SW Musical Repertoire: 1970 – 1979: The Post- Modern Musical Decade

In the two and a half decades following the premiere of Oklahoma! in 1943, the structure of the musical play was the dominant form in musical theatre. Towards the end of the 1960’s, there was a move away from this standardized composition with the arrival of the rock musical on Broadway and in the 1970s, the voice of musical theatre would become even more diverse than ever before. For along with the rock musical arrived the sung-through “rock operas” as well as the so-called concept musicals. In addition to this flourish of creativity, the standardized form of the musical still survived in the background, waiting for its popularity to increase once again. Musical theatre in the seventies had developed into a post-modern art form – the norms were inverted and instead of having one standard to which all musicals were measured, the field was open for new and contrasting influences to be realized on stage.

The Rise and Fall of the Rock Musical

The rock musical had premiered on Broadway as early as 1960 with the opening of Charles Strouse and Lee Adams’s Bye Bye Birdie. The style seemed set for a good future in musical theatre with other musicals like Hair (1967) and Your Own Thing (1968). Clive Barnes, who had taken over from Walter Kerr as the Chief Arts Editor of The New York Times, was particularly impressed by this infusion of the popular voice in musical theatre and stated emphatically that “rock music (was) the one hope for the Broadway musical”. The composers responded with a flourish of rock musicals, of which very few succeeded and even less are still popular today. Rock music was not enough to sustain the artistry of musical theatre.

The composer of the smash success Hair, Galt MacDermot, tried his hand at an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona for his next stage project. With lyrics by John Guare and a book by Guare and Mel Shapiro, the show opened in 1971 and ran for the next year and a half. Although the show was initially popular with critics and the public, even winning Tony for Best Musical won the Tony in 1972, further attempts at staging the show around the world (and even as a revival in its country of origin) have been met with failure. With a modest success under his belt, MacDermot began work on two new shows which both premiered in 1972. Dude was a Faustian story of God and Satan battling for the soul of an Everyman character, while Via Galactica took audiences into space with a band of castaways marooned on an asteroid. Together these shows lasted 24 performances and collectively lost well over two million dollars. This was still not enough to deter MacDermot from composing musicals, but none of his six subsequent projects had any glimmer of the success he achieved with Hair.

The most popular rock musical of the 1970’s premiered in 1972: Grease would achieve great success on stage and an even bigger one on film later in the decade. The film was a typical boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl-in-the-end story with a score that parodied the style of 1950’s rock and roll while retaining the attitudes of the seventies in its lyrics. The show, written by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, has become popular as a school and regional production, often with a sanitised script that has never been officially approved. The show is certainly the most financially successful rock musical of all time and also managed to achieve a milestone in that it became the longest running musical in history for some time – beating the previous record holders Fiddler on the Roof, My Fair Lady and South Pacific.

1973 saw the original production of the world’s greatest cult musical, The Rocky Horror Show. The show was completely conceptualised and written by Richard O’Brien and was one of London’s most significant contribution to the rock musical phenomenon. The absolute decadence and fantastical novelties provided by the musical ensured it a run of 2 358 performances. The film version, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, was an initial failure but has become one of the most successful underground favourites with students and adults who will sadly never extend their appreciation for musical theatre beyond this rather mediocre show.

The other successful (albeit only in its original production) rock musical of the decade was The Wiz (1975), rocking, soulful, all-black adaptation in The Wizard of Oz. The show was written by William F. Brown, with music and lyrics by Charlie Smalls. Although the show received some of the most negative reviews in Broadway history, it managed to run for 1 672 performances and win the Tony for Best Musical of the year. It must be noted, however, that this was largely credited to Geoffrey Holder’s extravagant staging – proving that the supposedly critical eyes of the Broadway elite can be blinded by a flashy set and colourful lights. The show was filmed with a too-old Diana Ross as Dorothy and Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow, and a new film version is slated for production by ABC TV, with rumours of a more suitable Brandy in the leading role.

The rock musical died a quick death after The Wiz with the production of Rockabye Hamlet in 1976. The public had tired of the novelty and many of the rock musicals were less coherent than any random rock concert of the day. Most of the musicals lacked any formal structure and were workshopped around the music – a process that was rarely carried as far as it needed to be done. Perhaps with the popularity of RENT at present on Broadway, it is time for some of these shows to be investigated, restructured and newly created for the new millennium.

