holistic conception of Nature, rather than a static, atomistic one.

That's what "Ol Man River" is talking about. Joe would probably not understand the two paragraphs above, but he clearly understands the Tao.

I'll quote the first section of the song (forgive the semi-racist "dialect"):

Dere's an ol' man called de Mississippi,
Dat's de ol' man dat I'd like to be.
What does he care if de world's got troubles?
What does he care if de land ain't free?

Ol' man river, dat ol' man river,
He mus' know sumpin', but don't say nuthin'.
He jes' keeps rollin',
He keeps on rollin' along.

He don' plant taters, he don't plant cotton,
An' dem dat plants' em is soon forgotten.
But ol' man river,
He jes' keeps rollin' along.

You an' me, we sweat an' strain,
Body all achin' an' wracked wid pain;
Tote dat barge! Lif' dat bale!
Git a little drunk an' you lands in jail.

Ah gits weary an' sick of tryin';
Ah'm tired of livin' an' skeered of dyin'.
But ol' man river,
He jes' keeps rolling' along.

Just stay on the road, Joe is saying -- or it is the river saying it? Take whatever comes as it comes. The river -- life, fate, whatever -- plays no favorites and answers no prayers. Or as Spelling Bee puts it, "Life is random and unfair." The idea here is that we could all learn something from Ol' Man River, to be in harmony with the world instead of struggling against it, to go with the flow, accept the path as it is. This is a lesson Magnolia will learn the hard way as she navigates through the obstacles of her hero myth.

Joe has another song, written for the 1936 film, which goes even further in making him the story's zen master:

My point in all this?

I guess only that you can't always judge the older shows by the bland productions they're often given. Yes, many of the old shows are dusty and irrelevant today, but a few of them say something still worth saying. Is Show Boat one of those? Hard to say. Show Boat is still hopelessly old-fashioned, even if its commentary on race may still be relevant. Hal Prince's 1994 revival brought the show successfully into the modern era, but not without some cutting and reshaping.

I always hated Show Boat as a kid, but I think it was the third time I saw it at The Muny that changed my mind, that did the show justice with serious, subtle acting, great pacing, and less reverence. The revival at the Papermill Playhouse wasn't amazing, but it did reinforce my opinion that it's a strong show, only occasionally done well. Prince's revival was a rewrite, no question, but it left much of the show intact, and it really worked for me. And then I saw the 1936 film (at the time, still only on VHS), and got a glimpse into what this show was originally -- and I really like it.

I'm in the middle of Edna Ferber's original novel right now, which is really fun, and I've also started a great new book called Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical, by Washington University professor Todd Decker.

Whether or not it's a show you're dying to see (or see again), it's worth noting that there's a lot more there than many people might see. And that's worth pointing out. And if you're curious, check out the 1936 film. I think you'll be surprised by how much you like it.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

The New Movie Musical

Why did the movie musical pretty much die in the 1960s?

I think it's the same reason the Rodgers and Hammerstein model really only lasted a couple generations. The fallacy of naturalism.

The big, enduring flaw in the Rodgers and Hammerstein model of musical theatre -- the thing George M. Cohan and George Abbott knew -- is that there's just no escaping the fact that a musical isn't real, and there's no good reason to pretend that it is. R&H abandoned musical comedy and instead followed the model of the modern social realism play, counting on their audiences to "suspend disbelief" so completely that actors speaking naturalistic dialogue, in naturalistic costumes, in front of naturalistic sets, could suddenly break into song backed by a 24-piece orchestra, and nobody would flinch. But plays and musicals are so different in so many ways, and trying to bend the conventions of plays to accommodate the musical form created an uncomfortable hybrid.

To be fair, the R&H model was very successful for a couple decades, and audiences got used to its weird fake-naturalism. But rock and roll emerged, the teenage demographic appeared out of nowhere, and the R&H audience started getting older and older, without younger audiences to replace them. Now, as the New American Musical takes over the art form, young audiences are flocking back to the musical stage, but they just don't connect to the old-school musicals on a gut level. The pace of storytelling in those old R&H shows is much more leisurely than we're used to today, the morals and the music are old-fashioned, and so are the assumptions about audience expectations.

Movie musicals had the same problem. Movie musicals died at the same time that the R&H musical fell out of mainstream favor in the 60s. Sure, some movie musicals were made after that, but very few were successful. The movie musical was no longer the thriving film genre it had been. Mainstream audiences turned away.

