"Musical supervisors and orchestrators have secured a victory in their campaign to be honoured at the Olivier Awards, with next year’s ceremony set to include a brand new prize category for which they will be eligible.
Campaigners have been calling on the Society of London Theatre to honour musical directors/supervisors and orchestrators since 2011, with leading figures – including Mike Dixon and Gareth Valentine – calling the lack of a category honouring their peers a 'serious oversight'"
I'm all for honouring good musos. But isn't there a problem in campaigning for the instigation of an award when you're very likely to be a recipient of it?
"Now, SOLT has revealed plans to introduce an outstanding achievement in music category at next year’s ceremony, which it said 'will bring together potential nominations across the music fields' including 'composition of original music for plays, orchestration and musical supervision/direction'”.
I suspect the looseness of the category will mean that this will become a kind of "special achievement" award, given to notable theatre musicians more for their body of work, rather than a genuinely competitive category. I'm not sure how a judge would weigh the comparative merits of orchestrations vs. musical direction vs. playing second fiddle. On the other hand, if it does end up raising the profile of these professionals, maybe that's no bad thing for musicals.
Then again when it comes to musicals I'm never sure how much the Oliviers actually matter (I suspect they generally matter more for subsidised than commercial theatre, hence the dismal lack of a Best Pantomime category). The return of Miss Saigon to the West End reminds me of how that show was inexplicably overlooked by the Oliviers in favour of Return to the Forbidden Planet, a jokey jukebox piece of campery set in outer space. What I didn't realise was that Les Miserables was also overlooked a few years earlier in favour of the 1930s musical retread Me and My Girl.
So, in summary: at the height of the global success of the West End musical, the main prize-giving body in the West End was bravely honouring pop nostalgia and half-a-century-old scores.
"A lot of shows are star-driven. It’s because of the precarious nature of musicals now – it’s always down to the bottom line. They [producers] want insurance all the time. They want a big name to ensure a show will happen"
I'm sure he's right. Stars are, almost by definition, those who get top billing for protecting the bottom line.
"And there is so much money involved and invested that they don’t want to take chances anymore. In those days [the time of Les Miserables opening] there was more of a creative force behind a show, rather than guys in suits crunching numbers."
Quite. I've heard Russell Crowe sing and, man, can he crunch some numbers.
"Unfortunately, it dumbs down everybody. And it doesn’t do any favours to musicals or plays or creativity involved in the arts.”
The artistic complaint about the vulgarity of money is a common one. The complaint about using stars is more interesting.
Stars are a natural and necessary fact of commercial theatre. In fact, there are precious few genuine musical theatre stars here in the UK. As I've mentioned before, in order to become a bona fide musical star (as opposed to a star who does musicals) you need two things: (1) to be the original lead in an original musical and (2) to have a hit song from the show. Really, only Elaine Page, Sarah Brightman and the two Michaels (Ball and Crawford) fit the bill.
That is why we've had all those reality TV search-for-star Maria/Joseph/Jesus formats; there were no ready-made, off-the-shelf musical stars from which the producers could choose. So they had to create one. That's fine for one show but then there is the question of what happens next. After the initial production and the national tour and the limited-release album, what do these newly-crowned stars do with their stardom? I'm sure they could continue in revivals or do the rounds in the long-runners. But if they want to be bona fide musical stars, what they really, really need is an original hit show and an original hit song.
What they need are writers.
Whilst opportunity was knocking for those Marias/Josephs/Jesses, some wondered why Lord Andy couldn't knock up some similar opportunities for writers. Well, there's no shame in writing for a star. Indeed there are plenty of precedents: Gypsy, Funny Girl, Phantom, to name but a few. I'd have thought that writers would be lining up to provide material for these freshly-minted stars.
Maybe this is being done, maybe not. My point is that there's no intrinsic reason why a star-driven musical theatre should be an uncreative one. Stars need writers to help increase their stardom; writers need stars to get their work put on. It's a deal to be fostered, rather than Faust-ed.
Further to the post and podcast below on the question of why musical theatre songs gradually disappeared from the pop charts.
There is, of course, one obvious answer not explored by Messrs. Thos and Tim: musicals got less popular.
