An Interview with Mark Carroll

Short interview with musical actor/writer Mark Carroll over at the ever excellent Musical Theatre Review website.

The Soul Purpose of Oomph

What is the essence of a good musical? Domenic Cavendish has the answer in the Telegraph:

"What is essential – antiquated and quasi-religious though it sounds – is something underpinning it all called 'soul'"

OK, drilling down. By 'soul', are we talking about:

(1) the religio-philosophical concept of the immortal and non-corporeal essence of human nature, most notably expounded in the Thomist tradition or

(2) a central component in twentieth century African-American popular music born out of the convergence of gospel and rhythm 'n' blues or

(3) a vaguely indefinable quality attached to the musicals I happen to like?

 Now, now. Let's be fair. He does go on to explain:

"It doesn’t matter how much money, time and effort is thrown at a musical; if it doesn’t offer, at least in significant part, some profound sense of expressing our innermost being, then it’s money, time and effort largely wasted."

I don't know about you but the last time I expressed my innermost being was when I ignored the use-by date on that sushi mix. Sorry, cheap gag. Carrying on:

"These are transcendent moments, and no amount of technical skill can mask a deficiency in that department."  

It's also an interesting way to think about writing a musical: less about telling a story and more about creating moments. Like threading pearls on a string.

"The best musicals trade in the same gold as the best opera, but they tend to obtain it by unwrapping something apparently ordinary – the grandeur is hard-earned, not a given" 

Now this I like: unwrapping the ordinary. There is definitely something more down-to-earth about musicals compared to the abstractions of opera; Fred Astaire dancing with a hat stand or Gene Kelly splashing in puddles with an umbrella come to mind. Alternatively try and imagine an opera where somebody's doing the ironing.

"I’m aware that this 'thesis' can’t translate into hard and fast rules" 

Not to worry. I suspect most arts theses can't. However I think I understand the general ball park into which Mr. Cavendish is aiming. Personally I wouldn't use the word 'soul'; I would opt for 'oomph' instead. Musicals must have 'oomph'. 

The thing about 'oomph' is that it comes from the gut, literally - just try saying the word without moving your abdomen. And musicals must come from the gut. As one writer said about ancient peoples, they thought with their hearts and felt with their guts. So too for musical peoples.

For soul, think oomph.

How Musicals Work IV

Finished. Great book.

One general consideration. Mr. Woolford focuses on the mechanics of musicals. As he puts it in this blog post, he's tried to write the Haynes manual of the musical. Really he's trying to get writers to write more efficient musicals; ones with proper structure, consistent theatrical language, appropriate song forms and so on. All of which is well and good. But is efficiency sufficient? To put it another, you can check the oil, fine-tune the engine and spiv up the hub caps; but, if you're dealing with a Robin Reliant, is it really worth the effort?

What's missing is a discussion of creative instinct. Analysis necessarily comes after the fact, so where do creative ideas come from in the first place? The 'I Wish' song may be correctly sung by the hero and correctly positioned in Act I and correctly fulfilling the 'call to adventure' function in the story. But that doesn't give you "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" from My Fair Lady. To get there, I think you need something else.

In this case, Alan Jay Lerner needed a trip to the opening of Covent Garden market at four in the morning. It was freezing and a group fruit sellers were warming their hands over a fire. That sparked the idea of writing about Eliza's wish for creature comforts. And why did he pick up on the fire, rather than anything else that morning? Why did it spark that particular idea rather than any other idea? I suspect it was simply a matter of instinct; it just felt right.

So the next step: what exactly does Eliza wish for in the song? Roughly in order:

Room
Warmth
Big chair
Chocolate
Warmth
Doing nothing
A fella to look after her

In terms of the story, it's only the last one that's strictly important. And, as it turns out, she doesn't really want a fella who will merely look after her (as Freddy would); she wants someone to love and someone who loves her (as Higgins eventually does). So what about the rest of the list? Well, they all make sense. Eliza is a poor working-class gal. Rather than stumping up and down the streets hawking flowers for a pittance, she'd prefer a bit of comfort (warmth/chair) and a modest bit of luxury (chocolate) and the chance to put her feet up (doing nothing).

But why these particular images and ideas? Why couldn't the song be about wanting the comfort of a warm blanket, the luxury of Victoria sponge and a weekend break for two in the Cotswolds? Maybe it could have been. Writing is about making choices. Logical analysis of plot and character only get you so far. They take you to the edge of the proverbial cliff but they can't force you to jump. When the choices are equally efficient, something else makes a writer choose one idea over another. What is that? Again, my best guess is instinct.

This is where the car analogy breaks down (but the puns are still working - wahey!). There's only one solution to changing a spark plug; with a musical, there are any number of solutions. If we analyse how musicals work by looking at musicals that have worked, then we get a false sense of inevitability. We feel as if the story had to resolve the way it did or that the song had to be written the way it was. In truth, it could have been very different and worked just as well.

It is, then, not just a question of how musicals work in the sense of efficiency; it is also a question of their worthiness. What makes this story, as opposed to that story, worthy of the telling? What makes this idea, as opposed to that idea, worthy of the choosing? This, I think, is a deeper question and one that can't be answered using mechanics or analysis. It requires something closer to instinct, a gut feeling for what is important and funny and beautiful and, above all, true.

