Jennifer Toksvig's Twitter Thread

Got nothing to say about this. Just found it fascinating and wanted to put it in a more readable form for myself. Jennifer Toksvig is a lady worth listening to, having previously written one of the most interesting things I've ever read about lyric writing. 

This is one about the current state of musicals (and also employs the word 'smooshing' on several occasions, which can only be a good thing). 

Enjoy.

"A friend of mine recently posted on FB: "I’m confused. If we all love Sondheim so much, why do we tacitly accept a music theatre landscape almost entirely comprised of movie musicals, jukebox musicals, and frivolous drivel?" Here are some things I want to say about musicals.

It's complex. The man literally perfected the form. That specific form, the two-act, fourth wall, American scene-to-song book musical about contemporary life in his lifetime.

He was able to do that because of those who perfected their own specific form before him, like Oscar, who was weaving together other forms to create a new one that Sondheim then took and perfected.

Arguably, there is nowhere left to go with that form, the actual form, other than to keep the stories contemporary, which also involves contemporary music styles.

So things like hip hop musicals are made and people call it “new” but it isn’t new. It’s still the same American style that he perfected. The industry and the fandom are reluctant to admit that it isn’t NEW new, but there is an underlying sense of ennui, a frustration that new work is not plugging into something that feels excitingly new, not just stimulating but electric. Because it is electricity that creates buzz. And buzz creates demand. And demand creates income.

Producers smartly turned to existing sources of electricity: popular catalogues of music. There's some genius in truly weaving together existing hooks, existing emotional drives, to create a naturally flowing narrative. It's one of the most difficult tasks I've ever faced.

It can be infuriating and thrilling if you nail even one moment. I have often described a musical as a string of coloured lights. The songs should light up, but they can only do so if the book acts as a strong source of the power they need to do that.

A good cable plugged into a reliable emotional outlet in the power network of the human condition. Without that cable, the songs don’t light up.

Even in a catalogue musical, whilst individual songs might still light up inside the audient, you will never get the coloured lights that enhance each other’s brilliance as a whole string without that power cable.

So many catalogue musicals use the life story of the songwriter / performer to power the songs. In my view, this is like the difference between non-fiction and fiction. The former can be interesting and engaging. It can be a joyful or scary read, and you can get lost in it but anything based in fact has actually happened. You are always going to be revisiting it, even if you didn't know about it before. It will always be a re-presentation, a copy. Fiction, on the other hand, is brand new. You cannot have visited it before. It's unexpected.

Within your personal existence, that story has never existed until this moment. Those people, those events, they are new and fresh. Exciting. When a brand new story first emerges into the world, there aren't even many other people for whom it will have existed.

And that? That is electric. With a catalogue musical about the actual lives of the songs, you can feel electrified by a song you already know and love outside the context of the story, but that's not a string of coloured lights. It's just sparklers.

Nothing wrong with sparklers. I love a good New Year's Eve celebration as much as anyone: the crowd in Times Square, the ball dropping.

The story of that experience is one you know and will love even if it's your first time experiencing it, at least partly because others around you already love it. This is also true of being in the audience of a catalogue musical of music you all already love.

It has that kind of shared experience. I'm not saying it won't feel electric, but I am saying that the story is far less likely to be the thing providing the power.

So catalogue musicals are refreshing the form that Mr Sondheim (may his memory be a blessing) perfected, but they are not renewing it, and mostly they bring with them that sense of ennui. We long for electricity.

Some people nail the form as near as dammit. @Lin_Manuel has that genius. He makes it feel electric because he gets it from the inside out, and he refreshes the form with music genre, updating the histories to make them newly accessible.

Those people are rare, though, and producers need to fill theatres as often as possible, for as long as possible, to gain the most income with the least expenditure. Running costs are far lower than production costs.

What that does to the form is evident in the history of musical production. By going global, Cameron etc essentially changed musical theatre, made it be about income first and foremost, but they also made musicals be something like Les Mis that you know and love. Familiar.

And nonetheless moving for that - in fact, often more so because of the familiarity. But now they are the Christmas lights you get out every year. You know and love them. They light up the tree and it makes you feel good to see that. Cosy. 

But some bulbs are out, and the ones that look like icicles are scratched now, you notice, as you fetch a gift from under the tree. Every time you put them up, they look a bit more worn but you don't mind. 

You don't mind losing some of the chandelier, some of the orchestra, some of the lavish set pieces because it's still the string of lights that you know and love. Still a sparkle on the tree for Christmas.

Then one year you get a new set of lights and you don't put them on the tree. You put them over the fireplace and suddenly you've used the same principle to frame a new area, and now you're actually hanging some stockings on the mantelpiece because damn, that looks festive.

And even though there are no kids in the house and you haven't even thought about doing this before, you actually put out a carrot and a cookie and some milk before you go to bed. And then your partner gets up earlier than you, drinks some of the milk, takes a bite of cookie and gives the carrot to the dog, and you come in rubbing your eyes, see the new lights shining, and look down to see that Santa has actually visited and suddenly there is a story... and it's unexpected and it's... electric.

We don't need new musicals. (Alright, don't shout, we love new musicals, but...) We need new musical theatre. Not new 'musical theatre'. New. Musical. Theatre.

Look, here is the really exciting part. Right now, all over the world, writers and composers are experimenting. They're taking that perfected form, and they're smooshing it together with other storytelling forms.

Me? I'm smooshing it together with immersive theatre where the audience can be fully included if they want to be, and with the way that folk storytelling has always worked.

Not just through collectively sung folk music, but also in ways we have always gathered to share stories: over the breaking of bread, and so on.

These things have their own rhythm, not scene-to-song but the walking, the greeting, the talking, the eating. Maybe songs are not emotional highs but moments of shared memory or understanding. Maybe songs are not three minutes long, but the length of a hook and nothing more.

Maybe we don't sing when we can no longer speak, but rather, sing when we want to connect, to come together. Perhaps the soliloquy is not ourselves internally, but ourselves being invited by the community to be seen and heard.

Look, this isn't just about what I'm doing. What I know for sure is that some people all over the world are smooshing and making a mess, and much of that will fail but hopefully some of it will nail.

And sometime, in the future, some day, there will be a moment when someone takes the stuff we've nailed, no matter how small it is, and somehow makes it perfect.

So here is what I want to say to that person, if they exist anywhere near my work, and also to Sondheim. Dear genius, for the record: thank you. You did what nobody else could have done, and the form would not be the best it can possibly be without you.

(But forgive me for trying to make something else, something more, with sung storytelling. Gonna make a mess. Gotta make a mess again.)"

Narrative Songs and Story Songs

So I was listening to a fascinating episode of Aussie podcast Thrash 'n' Treasure and a discussion about The Book of Mormon. One of the presenters liked this musical and offered up his reasoning:

"It [The Book of Mormon] tells the full narrative within the lyrics. Most musicals, so far, that I've listened to will ramble along and the character will go about how he's sad about something. And they'll sing for four and half minutes about being sad. And four and half minutes later, all that's progressed is the fact that he's sad. Nothing's moved forward. They've just sung about a moment in time and shoved a play in between. Matt [Stone] and Trey [Parker] have managed to advance the story with every song and within the songs, rather than just have a play broken up by music."

I think I know what he means. But I also think that it's a common misconception about musicals.

Yes, musical theatre songs often contain narrative. That is, they give you the plot points in song. And that's true for some of The Book of Mormon songs. "Two by Two" shows us how the newly-minted Mormons are getting assigned to their various missions all over the world. "Baptise Me" shows us Nabalungi getting "baptised" by Elder Cunningham, albeit in a Fifty Shades kind of a way.

Songs can also be interspersed with dialogue and scenes. The narrative continues, not so much within the song, but around it. So, when Elder Price tries to gee himself up in order to convert the local Ugandan warlord, he does so by singing a little gospel number to himself, "I Believe". Halfway through the song, the scene changes. He enters the warlord's camp and picks up the song again in a cheery singalong with the gun-toting chief.

So theatre songs often have this narrative element. However - and here's the point, so I may just write it in caps - THEY DON'T HAVE TO. 

That's because musicals aren't really 'narrative through song'; they are 'drama through song', and drama is more than narrative. It's also character, tone, theme and all those other things that your tweedy English teacher droned on about at school. 

So, for a song to be dramatically integrated, it doesn't necessarily have to drive the plot. Take the opening number from The Book of Mormon, "Hello". That doesn't do much narrative apart from introducing a few names. It does, however, set the tone of the show. The same goes for "I am Africa" where a bunch of fey white boys express their new-found love of the Dark Continent. It doesn't really advance the plot. It's more an exposition of the musical's thematic concern for inter-cultural exchange ("Africans are Africans, but we are Africa!").

