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.