And this made me think about concept musicals. Now I’m never sure exactly what makes a musical a “concept” musical; it’s a vague term and probably not a little self-important. Yet I have the funny feeling that Catch Me If You Can is an example of one.
So what makes a concept musical? I think there are two aspects to this: THE SONGS and THE FORM.
THE SONGS (ooh, sub-headings).
The songs express a concept rather than a character or situation. A good example of this is “If They Could See Her Through My Eyes” from Cabaret. Ostensibly it’s just a comedy number performed in the Kit Kat club. The joke is that the MC sings this sweet song of love-blind devotion to someone dressed as a gorilla in a tutu. The kicker is the last line:
“I grant you the problem’s not small
But if you could see her through my eyes
[pause] She wouldn’t look Jewish at all”
Suddenly it’s not just an innocent comedy song but a comment on the unfolding drama of the story; the sinister, but alluring, rise of anti-Semitism. The song isn’t expressing a particular character or dramatic situation so much as an idea, a concept.
The other thing I’d say is that concept songs tend to be highly stylised. That is, the style of the song, often a very self-conscious pastiche or parody, is in some way being used to express the drama. Take “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” from Company which is written as a 1940s close-harmony trio, right down to the patter lyrics (“Bobby booby bobi”) and the vocal glissandi (“Knock, knock, is anybody the-e-ere?”). Now there’s no reason why the three women singing (Bobby’s girlfriends) should sound like the Andrews Sisters. Even the showy rhymes (coercin’ a bull/personable) are characteristic of the style of song rather than the characters. So what is Sondheim up to? He’s not just written a cheery, upbeat song; he’s written of cheery, upbeat song in a very recognisable song style. When we, the audience, hear it we’ll recognise the style and bring all our pre-conceptions to it. In the case of the Andrews Sisters, we think of light and innocent and frothy (“Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree”). Having planted this pre-conception, Sondheim can then do the opposite with the lyrics which are biting and acidic:
“You could understand a person
If he actually were dead
Doo doo do do!”
In other words the familiar and understood style of the song is being used to tell the story. Not so much a concept song, perhaps, but a pre-concept song.
So what about the form?
THE FORM
Concept musicals require some disassociation from the story. This can be a disassociation of place (like the Kit Kat club in Cabaret) or of time (like rock songs in an 1891 setting as in Spring Awakening) or of something more abstract. This disassociation allows for an artificial break in the story as the musical moves between dialogue and song. This is why concept musicals often mirror the form of a revue show (Chicago) where the formal scene-song, scene-song structure reflects the clear distinction between the talky bits and the sing-y bits.
This problem of moving from dialogue to song is, I think, at the heart of the way that musicals have developed. Broadly speaking the early musicals of the 20s and 30s ignored the problem; silly plots were punctuated by great songs via the most tenuous of dramatic links. Later the book musical tried to smooth the transition by making the songs an expression of situation and character. More recently the big West End shows overcame the problem by ditching most of the dialogue making everything one long sung-through poperetta.
The concept musical offers another solution. By creating this disassociation or artificial break between the story and song, there’s no need for a smooth transition from dialogue to singing. The songs are still “integrated” in the sense that they are still related to the drama. But there’s none of that fiddly lead-in/underscoring/intro used in book musicals to try and cue a song “naturally”.
Ay, but there’s a rub. Two rubs, in fact (ooh, numbered rubs).
1. The first is that most concept musicals aren’t fully so; most have a mixture of book and concept numbers. Cabaret, again, is a good example with some songs taking place within the Kit Kat club and others in the “real life” of the story. Even Company and Chicago have book numbers (“Barcelona” and “Class” respectively). This suggests that there are some practical limits to the form when it comes to telling a story. Some moments just call for a song to arise naturally from the moment in the narrative, not to be disassociated in an artificial way.
2. The second point is, I think, the bigger problem with concept musicals namely that the concept is always the same. Whether it’s a German nightclub, a Broadway revue or a Chicagoan burlesque, everything is viewed through the prism of entertainment. As Billy Flynn says, “it’s all showbiz, kid!”. This isn’t just a case of “shows about shows”; it’s shows about how everything can only be understood as a show. Sometime this works, sometimes it doesn’t.
Which brings me (finally, I know) to Catch Me If You Can.
**SPOILER ALERT** (ooh, spoiler alerts)
This is a musical based on the film which itself is based on the true life story of Frank Abagnale Jnr, a man who managed to defraud millions of dollars whilst still a teenager. The FBI, in the form of dogged investigator Carl Hanratty, finally caught up with him. Whereupon he was jailed, only to be released early and given a job helping the FBI helping catch other fraudsters. And presumably writing his memoirs.