More success was achieved with the evolution of the rock musical into the “rock opera”, the brainchild of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. Having toyed with a pop-music production called Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, the pair launched their first full scale rock musical with a concept album – the ever popular Jesus Christ Superstar in 1971. The show that was produced after the premiere of the album ran for eight years and paved the way for the pair’s second rock musical, Evita. This production showed a tremendous growth in both the lyricist and composer, who managed to create a piece that found unity within the diverse sounds and styles used to create the show. Theses two shows established Lloyd Webber and his approach to his work – he would continue to write popular shows that made money, not caring whether the shows had any effect on musical theatre. In many ways he is the antithesis of Stephen Sondheim – who worked hard at founding the opposing voice to Webber’s rock operas: the conept musical.

The Concept Musicals

After Stephen Sondheim had produced his first massive public and critical failures with Anyone Can Whistle and Do I Hear a Waltz?, the composer-lyricist took a break from Broadway. Five years passed and in 1970, Sondheim returned to the Great White Way with a vengeance – and an exciting new approach to his work in musical theatre. Sondheim had met the famous producer-director Harold Prince, and worked with a several librettists on his series of concept musicals. This innovative form largely discarded the plot element, and focused on characters and their relationships in a situation, whether this dealt with “single life vs. marriage” (Company), “culture clashes” (Pacific Overtures) or “a bittersweet reunion” (Follies) – and thus paved the way for what is considered one of the greatest American musicals of all time: A Chorus Line.

Sondheim’s debut concept musical was Company (1970), and made use of a single man looking for love in modern day new York. His observations of the problems of five couples are at the core of this musical, as he decides whether he is ready for marriage and all that this sacred contract entails. The songs were witty and full of emotion, and covered a range of styles in what is one of Sondheim’s most accessible scores. The choreographer was a young man called Michael Bennett, whose observations of this style of presentation would find a great manifestation later in the decade. Company ran for 701 performances – it was clear the Sondheim was back on the winning track with his fresh stylistic creation. 1971 saw a follow up to this musical: Follies reunited a group of performers from the burlesque days of Broadway. This score dispensed with the poetic niceties of Company and is cynical, brutally honest and reveals the painful realities of sacrificing your dreams for the sake of life. Sondheim used older styles of music to contrast the lives of the characters in the past and the present. Although not as popular as Company, Follies has grown in status over the years and the upcoming revival is awaited with much anticipation. A Little Night Music was Sondheim’s 1973 contribution to Broadway, and used the lessons learnt in the style of the concept style and applied them to a more plot focused musical, while paying equal attention to the aspects of character development and situational conflict. And this time the concept extended into the musical composition: Sondheim’s score was written entirely in variations of waltz time and one song, Send in the Clowns, would become extremely popular out of its original concept. Everyone, from cast members to Elaine Paige and Frank Sinatra, has recorded this song, with varying degrees of success (and more often, failure).

Sondheim’s next project, Pacific Overtures, was set in 1853, moving until the present day, and was based around the culture clashes between the American and the Japanese after the West forced the East to participate in international trade. Price used kabuki to stage the musical, which had a score that parodied the styles of Gilbert and Sullivan and the operetta style of Offenbach. The show is extremely taxing on the mind and did not enjoy a public success. But the show was critically lauded and remains the most innovative of Sondheim’s concept musicals.

As Sondheim put this new style into motion, other musical artists were eager to try their hand at this new type of work. Bob Fosse was first in line, with Sondheim’s choreographer set to follow in his footsteps. Fosse used dance as the centre of his musicals, and his visually creative style became known as “Fosse Uber Alles” – Fosse above all. Fosse has three major musicals which embraced this style in the seventies. The first was Pippin (1972) which examined familiar jealousy, war, love and, mostly, sex. Fosse used highly erotic choreography, a factor which held the public’s interest for 1 944 performances in spite of its extremely weak book and large amounts of harsh criticism. Chicago, now enjoying a successful revival on Broadway, told the story of 1920’s murderesses looking for fame on the vaudeville stage. John Kander and Fred Ebb composed a spectacularly cynical score, satirising the hypocrisy of entertainers and the press. The recently deceased Gwen Verdon starred in a role that many consider to be Fosse’s apology for his marital unfaithfulness. Fosse dropped the book element entirely for his 1978 musical, Dancin’, a dance revue that set the stage for shows like Fosse and Contact two decades later. Sondheim had used his concept mainly in the music and lyrics for his musicals; Fosse took what Sondheim had done and successfully extended the style into dance.

The concept musical climaxed with the production of A Chorus Line, 1975, which was the idea of Michael Bennett. Based on a series of talks he held with Broadway gypsies, Bennett and his team of writers built a soul-sharing libretto that won every prize it possibly could, including the Pulitzer Prize for drama. This show smashed every long run record because it appealed to every type of musical taste and ran for 6 137 performances – a record which it held for nearly twenty years.