I'm a big fan of Don Black and the song cycle Tell Me on a Sunday, which was later turned into Song and Dance for the stage. There's a funny line where the English heroine, who has hooked up with a Californian film producer called Sheldon, is describing him in a letter to her mum:

"Sheldon has a lot of meetings
Well, he's terribly ambitious
He's working on a musical 'bout Rommel as a boy"

The audience instinctively gets the joke. No matter how much you try and make them work, some musicals are never really roadworthy.

How Musicals Work III

Getting there.

On the "Lyrical Matters" chapter, Mr. Woolford has sections on the following:

Rhyme
Scansion
Sounds that Sing and Sounds that Don't
Character

All good stuff. Can't disagree with any of the sections, only the order in which they're placed. I think I'd go for:

Sounds that Sing and Sounds that Don't
Character
Scansion
Rhyme

Actually I'd probably shove Scansion in with the first category under the general heading of Singability or Singableness (neither of which are probably real words but, hey ho, that's why I don't have a book deal). And I'd put the Lyrical Idea ahead of everything (although Mr. Woolford calls this The Hook and deals with it in the previous chapter).

My point is that rhyme is nearly always the first consideration when most people think about lyrics and, really, it is the least important. It's the thing that usually comes up in first-night reviews. If a critic likes the lyrics they'll call them witty and quote a clever rhyme. If we think of the great lyricists, we tend to think first of the great rhymsters: Hart, Porter, Sondheim. But often it's the less flamboyantly rhyme-y ones that prove to be more popular: Berlin, Hammerstein, Loesser.

I think that's because clever rhymes tend to stand out and stick in the memory (indeed that's one of the functions of rhyme, to make something memorable), whereas making a lyric singable and writing in character, if done well, are trickier things to appreciate. Clunky lyrics draw attention to their clunkiness; singable ones don't draw attention to their singability, they just sing well. Similarly a character lyric draws attention away from the author and towards the character singing, so the author's skill is less conspicuous.

Mr. Woolford peppers his excellent book with little exercises for potential musical writers. I'd add this one: write a song without any end-of-line rhymes. I think this could be a useful way to force writers to think about their lyrical ideas, singability and character before worrying about rhymes.

Sometimes
The rhymes
Should be
A non-priority

How Musicals Work II

Still reading.

Some further thoughts on the section "Why Do Characters Sing?" (p.251). This, it seems to me, is crucial and probably deserves a chapter on its own.

Mr. Wooldford identifies the main reason:

"There is a cliche that the characters sing when the emotional pitch reaches a level at which speaking is no longer appropriate"

But:

"This is only true of some emotional situations...The actual reasons why characters sing are the most clearly defined by the theatrical language the writer is using. Your characters can sing only the most rapturous emotions, or the most mundane banalities, but as long as it is consistent with the theatrical language of the piece, then the audience will accept it."

Not sure. Except for the most modern, experimental, serialist, plinkety-plonk stuff, music is inherently emotional. More than anything else, music makes us feel feelings. So in a musical there must always be enough emotion in the drama to make the characters sing. The words may be banal but the song shouldn't.

My favourite example is from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Coy romancers, Finch and Rosemary, meet at the office lifts (aka elevators) and exchange small talk ("It's Been a Long Day") whilst Smitty translates their thoughts for the benefit of the audience:

Smitty: Now she's thinking
Rosemary: I wonder if we take the same bus?
Smitty: And he's thinking:
Finch: There could be quite a thing between us.
Smitty: Now she's thinking:
Rosemary: He really is a dear.
Smitty: And he's thinking:
Finch: But what of my career?
Smitty: And she says:
Rosemary: (yawning) Ah.
Smitty: And he says:
Finch: Huh?
Well, it's been a long day.
All: Well, it's been a long
Been a long, been a long,
Been a long day

You really can't get more banal than a yawn followed by a "huh?". But even if we didn't have Smitty, the sheer fact that the whole thing is sung, with the musical to-and-fro gradually shortening and rising in pitch, tells us that something more is going on. Something emotional.

This question about why characters sing is also one of the major problems for sung-through musicals. If everything is sung, at some point the characters inevitably end up singing trivialities. Woolford points to the critic who complained that the characters in the through-sung musical Aspects of Love spend a chunk of their time singing their drink orders. If I'm not mistaken that critic was Mark Steyn who also wondered if South Pacific's "Some Enchanted Evening" would have been half as successful if it turned up later in the show as "Would You Like a Biscuit?", which is effectively what happens to the big tunes in Aspects of Love. For my money, Aspects one of the greatest book musicals never made; strong story, great score but hamstrung by drink orders and the sung-through format.

The broader point is that if you are going to have continuous singing, then the music must distinguish between the emotional highs and lows (in a similar way that classical opera uses recitative). That's because when you have music, you have emotion. So when you have an emotional low in a musical, it's probably best not to sing at all.

How Musicals Work

Currently enjoying "How Musicals Work" by Julian Woolford (available from Nick Hern publishing). Haven't quite finished but one small thought thus far.

In a section about theatrical language, Mr. Woolford makes a passing point about film musicals:

"The various theatrical languages that musical-theatre creators have utilised over the years have translated with greater or lesser success to the more naturalistic medium of film...I mention this only to point out that in the transfer to a movie version, any musical necessarily has to change its theatrical language to a cinematic language" (p.193)

Which is, I think, a much better way of saying what I was trying to say about Nine: film musicals need to be conceived as films, rather than merely being filmed.