(Nice little YouTube clips here which give a good feel for the show).
So what makes this a concept musical? Well for one thing some of the numbers are highly stylised which creates that funny old dissociative feeling. Frank and his Pop turn “Make Butter Out of Cream” into a Frank and Deano Vegas act; later Pop is drunkenly propping up the bar with Hanratty swopping boo-hoo stories in a classic saloon-style song “Little Boy, Be a Man”. But these stylisations are really part of a much bigger one.
The show begins at the end with Frank’s arrest. As Hanratty attempts to slip on the ‘cuffs, Frank starts spinning a line, trying to con his way out of trouble one last time. Hanratty’s having none of it. So Frank turns to the audience and makes his appeal directly. Just give me a chance to tell you my story, he says and...ding! We’re into the first number, “Live in Living Color” (or “Colour” – our language, I say we choose the spelling). The whole thing becomes Frank’s “show” in the form of a 1960s TV special. That’s the big concept.
Once again a story is being triple filtered through entertainment for a smoothly plotted outcome.
But I think Catch Me If You Can runs up against the limit of the form. In many ways this was a terrific musical: smart, tuneful, slickly staged and wonderfully performed. And yet , and yet. Somehow the big concept diminishes the drama. This is essentially a How? story. How’d this teenage kid get away with it? We need to hear more about the details of the con: the forged papers, the fake IDs, right down to the specialist inks. Not to the mention how he played the banking system, the payroll processes and the rest. But there’s not enough room for this in a concept musical. Instead the only answer to “How’d he do it?” is a spot of razzle-dazzle: with a smile, a song and a dance. The result feels like the kind of show the creators wanted to write rather than the kind the story required.
The show’s lyricist Scott Wittman said that he was inspired by a picture of Frank Abignale Jnr dressed in a pilot’s uniform (one of his many cons) and surrounded by a gaggle of air hostesses. He took one look at those leggy flight attendants and saw in them the potential for a great high-kick chorus line.
Life as showbiz. But sometimes the con needs a better concept.
RESPONSE PART ONE
ReplyDeleteWell, you gotta have a gimmick, as I heard sung somewhere - and that’s the nub of the issue for me. A “concept musical” is often actually just a musical with a gimmick. But what’s the difference, you ask? (and how wise you are to do so).
The online definition of gimmick is “an ingenious or novel device, scheme, or stratagem, especially one designed to attract attention or increase appeal”, whereas that of concept is a “general idea derived or inferred from specific instances or occurrences.” And whilst we are at it, Wikipedia defines the concept musical as “a musical where the show's metaphor or statement is more important than the actual narrative.”
I’m not going to make this a dull thesis on semantics but the difference in the ideas here is significant in practice when applied (or not applied) to musical theatre; a concept is an illustrated idea, whereas a gimmick is an idea designed to illustrate. So to qualify as a concept musical you need to have an idea bigger than a narrative. That’s quite a high bar to surmount.
So let’s have a look at a few possibilities:
Jerry Herman wrote a musical at the end of the last century called “Miss Spectacular”. It fell foul of various corporate issues and was never produced – except as an album or “the concept album”, if you will. Yes, if you buy the CD you will find this description emblazoned at the top of the cover, the concept in question apparently being the novel idea to record a musical in audio only! (*shocked gasps from innocent readers*). Sadly, humanity has to scream in response “been there, done that”, as the first musical to be commercially recorded and released was in the nineteenth century with Floradora! (1899). The idea of doing it again for another musical 100 years later is a brilliant concept, if only no-one had thought of doing anything similar in the intervening period. However, my CD shelf suggests this might not be the case. Some concept! Now, I josh, of course – the concept here was to record an unproduced musical (though this again is no new idea) but really, is this concept an idea that comes from specific instances? No, it’s a gimmick as it’s actually being done to draw attention to a musical that might otherwise not be noticed, given you can’t actually see it in a theatre. And the story is still the central focus of the whole (audio) production – it isn’t saying anything bigger – so it fails the “concept musical” test.
That said, Miss Spectacular is quite enjoyable, even if misclassified.
(more to come in part two)
RESPONSE PART TWO
ReplyDeleteSo what of other examples of (in this case staged) concept musicals which are identified as Hair, Company, Chicago and Cabaret? (other “concept musicals” are available).