Any which way, it's pretty funny.

So, in musicals, there are some songs that advance the narrative and some songs that don't but advance the story in other ways.

Still, a fair dinkum discussion about a beaut of a show. Well worth a listen.

TATAR #14 She's Leaving Home

by Paul McCartney and John Lennon (1967)

It always seemed a pity to me that one of the greatest pop writers never had a pop at musical theatre. Paul McCartney branched out into classical works and painting and poetry but never, as far as I know, even attempted a musical. That's a shame and not just for us.

Trying your hand at an oratorio or two will stretch you as a composer. A musical, on the other hand, gives you the opportunity to write songs, duets, trios, choral numbers, songs in character, songs with specificity, songs in a dramatic context. Musicals allow songwriters to develop as songwriters. 

And, if this song is anything to go by, McCartney would have been a great musical theatre writer. You only have to look at the time signature to know that this is a different kind of a Beatles number. They didn't write much in 3/4, which is more for waltzing than rock 'n' rolling. So there's no heavy backbeat. It's really a story song but it's the brief character portraits that make it so interesting. 

There are three characters involved. Firstly, the young girl who's leaving home:

"She goes downstairs to the kitchen 

Clutching her handkerchief"

Nice visual detail that. The kind that says a lot without having to say much. I also love the way that the final phrase of the first verse ends with "leaving the note that she hoped would say more". Then, in the second verse, the same phrase gets shortened to "stepping outside she is free". That shortening puts the emphasis on the word "free" and leaves more of a gap after it, before the chorus kicks in. It feels like she's opened the door and paused as the cold air hits her face.  

Secondly, there are the parents.

"We gave her everything money could buy"

Finally, there's the narrator who plays the neutral observer and only hints at his point of view towards the end when he sympathises with the young girl:

"Something inside that was always denied

For so many years"

Then again, the parents have their sympathetic moments too:

"We struggled hard all our lives to get by"

And, frankly, the girl's decision is hardly looking like a bed of roses:

"Waiting to keep the appointment she made

Greeting a man from the motor trade"

Running off with a car dealer is what you might call a sub-optimal solution. And that's the image that we're left with: the young girl waiting. We're not sure the fella ever turns up.

So we have three distinct character voices. But here's the trick with this song: in th chorus, we get to hear all three at the same time. So the chorus' words are the narrator's matter-of-fact description:

"She is leaving home"

But that long high note on "home" speaks to the young girl's bid for freedom as she tries to release herself from her domestic prison. Then underneath, we get the the voices of the parents, lower and more dirge-like and full of overdone self-pity:

"We gave her most of our lives

Sacrificed most of our lives"

We can actually hear something of all three characters simultaneously. And, even though we're only getting small hints about the characters, it's enough to tell us that they're more ambiguous than mere caricatures. That's quite an achievement for a three-and-a-half-minute song. 

And, frankly, it's very musical theatre.

Finishing the Sandwich: Thoughts on "Breaking Into Song" by Adam Lenson

So this is a really interesting book. I mean, really interesting. 

I mean 'forget about your cheese sandwich mid-bite and, instead, spend the rest of the afternoon re-thinking a lot of what you thought you knew about musicals' kind of interesting. 

Maybe that's just me.

Ostensibly, this a book for those who hate musicals. The kind of high-minded critic who would rather suffer an unfortunate accident with a chandelier than sit through a single performance of Phantom of the Opera. But it's also a book for the Phantom Mega Phan, bogged down with merch, and on their six thousandth visit. Both could be said to have a narrow view of musicals and this book is an attempt to widen their gaze.  

Unfortunately, I'm not sure either group will be taking notes, so that just leaves everybody else. There's certainly plenty in here for those working in musical theatre, particularly in the UK. Practical things about how and why current practices need to change. 

For me, however, the most interesting chapters are the more philosophical ones. The ones that contain thoughts like this:

"I think that all musicals are memory plays and the best ones acknowledge that, these characters are retelling a story, they are remembering a story..."

That feels like it could be true but I've no idea why. Perhaps it's something to do with the fact that musicals tend to be very melodic and melodies can only exist in our memories.

Then there's this:

"So perhaps musicals, rather than the world, show us our minds, show us what thinking feels like..."

Again, that feels true but also very mysterious. Perhaps the unique combination of story, words and music can offer a simultaneous expression of thought and feeling, one that is closer to the truth of our inner experience. In a film, it's only the musical element, the score, that can really take us 'inside' a character. Maybe that's what musicals do all the time but with more than just music.

And there's also this:

"I have often compared a good musical to a lasagne."

Erm.

OK, so sometimes the philosophical metaphors are a tad extended and I would have loved a few more examples from specific musicals. But there's probably a good reason for this: those musicals have yet to be written. You see, this book is fundamentally about the future. 

Now I've read a few "how to" books on musicals. The ones that take you through the basic building blocks like story structure, song placement, "I want" numbers (and, oh my, they do like their "I want" numbers). They're good books but, by necessity, they're about the past. They tell you what's worked.

If you want to know about the future, you have to go deeper. Instead of talking about the building blocks of a musical, you have to ask what the blocks are made of, philosophically speaking. Only then, can you really start to re-imagine what a musical could be. That's why a book like this is so important.

To use a film analogy, it's basically The Lego Movie. In the modern musical theatre landscape, everyone's got the building blocks [er, what was that about extended metaphors? - ed]. The problem is that everyone's been following the instructions for so long, they've forgotten how to do anything else. What's needed are a few Lucys to lead a few Emmets into the Badlands and become Master Builders who can dismantle everything and start re-making the world the way they want to make it. 

That's not a bad plan. It worked in the movie. Here's hoping it works for musicals.

The future could be awesome.

And I've got a sandwich to finish.

Songs From New British Musicals #3 Don't Look Down

 

by Richy Hughes and Joseph Finlay (2017)

This is from a one-man show called Superhero. It's the story of a recently separated father who is fighting for his parental rights with regards to his daughter. 

Now I've never seen this show (I'm just getting the info from here). But I do remember the campaign group, Fathers4Justice, which, I'm guessing, were part of the inspiration. Fathers4Justice campaigners would occasionally make headlines by dressing up as superheroes and scaling famous buildings. (I seem to remember Batman once got up the front of Buckingham Palace, although it later turned out to be Prince Charles washing the windows. The ears confused people.)

So, for this song, our father-hero is dressed as Robin and climbing Big Ben. 

"Bing bong bing bong

Bing bong bing bong"

OK, so nobody actually sings "bing" or even "bong". Still, starting with the melody of the famous chimes lets us know exactly where we are and, presumably, saves on set design. In fact, this song is doing an awful lot of theatrical work, as we'll see. For the moment, though, we're more concerned with the character's vertigo.

"Is it a bird, is is a plane?

No, it's a twit in tights who's scared to death

Come on, dammit, dig deep breath and

Don't look down"

The great lyricist Ira Gershwin once said that "a title is vital". If his composer brother George ever replied, I'm sure he would have said something along the lines of "yeah, but the tune's a boon, bro". The point being that, if the title of a song is important, then the musical setting of the title is equally so. 

And here's a good example. The words "don't look down" start with two short staccato notes, followed by a longer note on the off beat. Three notes separated by brief rests. That little musical formulation is very precise. Those rests feel like snatches of breath: "don't [breath] look [breath] down". Like the shortness of breath you get with extreme anxiety. It's musicalising the physical expression of the emotion.

Here's another example:

"Me legs have turned to jelly

With every step I feel my belly scrape"

On the first line, the music modulates into a minor key and shifts from jumpy figures to wobblier broken chords. Meanwhile the melody descends by tentative half-step semi-tones which get increasingly dissonant against the sustained G in the bass, until, finally, we get to "scra-a-a-pe" on an ear-crunching Ebm6 chord. Again, the music is imitating the physicality of the moment.

That is very clever writing. 

It's also a very British. I don't just mean the London accent and the famous landmark. I mean the British sense of humour: the dryness, the self-deprecation. And, of course, the knob gags:

"I wanted Batman, they only had Robin

No extra larges, just smalls

I'm getting fat, man, I just squeezed my knob in

This costume, I can't find the balls"

Always appreciate a good "Robin/knob in" rhyme. You won't find that in Cole Porter's catalogue.

So we have an interesting setup, clever writing, funny rhymes and knob gags. What more could you want? Well, let's add dramatic ambition. This, I think, is where the song really stands out.

