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.
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