Well, as the original essay says, both Cabaret and Company have book numbers, and in both cases the stories of Bobby and Roxie are not only the driver of the plot but the reason for it. They are not exemplars of a wider issue, nor can be seen as an “everyman” character; the concept in each case is merely “how” the story is told, not what the story is. And we delight in the unusualness of the “non book” numbers but that takes us slap bang into the world of gimmickry – a general idea derived from specific occurrences: the vaudeville numbers of Chicago tell the story in an oblique way and together they form the gimmick of the show, ie that it’s being told in the style of an evening in vaudeville. All ideas that illustrate the story rather than being the story itself.
Cabaret is perhaps different – in that, in addition to the story of Sally, we are also given the parallel story of the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s. But this too falls foul of the terminological definitions, because the rise of oppression at that time is still a story, a true one, a historical one, but the piece and its production doesn’t have a bigger message. It is not philosophy, it is not opening our eyes or minds to a new idea – it is merely illustrating an existing one, albeit brilliantly. The concept that Nazism was a bad thing was no new idea in the late 1960s. So the instances of the show tunes in the Kit Kat Club, despite dislocation from the story of Sally and Cliff, are individual examples of something unusual happening to illustrate part(s) of the narrative(s) but do not create anything bigger than the stories. Again, the concept is “how” we tell the story and not “what” is, so not a concept musical, but a gimmicky one. Splendid though.
And Hair? Well, it is certainly a disjointed narrative – but does that tell us anything except about the craftsmanship of its writers? Probably not. It is also the story of a group of friends and one, Claude, in particular (or “Clod” as he seems to be called, appropriately, in some of the recordings, in order to allow it to rhyme with “God”). Nothing there out of the ordinary. But, beyond that, it seems to me that it does have a concept – which is the Vietnam War is a bad thing. Old hat now, but as the show was produced at a time when it was contemporaneous with the war in question, and the view was not universally held, you might (just) be able to argue that it was a concept musical: Hair was making its comments to people at the time, so despite the gimmickry/failure of cohesiveness (take your pick) of how it tells its story, it had a concept that it was peddling, so I think I can give you “a concept musical” in this instance. So despite parallels with Cabaret, this is a concept musical, whereas the Kander and Ebb masterpiece is not. Whether Hair is still a concept musical now in 2011 is another matter, and not one I intend to explore here.
What then about Oh, What A Lovely War which criticises the first world war in a similar way, but of course was written nearly half a century after the Armistice. Well, it doesn’t have a protagonist at all – it is a series of disparate illustrations of the (often logistical) incidents of that war and does not have a strict narrative at all, except relentlessly to pile on the facts through song and action (and irony) and let you reach your own conclusions. It does do this in a faintly chronological, admittedly, which suggests narrative drive, but only obliquely. The show is the about the first world war but it is not about the story of the war but of the nature – and weaknesses - of humanity – so I think this is by far the most likely successful fit for a “concept musical” if you are looking for one.
RESPONSE PART THREE
ReplyDeleteSo, to conclude, is “Catch Me If You Can” a concept musical? I haven’t seen it, so I may well be wrong, but from the description, the narrative is still the most important thing, and the method by which this (the story) gets across is not telling us anything else: there is no message or statement beyond the general life story of the central character, no matter how unusually this is portrayed. The “concept” of this actually-not-a-concept-musical-at-all-musical (oops, showing my hand already) is in the “how” the story is being told but not anything other than or beyond the story. So it is not a concept musical. And if the inspiration for it was the idea of a chorus line based on the photograph of the main protagonist (hero isn’t quite the right word here) and the air stewardesses, then you have a specific instance generating a general idea, it falls clearly into the category of gimmick!
What is clear to me is that concept shows have gimmicks, but many shows have gimmicks without being concept shows. So most shows purporting to be concept shows are in fact gimmick shows, at least so I think. And to conclude, we need to remember that the word gimmick can also be used as a verb: “to equip or embellish with unnecessary features, especially in order to increase saleability, acceptance, etc. (often followed by up ): to gimmick up a sports car with chrome and racing stripes.“ I fear that “self confessed” concept musicals are really just normal ones “gimmicked up”. Catch Me If You Can is really just Oklahoma with “go faster” stripes.
Wow, triple decker commentary! Thanks again, Thos.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest I was never happy with this post and have had a bit of a re-think. So a slightly less muddled response here:
http://middlebrowmusicals.blogspot.com/2011/08/putting-content-into-concept.html