So What's Wrong With Sondheim, Then?

So asks Comedy Thos of Sage Tim on a previous episode of MusicalTalk. It's a question worth asking if only because it's so rarely asked. There's so much to love with Sondheim's work, it seems a bit perverse to dwell on the negative.

But I enjoy a challenge, so here goes.

The best place to go for an answer is Sondheim himself. He is his own most observant critic. This is unusual. Good criticism requires a certain distance and most writers are too close to their work to assess it properly.

Fortunately Big Steve has been doing some assessing in his recently published collection of lyrics Finishing the Hat (or Fin-i-sh-ing-the-Hat, as I like to think of it). I'm only half way through but already there's plenty of good stuff to chew over. Of course he picks up a lot of lyrical sins in his early work: verbosity, redundancy, inconsistent characterisation, lazy rhyme schemes. But these are technical aspects. I think there is something deeper.

When it was publicised the book was trailed as Sondhiem dumping on the Pantheon of Great Broadway Lyricists including his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein. But this just isn't true. His notes on Hammerstein are much more revealing.

Big Steve quite rightly has a few digs: the redundancy and plodding didacticism ("You've got to be taught before it's too late/Before you are six or seven or eight"); the flowery operetta hangovers ("Softer than starlight, are you"); the sentimental bird imagery ("like a lark that is learning to pray").

Easy targets, all. But this is missing the woods for the trees. Here's how he concludes his appraisal (p.37):

"Hammerstein rarely has the colloquial ease of Berlin, the sophistication of Porter, the humour of Hart and Gershwin, the inventiveness of Harburg or the grace of Fields, but his lyrics are sui generis, and when they are at their best they are more than heartfelt and passionate, they are monumental...The flaws in Oscar's lyrics are more apparent than those of the others because he is speaking deeply from himself through his characters and therefore has no persona to hide behind. He is exposed, sentimental warts and all, every minute and in every word...In the end, it's not the sentimentality but the monumentality that matters"

This, remember, is Big Steve's assessment of Hammerstein as a lyricist. He's almost always considered as a significant book writer and theatrical innovator, probably the most significant figure in the development of the Broadway musical. But as a lyricist he is sometimes overlooked. Not so for Big Steve: Hammerstein's lyrics are monumental and it's the monumentality that matters.

In this praise of Hammerstein, I think there's also criticism of Sondheim. For me, Sondheim's lyrics are not monumental in the same way. They don't speak deeply from Sondheim himself. They can, at times, be cold and distant, as if something is being held back. He isn't exposed, warts and all, in every minute and every word.

In answer to the original question, Sage Tim suggested an occassional smugness in Sondheim's work. This may be true. But I think there's a more significant criticism, that he sometimes struggles to speak deeply with the same exposed, courageous simplicity of his mentor.

However carfeful you are, some things just can't be taught.

There's Something To Say For Having Something To Say

Bit slow in picking up on this one but there have been some musical musings from Boff Whalley over at The Guardian.

Hard to know where to start. At first I thought it was just another anti-Lord Andy rant. But not so, says the author. He clarifies things a bit in the comments:

"It's about how capitalism shifts generally and specifically towards the safe, easy money. Webber, for all his worth, is the easy money"

He may be now but he wasn't then. Cats struggled to find investors. Only after that did he look like a sure-fire bet. And since Phantom his shows have had more investment but made less money. Seems to me that this capitalism thing is a bit more complicated than Mr Whalley is letting on.

"The article (heavily edited, as it happens) is about writing musicals that (and I quote) 'have something to say'"

As opposed to those silent musicals? I'm kidding. But honestly, what does this mean? I'll come back to this.

"Webber's musicals just don't fit in this arts-cuts world. They have bugger all to say."

To the best of my knowledge, Lord Andy's shows don't rely on government subsidies. Whatever they have anything to say or not, they're bugger all to do with the arts-cuts world.

"They blot out the sun and soak up the money."

Again, they're not competing with subsidised theatre so I'm not sure how they're blotting out anything. And that money they're soaking up is paying the wages of actors, musicians, stage hands, front of house and the rest.

"They give people the impression that musical theatre has to be through-composed and grand. A sort of pretend-opera for the masses."

This I sort of agree with. Imitation is inevitable when somebody's successful. But that applies in artistic terms as much as in commercial ones. Lots of musical writers pretend to be Stephen Sondheim.

"Don't try to sell me the idea that Webber is avant-garde"

Wouldn't dare. Lord Andy certainly isn't before his time. I don't see him as pre-empting a future direction for musicals. He's more of a one-off original. He may have had his imitators but, so far, none have had the same success by following in his footsteps.

"Any writer who sucks up to the establishment and accepts their patronage ought to be viewed with nothing less than suspicion"

Isn't government-subsidised theatre a bit like accepting the patronage of the establishment?

"I only watch Man Utd on telly in the hope that someone will beat them. I feel the same about Webber"

Nice. No anti-Lloyd Webber rant here. Good to clarify that.

Now obviously I'm in disagreement with a lot of this. I think the article falls into the trap of seeing big, commercial theatre as "safe" and smaller-scale, subsidised work as "risky". If anything, when it comes to musicals, it's probably the other way round.