The more films became naturalistic, the harder it was to make movie musicals work, especially if they were based on R&H-style stage musicals. By the late 1960s, musicals and contemporary filmmaking had mostly parted artistic ways, exactly as musicals and popular music had parted ways. Luckily, as the musical theatre dropped out of the mainstream, the art form had the space and freedom to evolve like mad over the next decade, in the hands of Stephen Sondheim, Hal Prince, Michael Bennett, Fred Edd, John Kander, Bob Fosse, and others.

But all the reasons stage musicals didn't succeed at naturalism were amplified on the screen, where everything but the singing seemed completely real. Films were no longer overtly stylized, as it had bee in the 40s and 50s, but musicals still were. They couldn't help it. And nobody understood this problem. It's not that audiences were thinking "Wow, their singing is so un-naturalistic!" But movie musicals just didn't feel right or make sense in the world of the authenticity-centric 1960s.

Some movie musicals solved this problem, and got us back on track to where we are today, now with at least one major movie musical opening almost every year. These films accepted the conventions of the inherently artificial musical form as it is. Frank Oz created an entirely stylized world for Little Shop of Horrors, including the mystical Greek Chorus girls moving in and out of reality, taking the conventions of the MGM movie musical and adapting them for our Age of Irony, finding a style in which breaking out into song wasn't jarring. Rob Marshall set the numbers in Chicago as surreal production numbers swimming around inside Roxie's twisted, damaged, show-biz-infused mind. Nine worked essentially the same way. Marshall's approach is wonderfully in synch with the New American Musical onstage: Admit the artifice. Movies aren't reality.

Level with the audience. Respect their intelligence.

After all, when people say they don't like movie musicals, most of them mean they don't like faux-naturalistic movie musicals like Oklahoma! and The Sound of Music, films in which the style and acting are naturalistic -- except when the music starts. Most people who think they don't like movie musicals have probably never seen Shock Treatment, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Absolute Beginners, Colma, or Once.

In John Turturro's fascinating experiment Romance and Cigarettes, he fully embraces the conventions of old-school, faux-naturalistic movie musicals, but counts on his audience's cultural expectations to add an ironic, contemporary, meta-layer to every musical number, both expanding the emotional moment and also calling attention to its own inherent phoniness. Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You and Steve Martin's Pennies from Heaven work essentially the same way.

Another solution is the diegetic movie musical, in which the act of making music is part of the action of the story, rather than just the language of the storytelling. In Cabaret, Fosse turned all the songs into actual performances inside the story, so that the songs became both naturalistic and Brechtian. In Hedwig, all the songs are also performances.

And a few movie musicals, like Colma, Absolute Beginners, Repo, Across the Universe, and the recent short film Zombie Musical, have rejected almost all the other movie musical rules -- including the diegetic "work-around" -- and instead adapted the conventions of music videos into new rules for feature films. As today's stage musicals are doing, these film musicals don't try to find new approaches within the old rules, they create new rules.

It's ironic that so many music videos on MTV, particularly back at the beginning, borrowed a lot from the great MGM movie musicals, and now movie musicals are borrowing from MTV. I remember when the brilliant Moulin Rouge was released, it seemed to me like a musical Arthur Freed would have made at MGM in the 50s, if they'd had the tools we have now. But much of it also felt like really amazing, big-budget music videos. I think we'll see this MTV trend increase as the next generation starts making movie musicals, and as the ever decreasing cost of making films today democratizes filmmaking even further. And that's really exciting.

As we might expect to happen as the film musical evolves, the film Once combines forms. First, it is a diegetic movie musical, in which the act of singing and playing music is part of the action of the plot, so the film works in a kind of naturalism. But it's also an MTV movie musical, with many of its songs set to montages, a time-telescoping device taken from the non-musical romantic comedy. And like David Byrne's movie musical True Stories, the songs in Once never further the plot; instead they amplify or expand on the emotional or thematic content. Exactly, in fact, like Spring Awakening does, whose movie version is in the works. And also Stephen Sondheim's Company -- I would love to see Rob Marshall make Company into a film.

But no doubt about it, the movie musical is back. And, like its stage counterpart, it's more interesting, more adventurous, and more vigorous than ever before. Just think about all the cool movie musicals released in recent years -- Nine, Repo, Colma, Once, Fruit Fly, The Devil's Carnival, Across the Universe, Hairspray, Dreamgirls, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Chicago -- and we have to include High School Musical, which did a lot in bringing a young audience back to the musical theatre. And all these films are so different from each other! So much original work is going on. The movie musical as an art form is evolving and moving into the twenty-first century, and that's very cool.

Long Live the (Movie) Musical!
Scott