Throughout, there are these sudden shifts in who the singer is singing to. He starts out talking to himself ("What was I thinking...?) and giving himself a pep talk ("Come on, damn it, big deep breath..."). In the next verse, he's remembering and talking to the audience ("I wanted Batman, they only had Robin..."). Later he's addressing the crowds below ("Kids need Dads!"). Later still, he's shouting at the police or the parliamentary officials or Harriet Harman or whoever it is who's trying to talk him down ("Get back! Now way I'm coming down!").

These shifts allow the song to paint a very 3D picture. It's not just a soliloquy. The song is doing much more than showing us his inner feelings. It's expressing the physicality of the climb, his memories, the events going on around him. All through the words and music.

Then something different happens with the return of the chorus. The preceding section gradually builds as the character, frankly, starts going a bit nuts [keeping up the knob gags, I see - ed.]. The superheroes and villains in his head seem to be merging with real life ("Catwoman can't touch me or that Riddler of a judge"). The music modulates like crazy. The melody gets higher and higher.

And, all of sudden:

"Dad, look down..."

This isn't just a change in the person he's singing to, it's a change in the singer. Musically speaking, we're in an entirely different voice, having gone from Eb to the unrelated key of G. It's the voice of his little girl:

"I saw you on the telly

Your belly stuck out under your disguise..."

Now it's not actually clear what's happening at this point. Presumably the Dad isn't actually hearing his little girl's voice since he's half way up Big Ben. Maybe he found out what she said later and is retelling the story. Maybe he's spotted her in the crowd and is imagining what she might be saying. Maybe he's dreaming the whole thing. Honestly, it doesn't matter. What matters is his little girl. That's what this final shift in perspective is telling us and that's why it is so effective.

So the ending may be sentimental, but it's certainly been well earned:

"A silly superhero

But still a superhero in my eyes"

It's a proper musical theatre moment. That is, it's the kind of thing that only musical theatre can do and, as such, probably the kind of thing that musical theatre should be trying to do more often.

That, and knob gags, obvs.

TATAR #13 Is My Team Ploughing?

 

by AE Houseman and George Butterworth (1909)

I've put these two names together as if they were some kind of songwriting duo. Although "Houseman and Butterworth" has a nice ring to it, they were, in fact, a poet and a composer. The poem is taken from Houseman's best known work, A Shropshire Lad, written in 1896. It was later set to music by Butterworth around 1909. 

So this isn't quite a song in the way in which we think about songs today. It's poetry set to music and from what you might call the "posher" end of the culture. Nevertheless, it has an immediacy that gives the songs a very different feel to most classical songs and, to my ears, much closer to a theatre song.

Why so?

Well, for a start, it's a very simple structure. The poem consists of alternate verses in alternate voices. The first voice is that of the ghost of a recently-deceased young man asking a series of questions:

Is my team ploughing

That I was used to drive?

And does the harness jingle

When I was man alive?

The responding verses are told in the voice of his still-very-much-alive friend:

Aye, the horses trample

The harness jingles now

No change, though you lie under

The land you used to plough

So, like a theatre song, there's a lot repetition, more than you would normally find in a classical number. Not only does the tune repeat four times, the answer-response nature of the poems means that the ideas repeat themselves too (like the harness jingling in the first and second verses). This makes the words more immediate and understandable, more like a lyric.

Then there's the simplicity of the chordal accompaniment which allows the singer flexibility with the words. In classical songs or operatic arias, the meaning of the words may be important but the sound of the words - their natural emphases and cadences - usually ain't. The music tends to dominate. In this case, however, the music is much more in service to the words. Like a good song. 

Finally, the innate drama of the song calls on the singer to do a bit more than only pay attention to the music. They have to act a bit which makes it more like a theatre song. There's a distinct change in singing voice required from the thinner, weaker voice of the ghost to the more robust tones of the living friend. And I like the way the performer here nervously fiddles with tips of his fingers when he's singing the ghostly verses. Then, for the final verse, he uses the same gesture, only this time it's the friend who's anxious about the final question:

"Is my friend hearty

Now I am thin and pine?

And has he found to sleep in

A better bed than mine?

To which comes the nervous reply:

"Aye, he lies down lightly

He lies as lads would choose

He cheers a dead man's sweetheart

Never ask me whose"

Awks!

That lovely, sudden and empty note on "whose" with no chords in the accompaniment, only a solitary note, tells you all you need to know about the character's guilt about what he's done.

So we have character, situation, immediacy and a balance of music and words.

Goes to show, even the "posh" fellas, the poets and classical composers, can write a good theatre song from time to time.

TATAR #12 Foundations

 

by Kate Nash and Paul Epworth (2007)

This is odd. One of those surprising hits. There's nothing that really indicates that it could be a hit but it was. Goes to show there are audiences don't always know what they like until they hear it.

Now I am not the audience for this. To be honest, the content of the song barely registers. But the songwriting itself is fascinating.

Let's start with the most apparent aspect of the song, the accent. Kate Nash sings with a heavy London accent (she's originally from Harrow). I don't know if it's authentic. It sounds a bit affected to my ears but that doesn't really matter. The significant thing is that it's not the usual American accent and that, I contend, is not just a performing choice, it's a songwriting one. 

This kind of accent is all closed vowels, dropped Ts and glottal stops. So we get a staccato-type melody without any long, held notes. Really the melody in the verses just dances around the tonic note.This limited movement allows it to be closer to normal speech, which makes it easier to sing in an accent other than the usual American-ese that most singers use. The words are dictating the rhythm and phrasing. It also makes it easier to switch between singing and speaking. So we get lines like:

"You said I must eat so many lemons 'cos I am so bitter

I said I'd rather be with your friends, mate, 'cos they are much fitter"

The first line is sung to a jumpy melody; the second line is pretty much spoken. And we get a nice off-beat drawl on bitter/fitter. Which is kind of funny and memorable.

The next line hints at something nastier, abusive even:

"Yes, it was childish and you were aggressive and I must admit 

I was a bit scared but it gives me thrills to wind you up"

But that "childish" reference is apt. We hear that in the harmonies. They are childishly simple. The verse is three basic chords (I, IV, V). The chorus is another three basic chords (VI, V, IV). No inversions, no added notes. This simplicity not only allows the melody to bounce around on top, it also reflects the character. 

A lot of this song is narrative. She's recounting incidents from a bad relationship. That's all in the words and, yes, the words dominate. It's a very wordy song. But the way in which the narrative is being told, the character of the narrator, that's all the there in the music. The unchanging beat, the limited melody that never quite breaks free, these express a kind of boredom without being musically boring. That's not easy to do. And those childish harmonies. This is a young girl caught up in something bad that she doesn't quite know how to handle. All of which makes the chorus that more affecting: 

"My fingertips are holding onto the cracks in our foundations

And I know that I should let go, but I can't

Every time we fight I know it's not right, every time you're upset and I smile

I know I should forget but I can't"

And here's the interesting thing. We shouldn't like this character. The character being presented isn't a very appealing one - nasty, vindictive, bored, rude. Yet we do like her and I think it's the fact that she's self-aware. Those two lines are key: "I know that I should let go...I know that I should forget...but I can't". Without those lines, it's really just a laundry list of complaints. Instead we see that she's trapped and she knows that she's trapped. That's much more interesting dramatically. 

In fact, it could be a great theatre song.

Songs From New British Musicals #2 Juliet Kind of Love

by Charles Miller and Victoria Saxton (2020)

This is from a show called Marriage a la Mode. I happened to catch this at Chichester University earlier this year (which, I think, was its premiere). Inspired by a series of Hogarth paintings and set in the 18th Century, the story revolves around two families. One family is aristocratic but cash poor; the other is Essex nouveau riche. So they arrange for their kids to marry. Cecilia is the daughter of the Essex family and a hopeless romantic and Percy is the dimwit aristocrat's son (think Thick Prince George from Blackadder). Needless to say, things don't go well. 

"Juliet Kind of Love" is Cecilia's "I want" number from Act I. It sets up her desire to marry for love. Something that, apparently, stems from a youthful trip to Romeo and Juliet:

"When I was eight Dad took me to the theatre

He said we should be seen to be seen, seeing something cultural

He fell asleep half way through the first act..."

What I like about this song is that it's all character comedy. If this were a Cole Porter-esque number, then the jokes would be about how clever a rhyme you can find for Cleopatra ("flatter 'er", since you ask). Instead there are relatively few rhymes and all the jokes come from the character. Like Cecilia's childishness:

"I felt tingles in my tummy and my nose and in my feet..."