But there is, I think, a distinction worth making between musicals that have "something to say" and the rest, although it's a bit hard to work out how Mr Whalley makes that distinction. He seems to approve of West Side Story, Hairspray and small-scale musicals dislikes Evita, Cats, Disney and jukebox musicals. To my mind, it's the last category where the true distinction lies.

How does a musical "say" anything? Primarily through its songs. It's hard to see how a musical writer who has something to say can do so by stuffing old songs into a new plot. Jukebox musicals are undoubtedly hard to get right and can be far better nights out than a musical with new songs. But I'm not really sure that they can ever have much to say.

That's the real distinction to be drawn. In the end it's not about the size of the budget, the scale of the production or the whether it's commercial or subsidised theatre. It's about the songs.

Boff Whalley has written the songs for a show about a Liverpool family divided by the Dockers' strikes of the 1960s. I'm sure he hopes that the songs tell the story, that the story has something important to say and that the show's successful. In that, I suspect he has more in common with Lord Andy than he'd care to admit.

A Little Theory on Musical Stars and Their Making

Interesting post from Mark Shenton at the Stage.

He discusses two recent musical stars: Elena Rogers who took the lead in Evita a few years back and Tracie Bennett who is curently playing Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow. Mark Shenton points out that neither were the overnight sensations that is sometimes claimed. Both paid their dues before their big breaks.

This is often the case and I don't doubt their talent or that they've earned their stripes. But are they stars? Certainly they are in the theatreland but what about the country at large? Neither is really a household name and I doubt they will be any time soon. In fact very few musical stars are household names. Here's my little theory as to why.

First I have to make a distinction between Musical Stars, that is stars who earned their stardom doing musicals, and Stars Who Do Musicals, that is someone from TV (Denise van Outen) or pop (Mel C) or non-musical theatre (Dame Judi Dench) or Bolton (Peter Kay) successfully making it in a musical. This is, by the way, not a judgement on the abilities of Stars Who Do Musicals, only a remark on their route to stardom.

I can only think of two current Musical Stars who became household names by starring in musicals: Elaine Page and Michael Ball. Elaine Page became with Evita and later by singing "Memory" from Cats and Michael Ball with "Love Changes Everything" from Aspects of Love. It probably helped that they both had chart hits and subsequently have appeared on TV and radio but, essentially, it was the musicals what made 'em.

You could add Michael Crawford to the list. Although he had previously made his name in a TV sitcom, he became even more famous for doing Phantom of the Opera. Sheridan Smith may be following a similar sort of path with Legally Blonde.

From this I surmise that to become a Musical Star you need to do two things:

1. Star in an original role in an original musical.

And

2. Be associated with a big song from an original musical. (This could be the fatal flaw for Sheridan Smith - Legally Blonde is lacking a hit song)

To prove this little theory with a negative, let's take two top-drawer musical performers who, if it were based on talent alone, probably would be household names but aren't: Ruthie Henshall and Colm Wilkinson. Ruthie Henshall has oodles of talent, has won awards and even made it big on Broadway. But her best-known shows have been revivals (She Loves Me, Crazy for You, Chicago) not originals. Colm Wilkinson did star in a big original (Les Miz) but didn't have a big song to go with it. It took the Mighty SuBo dreaming her dream to give Les Miz its take-home tune.

So that's why Elena Rogers and Tracie Bennett aren't household names. Starring in revivals and doing old Judy Garland songs, however brilliantly, just isn't enough to scale the heights of popular culture. What they need is original shows and original songs. Until we get some more of those, no matter how good the performers, we won't get any more Musical Stars.

Just a little theory.

Dahl M for Mathilda

I was pretty interested when I first heard of a musical version of Roald Dahl's Mathilda, especially when Tim Minchin was named as the songwriter. It seemed like a terrific match of author and subject. It still does.

But this report from the Telegraph's Serena Allott is a bit of a worry. Here's the show's book writer Dennis Kelly:

"'I'd never written a musical,' Kelly says. 'I don't particularly like
musicals.'"

You hear a lot of this from new musical writers and I never really understand it. No first-time playwright advertises their play by telling reporters that "well, to be honest, theatre's not really my bag, I'm afraid". If you don't like musicals, don't write 'em.

"Kelly admits that he initially assumed that the collaboration would entail him writing the play and plonking Minchin’s songs into it where he saw fit. 'Slowly I began to understand that the songs had to tell the story as much as the dialogue.'"

It doesn't exactly fill you with confidence. You're opening a new musical with a book writer who doesn't like musicals and who only recently realized that songs are an important part of the storytelling. Hmm.

British writers often give this impression of underestimating musicals, apparently unaware of the thatrical tradition from Show Boat to Phantom and thinking that all you really need's some flash sets and some catchy tunes, then sit back and enjoy your percentage. The idea that musicals are actually written, as opposed to merely produced, seems like a novelty.

Perhaps this is being unfair but that's often my impression. I suspect it's because, even now, when the West End is choca with musicals, there's still not what you could call a tradition of musicals in British theatre. For the most part British theatre is the spoken word; musicals are, at best, a bit of fun. They're just not in the blood in quite the way that they are on Broadway.

Now sometimes tradition can be overbearing and ignorance a virtue and I honestly hope that Mathilda is just such a case. And that Dennis Kelly has changed his mind.