Conclusion

The seventies were a time of massive creativity in musical theatre. After this, in the eighties and nineties, the musical theatre would settle into the production of stylistic imitations of what had gone before. There have been minor innovations since then , but we are still waiting for a new era that, like the seventies, can provide musical theatre with something new, something innovative, something more…..

SW Musical Repertoire: 1920 – 1929: Musicals in the Face of Depression

1930 saw the start of the Great Depression in the United States. 1300 banks collapsed, unemployment rose to more than 14 million and human misery was the order of the day. Musical theatre was a form of escapism from that misery – a light in the eyes of the suffering people. The flimsy books of the twenties musicals made way for plots with high comedy as well as lots of song and dance – something to boost the morale of a despondent nation. The style of musical theatre was rather stagnant in this era – the only advance made on the twenties musical was the use of dance in a more integrated fashion, although not to the extent that this performing art would eventually find expression in musicals in the forties. Reflecting their American counterparts, the British continued with the highly energetic dance-hall type musicals that they churned out in the twenties, with an occasional deviation into the romantic musical by Noël Coward.

On Broadway and Beyond

Although the Great Depression was the main reason for the attempt at public spectaculars, there were other reasons that the musical creators tried to make the shows big audience attractions. One form of stage entertainment, vaudeville, was already a thing of the past and the “talkies”, which had come to prominence in the late twenties, were considered a serious threat to the musical theatre. Thus, rather than being innovative and daring, most of the composers and lyricists played it safe when mounting a new stage production.
Many of the composers which had created names for themselves in the previous decade, continued their success in the thirties: Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, the Gershwins and Kurt Weill were among the most successful men in the business. Their songs were still, as in the twenties, the substance of the shows and often became popular hits outside the context of the stage productions. As a result, the thirties was a time which really separated the best creators of musical theatre from the mediocre composers and lyricists. With a couple of exceptions, the musicals all came from a few major individuals or composing teams.

The most successful composer-lyricist was probably Cole Porter who had several successful musicals during the decade and whose lyrical wit and musical charm are still recognised today. His sharp lyrics are among the best ever written, and are as sophisticated as any that are written today. He wrote The Gay Divorcee for Fred Astaire (with the classic song ‘Night and Day’), Jubilee (‘Begin the Beguine’), Red Hot and Blue which starred Ethel Merman and Bob Hope (‘It’s DeLovely’), Leave It To Me where Mary Martin introduced ‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’ and DuBarry Was a Lady (‘Friendship’).

Porter’s biggest hit of the decade was Anything Goes. The show was a smash hit for 1934’s Reno Sweeney, Ethel Merman and also for her eighties counterparts, Patti LuPone and Elaine Paige. The show is, along with Kiss Me, Kate Porter’s most durable and has been produced in umpteen revivals, two film versions and the title song even made and appearance in Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Anything Goes was a typical anti-Depression thirties musical with a farcical plot that was linked by fabulous musical numbers. The unimportance of the plot element is highlighted by the fact that the entire show was rescripted in the last two months before its Broadway premiere. Cole Porter was extremely pleased, however, with his contributions to the show, christening it one of his “two perfect shows”.

The plot of Anything Goes was one of lofty love affairs and mistaken identity. Billy Crocker stows away on an ocean liner to win the love of the beautiful Hope Harcourt. He eventually does, using a series of disguises and with the help of evangelist-cum-nightclub singer Reno Sweeney. The songs that illustrated this tale became instant classics: the comedic numbers “I Get a Kick Out of You” and “You’re the Top” and the classics “Anything Goes” and “Blow, Gabriel, Blow” are just a few of the numbers that became standards of the era – standards which are still recognized in our time, more than six decades after they were written.

This show ran for 420 performances on Broadway and 261 performances in London. There are few other shows that have survived the thirties with such timelessness. Cole Porter created a smash success that has lasted for 67 years as a significant part of the American musical theatre.

The Gershwins’ successes took place in the first half of the decade, and included Strike Up the Band, Girl Crazy and Of Thee I Sing. The latter of these three included the songs ‘Love is Sweeping the Country’, ‘Who Cares’ and ‘Of Thee I Sing’ and, because of its satirical and political nature, was the first musical to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Gershwins’ last show would become one of their most revered classics – Porgy and Bess has grown in popularity and stature and is considered by many to be the world’s first significant jazz opera.

Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart supplied seven hits to the Broadway stage in the thirties, each providing the public with instant song favourites. These included ‘My Funny Valentine’, ‘The Lady is a Tramp’ (from Babes in Arms), ‘Falling in Love with Love’ (from The Boys in Syracuse) and ‘There’s a Small Hotel’ (from On Your Toes). One Your Toes was also significant in that its use of dance was something different for this era – George Balanchine choreographed the now classic “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” routine, which was kept intact for the 1983 Broadway revival of this show.