And her subsequent obsession with the play:

"So I went back to see the play each Friday

In fact I went every day it was on, even when it wasn't..."

Not to mention her naive, but uncompromising, notions of romance:

"They said big, impressive words I didn't always understand

And yes, they do all end up dead but that's the price you pay for love..."

In these verses, the music has a regular meter. Not quite patter but more of a tum-ti-tum storytelling feel. It starts in E major with some interesting modulations. In contrast, the chorus sticks more solidly to G major. Now an E major verse to a G major chorus is itself unusual. It means that when we reach the chorus, there's a distinct shift in gear. The meandering verse suddenly blossoms into something very different, more assured:

"A Juliet kind of love

A Juliet kind of love

A love that you fight for

You live for, you die for

That fills your whole world and more"

That's a beautifully romantic tune. And those repeated phrases - "fight for...live for...die for" - add a bit of urgency. It's sincere, as is Cecilia. Even more impassioned is the end of the bridge section, where she's dreamily outlining her intentions for her intended:

"And we'll live a simple life in a cottage by the sea

Just him, just him and meeee..."

That big, long note on "me" is held over as the main tune of the chorus returns underneath. Now it feels like the romance of the song is taking over and she's being swept away. Falling in love with love, you might say.

So who needs Romeo?

Anyway, funny and romantic are two things that musicals do well and this song follows firmly in that tradition. 

A very musical theatre kind of a song and all the better for it.

TATAR #11 There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly

 

by Rose Bonne and Alan Mills (1952)

This is pretty much the first song I remember hearing as a child. I'd always assumed that it was one of those nursery rhymes that have been passed down from the mists of history. Not so. It was written back in the '50s by actual songwriters. And I should have guessed. It has all the elements of a great comedy song.

Some people think that comedy songs are all about the rhymes. I'm not so convinced. At least, the rhymes aren't always the thing that gets the laughs. I read a book recently by a stand-up comedian who noted that, for all his efforts in writing his material, audiences laughed most at his silly voices. It may not be the height of wit and sophistication but silly voices are undeniably funny and this song has a lot of 'em. And I appreciate that.

Another important element is surprise. So this song sets up the pattern of the rhyme:

There was an old woman who swallowed a fly

I don't know why she swallowed a fly

We get the same for all the animals ("How absurd to swallow a bird", "What a hog to swallow a dog" and so on). All except for the disruptive little spider who mucks up the pattern every time we run through the list:

There was an old woman who swallowed a spider

That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her

Now that "wiggled and jiggled and tickled" is a fun rhyme. But it's the surprise that make it even more fun and memorable.

And here's another secret to a great comedy song. It feels like it's getting funnier. The animals keep getting bigger in size and the extended joke and visual imagery gets more and more ridiculous. The music does the same as it modulates up a couple of semitones and the singers' voices get higher and higher. Right up until the final payoff:

There was an old woman who swallowed a horse

She's dead, of course

Amen!

Best. Song. Ending. Ever.

And that "Amen" makes me laugh every time.

RIP little fly.

Songs From New British Musicals #1 Don't Lose UR Head

by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss (2018)

So the musical Six is one of the big British musical successes of recent years. It started life as a student production at the Edinburgh Fringe and, at some point, has morphed into a high-end production that has tapped into the Wicked fan girls demographic. Although it hasn't quite shed its student skin which, I guess, is how you end up mouthing the word "threesome" on a family show on the BBC.

But, prudery aside, this is a fantastic comedy song and funny on a number of levels. (Note: the video is an abbreviated version of the full song.)

First level, we've got the basic idea of retelling a familiar-ish bit of history in modern jargon. So instead of ye olde speech of "my lady doth this" and "my lady doth that", it's all texting talk ("xo baby", "lol") and foreign slang ("pret a manger").

Second level, we've got the banter. Anne of Cleeves is at odds with the other queens so we get a bit of back-and-forth ("you didn't?", "you sent him kisses?"), as well as Anne's withering assessment of British virility ("epic fail"). All these little interjections liven up the song and, again, make it funnier.

Finally - and this is the best level - we've got the character comedy. Anne is scheming, derisive, arrogant, playful, capricious, naive. How do you convey that in a song? Well, the writers manage it in the first two lines of the chorus:

Sorry no sorry 'bout what I said

I'm just tryin' to have some fun

Listen to that little staccato melody. It's a playground taunt. It's "I'm the queen of the castle". It's "nah-nah-nah-nah-nah" with knobs on. That's a great bit of tune to go with the most succinct of put-downs: "Sorry not sorry". 

And here's what's really great. The same bit of song can be played in different ways to express different aspects of character. So the first time around, she's pretending to be coy, all wide eyes and innocent face, and the music is light and dainty. The choreography is cutesy shoe shuffles and tidy leg flicks. 

The second time around, it's different. Now she's all aggression and derision. The cutesy shoe shuffles have been replaced with head bangs and fist pumps. It's the same tune and the same lyrics but the arrangement and performance has brought out a different aspect of the song and, in doing so, a different aspect of the character. In only a couple of repeated lines of song, we know all we need to know about Anne.

The show Six has been praised for its feminist revisionist history as well as its parodying of modern pop styles. Now my knowledge of modern pop styles is about as extensive as my knowledge of feminist revisionist history, so I may be missing something. For me, this is just really smart musical comedy writing and properly funny. 

Epic fail, it ain't.

Songs From New British Musicals

I feel that a new series is required.

I'd like to look at new some songs from new British musicals. 

First, let's lay some ground rules and get the definitions in order:

New? Oh, I dunno. Say, last 10-20 years. Not the old Lloyd Webber/Mackintosh shows. Been there, done that.

British? That is, written by Brits or possibly with a British story or setting or British perspective. It's not like there will be citizenship tests or anything but I probably won't be looking at Broadway shows.

Musicals? Shows with original songs. No jukebox.

My blog, my rules.

So basically I'll just write about songs that I want to write about.

Theatre Songs and Pop Songs and Electrical Appliances

In this Dischord podcast (Soapbox #2 Danger, High Voltage), musical theatre man Adam Lenson compares theatre songs and pop songs and asks, what's the diff?

His answer is that musical theatre songs tend to contain more 'information' and, for modern pop listeners, getting such 'high voltage' information in their songs tends to blow their electrical appliances. Musically speaking, that is. And maybe that's why some audiences get put off musical theatre songs.

To demonstrate the point, he runs through a selection of pop and theatre songs and considers the amount of information they are conveying in terms of tone, character and narrative. He gives a score for each category out of 100 and tots up the results. So every song gets a Lensonian 'voltage' rating out of a possible 300. 

Now I cannot tell you how much I love, love, love this idea. I mean, why wouldn't you? Isn't this how everyone thinks about songs? My only disappointment is that a spreadsheet was not made available.

So take a song like "Ya Got Trouble" from The Music Man. This is packed with information - details of character, story references and so on - and scores high on the voltage scale (voltage rating = 225). Whereas a song like "Falling Slowly" from Once is more generic and scores low (voltage = 75). Although they're both from musicals, the former is more of a traditional theatre song, the latter is more of a pop song. 

And this proves to be the general rule. Pop tends towards the 0-100 range, whilst musical theatre songs tend towards 200-300 territory. There are exceptions. A song like Ben Fold's "Fred Jones"  is pretty high (250) and a lot of pre-Golden Age theatre songs, like Cole Porter's "Easy to Love", are low (although, arguably they were more like the pop songs of the day rather than integrated theatre songs). But, generally speaking, pop songs are low information and theatre songs are high information.

So how can theatre reach out and appeal to pop audiences? So what can musicals do about this information gap between theatre and pop? Well you could (i) lower the voltage of theatre songs or (ii) use pop styles (country or hip-hop, say) that tend to be more high voltage or (iii) you could aim for a balance, something in the 100-200 mid range.

This makes a whole lot of sense. And it's a fascinating way to analyse songs.

Here are some thoughts to add.

INFORMATION AND MUSIC

I wonder if using 'information' as a metric puts too much emphasis on the words. It's easier to discern the 'information' conveyed by a lyric, whereas music is trickier. Musical 'information' is more emotional, more abstract, more open to interpretation. Perhaps the metric should be something more like or 'aural thought-feel data points' or 'sonic emoji-ness'? On second thoughts, let's stick with 'information'. But remember that the music is conveying information too.

