“It seems that the prevailing economic uncertainties nationally are leading audiences to take less risks on spending their money on new and unknown work and to seek refuge in safe and familiar titles and material”
But deep down it's still a mystery:
“It is very curious — after such amazing reviews and positive word of mouth, no one knows the real reason why Betty couldn't find a bigger audience”
So says Super Mac and that’s a worry. If he doesn’t know, then nobody knows. For a good couple of decades Sir Cameron seemed to know exactly what made a musical a hit: “safe and familiar” material like people pretending to be cats, a lengthy French novel and a weirdo in a sewer. By comparison adapting a well-loved Alan Bennett film should have been a doddle.
Now I claim no knowledge of the show: haven’t seen it, haven’t heard it. So speaking from the twin authorities of ignorance and prejudice, I can only agree with the assessment of the Guardian’s Alistair Smith:
“Stylistically, it feels like it could have been written at any point over the last half-century”
This is generally true of Styles and Drewe shows. They’re new shows but they feel like old ones.
“In the golden age of musical theatre, it was the popular music of its day. Today, the traditional musical is, like opera, more of a niche pursuit. It needs
to reinvent itself if it is to have a vibrant, popular future. You might even argue that plundering the back catalogues of pop groups such as Abba and the Spice Girls are one way forward (TV casting is another), and the best of these have no problems attracting large audiences.”
Firstly, traditional musicals are not a “niche” like opera. Revivals are playing in commercial theatres all across the land. Opera is almost entirely non-commercial. Secondly, jukebox musicals and TV casting are terrific but can’t offer a way forward. By definition these are old shows. Stiles and Drewe songs may sound as if they could have been written at any point over the last half-century but the songs from Jersey Boys actually were written half a century ago. Abba, Queen, even the Spice Girls; this is the popular music of yesterday, not today.
“But if new musicals are to find the large, popular audience required for a sustained West End run, they need to engage with popular forms of music, not
sounds and forms that hark back to a long-distant golden era”
Now I’m not in total disagreement with the analysis. I’m just not convinced that modern pop is the cure.
The problem is in our ears. Just for fun, let’s invent a theory and call it the Problem of the Audience and Stylistic Associative Preconditioning (PASAP). Stiles And Drewe sound old-fashioned. Why do they sound old-fashioned? Because their songs sound a bit like the kind of songs we associate with a certain period from the past. The clever lyrics, the exact and intricate rhymes, the lack of electric guitars and a heavy backbeat; there’s a gentility to their songs that speaks of a different time. By associative preconditioning the style points the listener to the pre-rock era.
Does this matter? Yes and no. On the Yes side:
1. Old-fashioned songs make it difficult to tell modern stories. It limits the potential.
2. Even old-fashioned songs in a period setting can be distracting. An old-fashioned song may be appropriate to the style of the show’s setting but that doesn’t necessarily make it an integrated musical. Oklahoma sounds folksy but it ain’t folk music. Period music is no substitute for drama.
(Incidentally the PASAP theory may explain why Stiles and Drewe have fared better with children’s musicals. Children are less preconditioned and therefore less likely to perceive a song as being “old-fashioned”)
On the No side:
1. Being old-fashioned doesn’t preclude success. The soundtrack to the Sound of Music beat the Beatles to become the biggest-selling album of the 1960s.
2. Modern pop music, despite the self-appointed title, isn’t that popular. At least not as popular as it once was. (In fact, it’s probably better to call it chart music in order to avoid confusion). “Memory” has never in the charts but it’s a far more popular song than most that have been.
3. Chart music faces the PASAP theory in just the same way as old-fashioned music. When you hear chart music, you think top ten, Radio 1, hippity hop, Beyonce, whatever. The point is that you don't necessarily think character, situation, drama. So how useful is it for musical theatre?
Alistair Smith points to the Divine Comedy, Lily Allen and Tim Minchin as songwriters bringing modern pop into musical theatre. It'll be interesting to see the results.
And if it doesn’t work, we can always blame the bankers.
No comments:
Post a Comment