In addition to these musicals there were also several significant revues in the thirties, with words and music by people like Irving Berlin, Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz and Harold Rome. Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s partnership died out with a series of unsuccessful shows, their last success being Music in the Air – a European style operetta set in Vienna that had a decent run of 342 performances.

In the UK, the major contributor to musicals theatre was Noël Coward, who wrote romantic operettas like The Third Little Show, Tonight at 8.30 and Set to Music. He also had a flair for comedy, and used his own material in self-styled cabarets for much of his life.

But Britain’s smash hit of the decade was Me and My Girl (1937). The show was written for Lupino Lane, a British comedian, by Arthur Rose, Douglas Furber and Noel Gay and would become the second longest running musical at the time in the UK. The production displayed typical features of the era: a series of light-hearted events was linked by a series of musical numbers that would become standards of the day. The musical ran until the beginning of the war in 1939, when all theatres were closed as a precaution against air raids, and was the first to resume performances. The show then ran until 1949, by which time Lupino Lane had played over 5000 performances in the lead rôle. The show was also the first ever to receive television coverage, and also owed a great deal of its success to coverage on BBC radio. A film version, The Lambeth Walk, was made but is unfortunately no longer available in print.

Me and My Girl was the story of Bill, a Cockney who inherits a title in the British aristocracy. He arrives to claim his title from the Duchess of Dene and Sir John Tremayne with his girlfriend, Sally. The Duchess takes an dislike to Sally, who reluctantly leaves Bill to his new life. Bill realizes that his life is meaningless without Sally and is prepared to give up everything he has gained for her. But, with the help of Sir John, Sally and Bill are finally united by the time the curtain falls. The show’s score provided some standards that carried Britain through the war: the famous “The Lambeth Walk”, Sally’s pieces of Cockney philosophy “Once You Lose Your Heart” and “Take It On the Chin” and the title song “Me and My Girl”. When the show was revived 1985, some of Noel Gay’s other songs were added, including “The Sun Has Got His Hat On”.

The 1930’s were then, possibly without the knowledge of its inhabitants, a time of calm before the creative storms which would be brewed in the forties. This was a quiet period – but a necessary one – and shows just how important the function of the arts is within any society.

The Survival of Musical Theatre from the Thirties

The musical comedies of the thirties have generally fared better than those of the twenties, having had a large comeback in the eighties and nineties. The plots of thirties musicals are slightly stronger than the storylines of twenties musicals, and the light-hearted tone of these shows has served as a balance to the original shows of the past two decades – like Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera and Passion – which have been of a more serious nature. Usually, the revivals keep the show fairly intact, adding a few songs in here and there and cleaning up the book and lyrics for the sake of political correctness. Two prime examples here are the musicals that were studied in the course.

Anything Goes was revived at the end of the eighties by two extraordinary actresses on either side of the Atlantic. Patti LuPone resurrected the show on Broadway, while Elaine Paige brought the show to London’s West End. Once again, the book was kept fairly intact – with a little tidying up here and there – and several of Cole Porter’s other hit songs, including ‘It’s De-lovely’ and ‘Friendship’, were added to the musical.

Me and My Girl had an exceptional revival in 1985 with Robert Lindsay and Emma Thompson in the lead roles, running for 3303 performances in London and 1420 performances on Broadway. British actor and author Stephen Fry reworked the show by strengthening the characters and deleting the references that dated the show from the script. The director of this show was the recently deceased Mike Ockrent, who would direct the “almost-a-revival” show, Crazy For You, in the early nineties.

In the nineties, as mentioned above, Mike Ockrent teamed up with Susan Stroman to resurrect the Gershwin classic, Girl Crazy. This show, however, was substantially reworked – to such an extent that it won a Tony for Best New Musical of the Season! The show was a success for another two leading ladies: Jodi Benson, who had just voiced Ariel for Disney’s The Little Mermaid, and Ruthie Henshall, who has since become one of the hottest stars in London and on Broadway.

So, although the thirties musicals were not the best in terms of plot and character development, some definitely have found a niche in the cynical contemporary world. These shows serve as a form of pure escapism – a night of fun at the theatre with no strings attached.

Conclusion

The thirties provided the world with some of the best musical comedies of the decade. The composers and lyricists gave us great songs to fill in ridiculous plots – and the result was something to whisk the audience away for two hours of unadulterated entertainment.
There was little innovation in musical theatre during the period – that would start to occur at a rapid pace during the next decade. The main purpose of thirties musicals was to provide an escape from the heavy days of the Great Depression, a task which was well fulfilled by the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart and their contemporaries.

The thirties may not have been one of the most profound decades in musical theatre history, but it was certainly one of the most delightful periods both on Broadway and in the West End.