BRIDGING THE GAP

On bridging the gap between theatre songs and pop songs, it's also worth considering the advice of the old-time musical theatre lyricist (can't remember which one, think it was Alan Jay Lerner) who suggested that, if you're going to reference specific details of the story, save those for the song's intro. Keep the main part of the song more general and multi-purpose, which then makes it easier to have a life outside of the show. Could also be a way to achieve that 100-200 mid-range sweet spot.

NEEDING TO HEAR THE WORDS

There could be a simpler explanation for the difference between theatre songs and pop songs going back to the days of early rock 'n' roll when the theatre/pop divide really began. Early rock music was basically something for young people to dance to. It's meant to get you moving, whereas theatre songs are meant to be listened to. So in rock music, and pop music more generally, there's usually a heavier beat. The problem for theatre is that, if the beat's too heavy, then you start to lose the lyric. And theatre lyrics need to be heard and understood in a way that pop lyrics don't. Maybe that's why, when theatre songs use pop styles, they sometimes feel like 'gentrified' versions of the real thing.

ACCENTS

I'll admit, this is a well-beaten drum of mine. I still think it's a big issue. For modern pop audiences, the norm is still to hear songs sung in American English. That's a problem for theatre writers. 

I once sat on a bus listening to a group of young girls behind me happily singing along to the latest pop songs on their i-phones. Then, as a joke, one of them said, "Wait a minute, what about this one?". And she started singing the old scouts' favourite "Kumbaya" ("Kumbaya, my Lord, Kumbaya..."). At least, she tried. She started, then stopped. She tried again. She was struggling because she was trying to sing in the same American English as her pop songs and she couldn't get the accent to fit the song.

Now, as it happens, "Kumbaya", despite being African-American in origin, sings very easily in an English accent. But the girl on the bus was so used to hearing songs in American English that she was struggling to sing in any other accent, even her own. She couldn't naturally move from her speaking voice to a singing voice without changing accents. 

To me, it's an amazing thing. We're so used to hearing songs in an American accent that it actually feels unusual and awkward when we try to sing in our own non-American accents. That's not such a problem for pop writers but it is for theatre writers who need to move from speech to song.

Anyways, enough drumming.

Listen to the podcast. Brilliant, brilliant thoughts on a really important topic for musicals.

And we definitely need that spreadsheet.

The Joy of Musicals and Does Form Dictate Content (maybe a little bit)?

In the world of musical theatre writing, it's something of an unarguable wisdom that content dictates form. Mostly because it was said by Stephen Sondheim. But listening to a recent podcast from Andrew Klavan, I wonder if this is strictly true. Could form actually dictate content? At least, a little bit.

Here's the thing.

Andrew Klavan is a novelist and screenwriter with a podcast about conservative politics in the US. He mostly writes tough-guy thrillers, so it's a bit unusual when he starts talking about musicals. But that he does, around the 51 minute mark of his podcast here.

I suspect his interest in musicals stems from the fact that he grew up in New York in the Golden Age and was close to the entertainment world (his father was a famous radio comedian). So Broadway musicals would have been a big deal.

His remarks were prompted by his review of Schmigadoon, a TV spoof of Rodgers-and-Hammerstein-and-Lerner-and-Lowe type musicals from that period. But his broader point is that musicals, more so than any other art form, can produce joy.

Here's what he says: 

"The musical is very special and specific. The reason it had such a moment at the peak of the American century is because it reflects something unique about America, namely joy. It is one of the only art forms that can record joy...joy is one of the hardest things to produce in a work of art...pure joy, the joy of being alive is something that the musical gives."

Even a dark musical like Sweeney Todd, he says, gives a kind of joy. The joy of beautiful music and words and rhyme. 

It makes sense. Joy lifts you up and makes you want to sing and dance. It shouldn't be a surprise that a performance of singing and dancing should bring joy or that most musicals are uplifting. It does, however, beg a question: does the form of the musical have a bias towards certain kinds of stories, namely joyful ones?

Now I admit, to some extent, this is apples and pears. When Sondheim talks about content dictating form, I think he's talking about forms within musical theatre. So if you're doing a musical farce about the naughty Romans, then you need a lively, sequential plot where the songs help you pause for breath. If you're doing a show about the historical assassination attempts of US Presidents, you need a revue-style concept show. If you're doing a show that goes backwards...well, to be honest, I don't know how that works. 

The point is that these are all forms within musical theatre. What The Klavan is talking about is something broader: the form of musical theatre itself. 

Every art form has its strengths. For example, films tend to be good for exciting action sequences: car chases, police shooting at gangsters, cowboys riding on horses, aliens blowing up large buildings. You can't really do this in theatre or a painting or poem. It's unique to film. That's probably why Vin Diesel has never played King Lear (although there may be other reasons). The form tends towards its strengths and so, on the big screen, we get plenty of action films. 

So, if joy is a strength of musical theatre, perhaps that's why musical theatre tends towards stories of joy. That's why musicals tend to be more comedy than tragedy, more exuberant than downbeat, more cheery than Chekhov. The form itself tends in that direction and, in so doing, dictates the kind of content.

And maybe, just maybe - whisper it - Sondheim needs a caveat.

The Difference Between a Musical Theatre Culture and a Culture with Musical Theatre

I was struck by this performance of "You'll Never Walk Alone" by Kelli O'Hara at the 9/11 memorial service in New York.

It's a beautiful song, sung simply and very effectively. But what really struck me was how, in a moment of national commemoration, they chose a musical theatre song.

That would never happen here in the UK.

I cannot for one moment imagine the scene at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day with Elaine Paige popping up for a performance "Memory", or Michael Ball chipping in with "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables".

It seems to me that musical theatre is part and parcel of American culture in a way that it simply isn't for Britain (or, I would guess, any other country). I don't mean that Brits can't do musicals. We can. Good ones. Some even say that we started the whole thing - looking at you, Gilbert and Sullivan groupies. 

But America gave us a certain kind of musical theatre and, with it, a certain kind of American culture: popular, confident, optimistic, joyous. For all the megamusicals of the past few decades, it still feels as if British musicals haven't quite found their voice. Even the term 'British musical' still doesn't quite feel right.

This may be to do with the difference between a European culture that was formed from a tradition of high art and an American one that comes out of the more commercial and popular end of things. I don't really know. If it is the case, then I say we could do with a bit more of the popular stuff. And, as watch that beautiful song being heard by everyone from the President and former Presidents down to the firemen and ordinary families, I'm reminded of one important thing: musicals are for everyone.

Even the Brits.

TATAR #10: Only Love Can Hurt Like This

 

by Dianne Warren (2014)

Now I do enjoy the original Paloma Faith version but, whenever I hear it, it always make me wonder what Shirley Bassey could have done with the song. So I'm choosing this Sheyla version. A bit simpler, gentler and, frankly, with better diction. I like diction.

There are several secrets to this song.

The first one is the chord sequence. In songwriting, one of the most common chord sequences is I-VI-IV-V which, if you're not a musician looks like an Italian sending a distress signal. In English, the chords would be called tonic/sub-mediant/sub-dominant/dominant, which doesn't help much either. Let's stick with the Roman numerals.

The good news is that, even if you're sub-par on your sub-mediants, you would definitely recognise this sequence of chords if you heard it. It's everywhere. Most memorably, in Heart and Soul (a 1938 song written by Hoagy Carmichael and Frank Loesser, he of Guys and Dolls fame). Also for anyone who started and gave up piano lessons, it's probably one of the things they can remember how to play. That's because it's simple and sounds good and uses that I-VI-IV-V chord sequence.

So why prattle on about this? Well, "Only Love Can Hurt Like This" starts with this standard sequence. The I-VI chords appear over the first four bars and a low, rolling melody:

I tell myself you don't mean a thing

And what we got, got no hold on me

Then you may be expecting another four bars with the IV-V chords. But it doesn't happen. It pulls up short with just 2 bars on the IV chord and misses out the V chord:

But when you're not there, I just crumble

It's almost as the singer can't keep up the pretence of not caring. The chord sequence we're expecting falls away. It literally crumbles.

So now we're back to the first melody:

I tell myself I don't care that much

But I feel like I die 'til I feel your touch

Have to admit, I don't like the double consonant on "feel_like". Sounds awkward. And, for dramatic purposes, 'feel like I die' is probably something you should build up to in a song, rather than have it near the beginning. I mean, where do you go after that? 

Fortunately there's not time to dwell on that because the chorus basically interrupts the verse two bars early:

Only love, only love can hurt like this

And here's another secret to the song. Often composers look to follow the natural patterns of speech so that a song sings well. If you speak the words "only love can hurt like this", I think the emphasis would naturally fall on the love and hurt: "only love can hurt like this". But in this song, the emphasis falls on the first beats of the bars which turn it into "only love can hurt like this".