OK, let's tweak that a bit. From the mid-sixties onwards the popular musicals got fewer and farther between. In the West End the megamusicals could still throw up a big song or two (Phantom begat four top ten hits) but there were precious few shows to do the throwing up. And on Broadway the golden age had well and truly passed. By the eighties the biggest home-grown show was 42nd Street which, admittedly, included several hit songs in its score. Hit songs from the 1930s, that is.
Comedy Thos and Sage Tim of MusicalTalk are back beating about the backbeat bush. Plenty of chew-worthy fodder here on why musical songs have mostly disappeared from the pop charts.
Also an honourable mention made of your humble blogger. For the curious, the post cited in the podcast is available here.
4. Stylistically the film is best described as an extended lingerie advert.
5. Judi Dench has apparently mastered the technique of shout-sing. She'd make a decent Al Jolson if ever given the opportunity.
6. Actors not stars. Daniel Day-Lewis is inch-perfect as the egotistical director Guido Contini. However something felt missing: he is credible but not charismatic. I could believe that this man was adored by women; I just didn't care. To be fair, there's not much to care about. The character is rich, handsome, successful, bags a series of glamour pusses and whose only problem seems to be a touch of writer's block. Not one for bleeding hearts.
Charisma is really his only redeeming feature and I suspect (and it is merely suspicion - I've never seen the stage show) that this is partly a problem of moving from stage to screen. It's much easier to get caught up in the sheer charisma of an actor on stage. If they're good, a musical performer can sing and dance their way into the audience's appreciation whatever the character. Screen charisma is something else, not always determined by talent. Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the finest screen actors. My feeling is that this part doesn't require an actor; it needs a star.
7. Stars not dancers. Where's the dancing? OK, there's quite a bit. But there's nothing that really strikes you with its physicality (with the possible exception of Marion Cottilard's "Take It All"). There's no routine which makes you say, "Wow! I didn't know the human body could do that". As I recall, I didn't care greatly for Chicago but at least there were some stunning dancers (mostly in the chorus) who were given the chance to shine. As much as I enjoyed Kate Hudson wiggling I can't help feeling that some of the chorines would have made a better fist of it. A film musical needs dancers even more than it needs stars.
8. Augmented theatre. With the exception of Guido's final song, all the numbers are set in his memory or imagination. So whenever the music cues, we generally cut from the story to a number set in the film's sound stage. The cut isn't really the problem (although I suspect, again, this is something that works more effectively on stage). The real problem is the sound stage, which is essentially a cavernous theatrical stage. So instead of eight dancers draping their legs over bits of furniture, we get eighty. Instead of a two-tiered stage, we get multi-storey scaffolding. Instead of the romantic lighting effect of a few dozen candles, we get a few thousand.
Sometimes these are good effects. But Guido's character is an obsessive film director. He eats, sleeps, drinks, thinks, dreams in film. The musical numbers, above all, should be filmic. Setting them in a big space with spotlights and half-finished sets and lots of well-spaced dancers doesn't really make this an imagination on film. Rather it is theatre augmented.
9. Redemption through Art. What does Guido want? Ostensibly it is to finish the film. What he really wants is a kind of redemption or, at least, the forgiveness of his wife, Luisa, whom he has wronged. At the end of the story, with his creative forces exhausted and unable to complete his film, he becomes a recluse, grows a beard and watches the world go by. A couple of years later his friend and long-term costume designer, Lilli, tracks him down. She reminds him of all the people he has touched through his films and encourages him to return to his film making. The final scene shows him in the studio making a film about a man trying to win back his wife. Meanwhile Luisa sneeks onto the set unseen. She sees Guido at work and smiles.
This is bunk. Artists tend to have a very high regard for Art and I think it catches them out sometimes. Guido is a monster. The story here is trying to redeem him merely by the fact that he's a great artist. Any amount of cruel and narcissistic behaviour is apparently forgivable as long as you can make a great movie.
Well, I'm not buying it. It doesn't happen in any other profession. We don't forgive plumbers their infedility on account of their copper pipework. We don't give a moral carte blanche to accountants who never misplace a decimal point. What makes the artist so special?
Ultimately I suspect that's why the film, despite the extensive lingerie and a galaxy of star names, never really became the hit in the way that Chicago was. For the non-artist, there's limited appeal. Nine is basically Sunday in the Park with George in frilly knickers.