That slight off-beat emphasis not only tickles the ear, it also colours the meaning. The "only" picks up the singularity of the experience and gives the song more character. What we are hearing is her experience of hurt. And then when we get to "this", we can actually hear the hurt in that long held note. We hear it even more when the line repeats and the tune stretches the word over an extra semitone: "thi-i-is". We feel that.

Then, of course, the final secret. That octave leap. Not so secretive, perhaps, but still unexpected. Just as we've gotten familiar with the verse-chorus structure and are settling in for the bridge, the chorus suddenly hits the high notes and leaps into life. 

From then on, it's pure melodrama (or the Shirley Bassey bit, as I like to think of it):

But it's the sweetest pain

Burning hot through my veins

Love is torture, makes me more sure

OK, so "torture/more sure" is a bit tenuous but, at this point, who cares?

Bring on the Bassey .

On Cheese (and Ham)

One of the reasons I started writing about musicals again was listening to Dischord, a series of podcasts from musical producer/director/dramaturgically-minded fella Adam Lenson. In these podcasts he does what any sensible person would do and tries to unravel the enigma that is musical theatre.

In one episode (Soapbox #3), he tackles the important issue of cheese. 

And this made me think of ham.

I remember an old interview with film director Orson Welles where he talked about ham or, more precisely, when an actor is 'hamming'. Some think this means over acting. Not so, said Orson. Hamming isn't over acting, it is false acting. To prove the point, he cited Jimmy Cagney. With screen acting, they say less is more but not for Cagney. He played every part like he was doing a one-man show at the O2 Arena with the roof off. But there was never a false moment and he never hammed. 

So coming back to cheese. 

What is it? Is it embarrassingly exaggerated emotion? Is it overly sincere emotion? Or is it simply the film version of Mamma Mia? It's hard to define but you know it when you see it.

Like our old friend Orson, I would submit that cheese occurs, not when a performance is overly emotional, but when it is falsely emotional. It's the falseness that makes for the cheesiness - the fake smiles, the forced jollity, the oh-so-earnest-yet-meaningless middle-distance gazes. If you're trying to convey an emotional truth but it doesn't ring true, then the result is awkwardness, embarrassment and cringe. In short, cheese.

Still(-ton) the question remains: why are musicals, in particular, susceptible to cheese?

I have two answers. 

And yes, there will be puns. And yes, they will grate on you.

MUSICALS ARE BRIE(-F)

Musicals tend towards brevity and shorthand. Book scenes in musicals tend to be shorter than scenes in a play. So you often have to get to the emotional point quicker and, if this feels too rushed, then it can be dramatically unconvincing. Here I'm thinking of the creakiness of the old boy-meets-girl plots where, five minutes after meeting for the first time, the pair are professing their love for each other in song. The drama hasn't had enough time to earn the character's feelings. The emotion rings false and thus, cheesy. 

Consider this scene, for example. A nightclub. Music playing. A young man sidles up to an attractive young woman.

HE: (shouting over the music) Did it hurt?

SHE: Eh?

HE: I said, did it hurt?

SHE: You what?

HE: When you fell from heaven.

SHE: Sod off!

Clearly the young man here has gone full cheese and received the appropriate dismissal. Why? Because his chat-up line is way too much, too soon. The encounter is too brief. We know it's false. She definitely knows it's false. There's no way that he could plausibly feel such feelings with only one glance. 

Except here's an interesting thing. That's basically the scene from West Side Story where Tony and Maria meet at the dance and fall in love at first sight. Admittedly, we've already been introduced to the characters and we know they're both waiting for something big to happen in their lives. So we've had some time to prepare but, even so, the moment should feel implausibly rushed.

The way the scene avoids feeling cheesy is by leaning into the falseness. The pair see each other, the music slows, lights dim, they gaze into each other's eyes and begin to dance without a word. The overt theatricality - musical theatricality, I should say, as this is a moment that you would't find in a straight play - actually makes it more convincing. It's as if the writers are giving the audience permission to ignore the cheese. Yes, this is false but it's a musical and we've got a bigger truth to tell, so just go with it. And we do. 

MUSICALS ARE FEEL-GOUDA

Musicals are often said to be feel-good. They make you laugh or cry and, either way, that feels good. I think this feel-good factor is because musicals tend towards a simple and direct expression of emotion. This simplicity is both their superpower and their cheese-tinged kryptonite (interestingly, one of lesser known types of kryptonite that actually turns Superman into Michael Ball singing disco hits).

Let's slice that up a bit. 

Musicals, at least on the surface, appear to be relatively simple and unsophisticated when compared to more highbrow forms. Take opera. Speaking broadly and without meaning to sound like the cloth-eared Emperor from Amadeus, opera is more sophisticated than musicals because there are way more notes. Operas have fuller scores, the melodies are rangier, harmonies more developed, orchestras bigger and so on.

In a musical, the music is necessarily simpler. As well as the fact that there's less of it, the music has to make room for the other elements, most significantly, the words. In an operatic aria, the music dominates. In a musical song, the music and words are in a more balanced relationship.

So we find that lyrics are relatively simpler too when compared to, say, poetry. Poets tend to use longer, more unusual words that often require a dictionary. Whereas a lyricist has to find words that fit a melody and can be readily understood. That's why Oscar Hammerstein wrote "The hills are alive with the sound of music" rather than "The acclivities are extant with sonoluminescence".

I grant that this is all very broad brush. But brushing broadly, I think there's a truth to it - the music and words in musicals are relatively simple and express emotions relatively directly and immediately. And this gives us a clue about false emotion and cheese. It's not that musicals are the only form that can express false emotion. It's that, being a simpler and more direct form of expression, musicals are more emotionally exposed when they do. When the emotion in a musical misfires, it's far more obvious. 

THINGS CAN ONLY GET FETA

So Edam - sorry, Adam - Lenson's podcast is really well-aimed. The more I think about, the more I think that cheese is a big issue. I'm sure there's more say on the subject. Perhaps musicals are cheesy because most are so uncool. (As discussed before, my general rule for musicals that they are only cool if they involve Kander and Ebb songs and underwear.) Why are some musical performers given over to cheese? Maybe that's something to to do with 'impure' blend of acting and singing and dancing. I'm not sure. But there's plenty there for thought sandwich. 

Can we makes musicals less cheesy? I think we can. Cheese is a big hurdle for some musical theatre audiences which means that it's something that musical creators should know about. And, in order to avoid the cheese, one must first understand the cheese. This podcast is a great place to start.

Now I Camembert it any longer. 

I have to make a toastie. 

Cameron Mackintosh has a JK Rowling moment

Once upon a time, JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, waded into the sticky waters of the 'trans debate' and inevitably there followed a Twitter storm. Fans disowned her. Organisations shunned her. High-profile stars of the film franchise, such as Daniel Radcliffe and Emily Watson (and even that other one, y'know, the Ginger One), people who owed their entire careers to the her, all distanced themselves.

It feels like musical producer, Sir Cameron Mackintosh, is going through a similar moment.

Similar, but not the same. As far as I can tell, this hoo-ha is a much lower key. Mackintosh didn't tweet his opinions directly but was quoted in a newspaper interview. And JK Rowling's response to the fallout was to write a lengthy article defending her position. Mackintosh's was to issue a clarification and a sort-of apology.

So what's all the fuss about?

Well, the always thorough Shentonian, critic Mark Shenton, has a decent summary. Here's the headline from the original newspaper article:

"Transgender twist on classic roles is 'gimmick casting', says top producer"

And here's the offensive quote from Mackintosh:

"You can't implant something that isn't inherently there in the story or character, that's what I think. Just to do that, that becomes gimmick casting. It's trying to force something that isn't natural." 

It's that 'gimmick casting' line that seems to have done the damage. Some took it as a description of casting trans actors generally, hence the retaliatory hashtag #notagimmick. 

Now it's not clear whether Mackintosh was being asked about his shows in general or specifically about the role of Mary Poppins. It's also not clear whether he was talking about casting a trans actor or rewriting a show to make the lead character trans. 'Gimmick casting' obviously refers to actors but the rest of the quote suggests sounds more about changing a character. 

So has the Big Mac revealed himself to be a terrible transphobe or just a producer concerned with the integrity of his shows? Well, take your pick. And many have.

Personally I doubt he's any kind of phobe or bigot. In fact the only criticism I have is with the bit in his statement where he apologises for any 'distress caused by my remarks being misinterpreted'. Now I'm not keen on these sorry-not-sorry kind of apologies. If you don't think you've done anything wrong, don't apologise. And if you really feel that you've been maligned, then make a more honest and bullish defence (like JK Rowling). Preferably astride a large barricade and holding a smoking rifle in each hand, Enjolras-style.

Or is that just me?

I suspect that Mackintosh was just hoping for a quiet life. I fear that his critics are not going to give him one. This issue may well rumble on and, if it does, then it would be better to have the discussion openly and honestly and with as much good faith as possible.

Maybe Twitter isn't the best venue.

Just ask JK.

TATAR #9 Welcome Home

by Joy Williams and Matt Morris (2015)

When I think of the great lyricists I often think about how they turn the most ordinary of phrases into something memorable and beautiful. I think of Ira Gershwin and "They can't take that away from me". I think of Irving Berlin and "Isn't it a lovely day?". I think of Hal David and "What's it all about, Alfie?". Then I think, who the heck is Alfie, anyways?

And I also think something similar is happening here in the chorus to this song.

Welcome home

Welcome home

It's so good to see your face

Welcome home

That line - "it's so good to see your face" - is nothing on paper. It's conversational, undramatic. You'd never find it in a poem. But in this song, it's perfect. The rest of the lyric is a bit more flowery. But that chorus remains beautifully, wonderfully ordinary.

The song is deliberately vague. It could be about a mother welcoming for her baby into the world ("I've been whispering your name again and again"). It could be about a divine Creator welcoming lost souls back into a heavenly Eden ("You belong, you are loved, you are wanted"). Or, since it was made famous by a Toyota advert, it could be something to do with built-in sat nav and a tip top fuel-injection system.

The point is that the vagueness gives you space to fill in the blanks.

Speaking of space, the music is doing a good job here too. The accompaniment features long, held notes on low and high strings, leaving the voice to drift in the musical space inbetween. The music leaves room for the words just as the words leave room for their interpretation, so that all the meaning in the world can be invested in a simple phrase:

"It's so good to see your face"

That is something only a song can do.

Making Emile of it: manliness and the musical

Recently caught the Chichester production of South Pacific. Good stuff, although I'm never sure how to judge a production when the story and songs are so familiar.

Anyhoo, one of the most surprising things was Emile De Becque. In part, it was the voice. The character was written for an operatic bass and Julian Ovenden who plays him in the Chichester production is a trained opera singer. I couldn't remember the last time I had heard that kind of voice - rich, deep, powerful - in a musical.

But it wasn't just the voice; it was the manliness. Debeck is a manly man. He's been around a bit. He's killed a guy, made a fortune from scratch, had kids. In the show, he not only survives a dangerous military operation but also bags a young nurse. Let's just say, Evan Hanson, he ain't.

Is it my imagination or don't you see this kind of manly man is musicals these days? Male characters tend more towards the geeky and shy and awkward. Perhaps musicals have always had a touch of the nerdiness about them. But it seems that in recent years they've been playing more and more into that stereotype. I suspect it started sometime between High School Musical and Glee or maybe it was the other way round. To be honest, I wasn't really paying attention.

The point is that sometimes it feels that modern musicals have gone full geek.

Now there's nothing wrong with that. I like geeks. Some of my best friends are geeks. It only becomes a problem if it limits the kind of stories that musicals can tell and the kind of characters that musicals can portray. And I wonder if Emile De Becque would ever find a place in a modern show.

There are times when it's all about that bass. 

TATAR #8 Bulletproof

 

by Elly Jackson and Ben Langmaid (2009)

Also known as pop-synth duo La Roux (whatever pop-synth means).

Now I generally like pared down versions of songs when I'm trying to do a bit of analysis but this cover from Pomplamoose is too much fun to ignore.

Anyways, what's the song all about? Pretty straightforward really. A girl is ditching some douchebag boyfriend and making sure she's impervious to any of more of his nonsense.

And when I say straightforward, I mean everything about the song is wonderfully straight and forward. It's a simple verse-chorus. Each verse is 8 bars and divides into two 4-bar phrases. The chorus is 8 bars and divides into two 4-bar phrases. And every one of those 4-bar harmonic sequences is the same: Cm-Fm-Ab-Cm. And the melody is basically a lot of repeated notes for the verses and a repeated 4-note phrase for the chorus.

Musically speaking it's tighter than a pair of skinny jeans. There's no give. It's sticking to its tight structure and tight harmonies and tight melody and impervious to any attempt to any monkeying around. Just like the character singing it.

So if I do have a quibble, it would be with the lyrics. They're not quite tight enough.

It does have some punchy starts to each verse to go with those repeated melody notes.

Been there, done that, messed around...

Do, do, do you dirty words...

Tick, tick, tick, tick on the watch...

And the chorus and title works fine. 

This time, baby, I'll be bulletproof

Apparently the first version didn't have the word or notes for 'baby' and it only came together when they were added. I can hear that. The word 'baby' lends a sarcastic edge and keeps up the verbal attack. Also without that additional 'baby' there would too much of a pause and the song would lose it's oomph. After all, it's a tirade and you don't pause during a tirade.

So the lyrics are good but, for me, they really need more perfect rhymes.

I won't let you turn around (A)

And tell me now, I'm much too proud (A-ish)

To walk away from something when it's dead (B)

Do, do, do you dirty words (C)

Come out to play when you are hurt? (C-ish)

There's certain things that should left unsaid (B)

It's attempting something quite hard - a really tight rhyme scheme of AABCCB. But those sort-of-ish-not-really rhymes (around/proud, words/hurt) let it down. The sentiment's there but needs to be sharper. 

I can only imagine what Ira Gershwin would have done with the lyric.

Do, do, do your dirty words

Like you done, done, done before, baby 

Alas, I don't think he ever did do pop-synth.

To Whom?

Super smart fella Sam Carner has written a super smart article with the title of 'Will I ever make a sound: modes of musical communication in the musical theater'.

And he asks this question.

"When characters sing in a musical, who are they singing to?"

Interesting.

"Another way of framing the question would be: when one character is singing in a musical, what do the other characters hear?" 

Now that really is a smart question.

We're used to hearing questions about about why characters sing in a musical and how they sing and, in particular, how they move from speech to song. But I've never really considered the question of 'to whom?'.

And Mr Carner has done some of the answering too. With categories. (I love categories.)

He categorises non-diegetic songs thusly: 

1. Soliloquy - character expresses internal thoughts and emotions but essentially talking to himself. The audience is 'listening in'. Generally the character is alone but, even if they're not, the other characters can't hear the soliloquy.

2. External Narration - character is addressing audience directly. So the audience aren't 'listening in' as in a soliloquy. However the other characters on stage are generally not being addressed and can't hear the song.

3. Monologue/Dialogue - characters are singing to (or being heard by) each other. The audience is once again 'listening in'. Think of a love duet. What's interesting here is how whether or not we imagine that the characters are actually hearing each other sing. Probably not. Instead, as Mr Carner puts it: "music and musical style often becomes a theatrical metaphor for what the characters understand to be happening".

4. Communal Consciousness - neither audience, nor characters are being addressed directly. Instead the song arises out of a characters sharing an emotional experience or event.

There's even a helpful table to summarise the categories. (I love tables.)

Here's where it gets even smarter. Musicals constantly shift between these musical modes. Not just between the different songs but in the middle of songs too. That's part of their dramatic power.

"Musicals can also achieve much of their impact and storytelling through explicit shifts in the mode of musical communication. When a song or a theme moves from one mode to another, the change can offer an audience important perspective on the story being told. Such shifts are also emotionally charged."

Yet despite all these complicated shifts in modes, it all feels very natural.

"When watching a musical, we do not consciously track these varying and shifting modes. The analytical part of our brain is not engaged, so this musico-dramatic mélange envelops us, bypassing the logical part of our consciousness that might ask why characters are moving instantaneously from singing songs to singing speech to singing thoughts (let alone from speaking to singing). And yet, this very combination is inherent to creating a musical world. The musical depends on a variety of modes of musical expression for its very status as a musical."

And that's why I like musicals. Dramatically, there are plenty of complicated things going on but audiences aren't sitting around parsing their External Narration from their Communal Consciousness. No matter how complicated, audiences instinctively 'get' what's going on in a musical.

There are lessons here for musical writers.

"As a musical theater writer and educator, I encounter a number of works in development...and one of the frequent problems I see has to do with the nascent work relying too heavily on just one form of musical expression—usually the soliloquy song... But when the writers wonder why their piece does not feel as theatrical, as dramatic, as envelopingly musical as they would like, they can often find part of the answer in the uniformity of their musico-dramatic mode. The form of their piece is likely too coherent, too consistent, too rational."

Bring on the irrationality.

You have to be genuinely smart to understand how crazy musicals can be. 

TATAR#7 Falling

by Joy Williams and John Paul White (2011)

(Now this songwriting pair are better known as The Civil Wars and if you want the full-on vocals of the original, it's more than worth it. However this simpler version lets us hear the song more clearly.)

So this song has more drama going on than most theatre songs. And in some unexpected ways.

First off, it's called 'Falling' but rather than the more usual idea of falling in love, this is about falling out of love. Oh right, I hear you say with imaginary insouciance, so it's just another sad song about breaking up, huh? Not quite. 

You see, there hasn't been any breaking up. This woman is still with the man she is falling out love with (or 'the man with whom she is out of love falling' or something - prepositional endings, they can off sod). She wants to leave but, overwhelmed by guilt, can't bring herself to do it. What she really wants is for him to recognize her situation and either rescue or end the relationship. Anything but this drifting emptiness.

So what we have here is not just the drama of a relationship between two people. There is also the inner drama of a woman knowing that something must be done but being unable to do it. She's living in that tension.

We start with the metaphor of sleepwalking.

Haven't you seen me sleepwalking

'Cause I've been holding your hand

We're in a slow 6/8 in a minor key. There's a little semi-tone clash in the accompaniment that keeps things off balance. Something's not quite right.

Then the pleading begins.

Tell me it's nothing

Try to convince me

That I'm not drowning

And when we get to the chorus, we're into F major. Normally this kind of key change - minor to major - would likely indicate a move from happy to sad. Here, it's more of an emotional clarity, like surfacing briefly from a murky pool. Suddenly we're not drifting. The harmonies have direction, the rhythm has a purpose.   

Please, please tell me you know 

I've got to let you go

I can't help falling out of love with you

Also if you're going to make it an emotional release, then having a nice long note on the word 'ple-e-e-ase' is a fine way to do it. In the final chorus, we get a glimpse of the full despair.

Won't you read my mind?

Don't you let me lie here

And die here

It's a kind of death, this living but not living. 

This is a beautifully simple song. The real complication isn't in the music or lyrics, it's in the idea. The dramatic setup - a woman trapped by her own guilt in a loveless relationship - offers more emotional interest than most songs. There's melancholy, disillusionment, guilt, anger, despair. All in four minutes.

This song reminds me of the astonishing things that music and words can do.

TATAR #6: Andrea

by Victoria Wood (1997?)

Not sure exactly when this was first written and performed but it's available on the 1997 album Real Life, so we'll go with that.

Victoria Wood was a comedian who wrote songs, as opposed to a songwriter who did comedy. So what's really remarkable is how good the music is. That's often the case for comedy songs. After all, it's very hard to make people laugh with only music. You can make people smile with a jaunty tune or raise a giggle with something unexpected. But those big belly laughs are almost impossible to induce with music alone. 

Yet words are never enough for a really great comedy song. The music needs to make the words funnier. So in Victoria Wood's most famous comedy song about the domesticated sex lives of a rapacious wife and a reluctant hubby, "Barry and Freda" (aka "Let's do it!"), it's the triple rhymes that everyone remembers ("Not bleakly / Not meekly / Beat me on the bottom with a Woman's Weekly"). But it's the music that makes it funnier. The quickening pace on the third line, the harmonies that are pushing on towards the end of the musical phrase, as well as the continuous modulations making it feel like the whole thing is getting more and more hysterical.

And for the song "Andrea", the music is again doing a lot of the work. It's not quite a comedy song. There are no big laughs. But it could easily be a great character song from a musical comedy.

And oh, 

I'm seventeen

And I live round here

And it's not so bad

These first four bars are brilliantly boring. The jumpy rhythm hints at some fire in the belly but the rest is dull and duller. Harmonically, it's basically one chord. Melodically, it's essentially the three most conventional notes of the scale - the fifth, the third and the tonic - dropping one by one in an entirely predictable way. 

Then repeat for extra boredom.

And oh,

My sister's left

So I'm just at home

With me Mum and Dad

Normally that would be the end of the first section. Instead we get a couple of extra bars.

(Well, he's not my Dad

But I call him Dad)

These musical afterthoughts are a feature of the song and do two things. One, it makes the song feel more spontaneous, as if these thoughts just popped into her head. And two, they capture the drama underlying the boring exterior. There are mini tragedies in these throwaway lines, like the one about her boyfriend who was involved in a car crash.

He looked the same

But he weren't the same

Has ever a couplet said so much by saying so little? And the slightly bored, commonplace way in which Andrea describes it makes it all the more tragic.

The other thing about this song is that it is unmistakably British. As British as Victoria sponge and Queen Victoria and, well, Victoria Wood. If this were the 'I want' song from a Broadway show then Andrea would be all super passion and deep desire, not to mention a few top notes held for slightly longer than is comfortable. But Andrea is British and so more subdued and ambivalent. She wants to get away but, then again, it's not so bad, she has some friends and, I don't know, I don't have any real plans or anything but it feels as if my life is dribbling away a bit, y'know?

She's trapped and she knows it. At least, she knows just enough to know that she's trapped but not enough to escape. Really it's kind of tragic. 

But also kind of funny.

TATAR#5: We're Gonna Change the World

by Tim Harris and David Matthews (1970)

This was the last big song from sixties crooner Matt Monro who was better known for smoochie ballads ("From Russia with Love", "Portrait of My Love") than upbeat numbers like this. In fact, no-one is associated with numbers like this because there's no song quite like it.

Some take it to be a protest song but I don't hear it that way. It's certainly about a street protest but, if anything, it's more of an un-protest song. It offers a snapshot of three fictional women. Two go out on a protest march (Shirley Wood and Margaret Beatty) and one doesn't (Annie Harris).

So the chorus is the gloriously hooky protest song bit:

Come with us, run with us

We're gonna change the world

Simple and fun, almost a chant. All very protest-y. But then there's this:

You'll be amazed, so full of praise

When we've rearranged your world

And there's the un-protest bit. It's poking some fun. We've gotten so used to the idea of the earnest protest song that it's actually quite surprising to hear one that turns the tables and satirizes the protesters. 

You get a sense of this in the verses too. Compared to the simple chorus, the verses are more musically complicated with a bouncy melody shadowed by a bouncy chromatic bass line. 

We get a couple of lines to introduce the protesters:

Shirley Wood gulped down her breakfast,

Shut the fridge and joined the throng

Margaret Beatty snatched the milk in,

Scanned the news and went along. 

Then we modulate up a minor third. That's an unusual modulation. On top of that there's an awkward 3/4 bar thrown in just before the modulation. I think the music is doing everything it can to tell us that our perspective is shifting as we hear from the un-protestor:

Annie Harris drew the curtains,

Screwed her eyes up, had a peep

Saw the marchers, heard their voices, making early morning noises

Stumbled back to bed and tried to sleep

The words and music are setting up two worlds - the active protesters and the passive un-protester - and puts them side by side. And there's more satire of the protester's side: 

Sit in front of all the traffic
Harry busy shopping wives
Try to stir their ostrich notions, whip them up to wild emotions

Put some fire into their wretched lives

Now I'm not sure of all the lyrics of this song. If I were being a lyrical purist, I'd look at the lines just preceding these and get out my big red marker pen, shake my head and 'tut' unnecessarily loudly as I noted the tricky-to-sing double consonants ("numbers swollen"), unnatural reversed verb order ("Up the marchers' banners go") and awkward scansion ("Protest for everyone to know"). 

But, honestly, I'd forgive any and all all of these lyrical hiccups for the quality of that last line: "Put some fire into their wretched lives". That is beautiful and wonderfully, funnily captures all the passion, as well as the self-righteousness, of some street protesters. If someone ever writes a jukebox musical about Extinction Rebellion, this song would get first dibs. 

In the end, though, the song isn't really making a political statement; it's just describing a divided country. One group with plenty of vim and vigour but also plenty of condescension for the politically disengaged; the other group more concerned with their own lives, their work, doing what they have to do. The final verse speaks of the two female protesters getting roughed up the police whilst Annie Harris works in her office and thinks of Don (who, we assume, was her husband killed in war) who "died for others to live better". It's not a statement, just a contrast.

The contrasts still exist today.

Thankfully, so does this very odd, very brilliant song.