The present Broadway revival of the late Stephen Sondheim’s most infamous flop, 1981’s Merrily We Roll Alongside, has unquestionably reclaimed the present’s status, not solely by means of the rave critiques of critics however by garnering the highest common ticket value of any present this season, with seats ranging as much as $600.
With Merrily raking it in on the Hudson Theatre, final yr’s acclaimed Sweeney Todd revival going robust on the Lunt-Fontanne, and the composer’s decidedly experimental present, Right here We Are, garnering a blended reception off-Broadway, it’s maybe value taking inventory of what American musical theater has develop into on this period the place Sondheim is each in every single place and nowhere. Whereas Sondheim’s reveals are presently enjoying throughout New York, his affect over the fashionable musical itself has develop into considerably more durable to trace.
“There’s a half-voiced worry amongst musical acolytes, comprehensible in a time through which theater itself is newly underneath siege,” former New York Instances critic Ben Brantley not too long ago wrote, “that on some degree Stephen Sondheim represents the top of the road for a once-flourishing artwork kind.” If that sounds dire, it’s as a result of the stakes are excessive: It’s a typical axiom that musicals are one of many few purely American artwork types; they advanced inside American popular culture to develop into a world export and certainly one of our hottest, enduring types of leisure. Nevertheless it’s additionally extensively understood within the theater world that for all of the composers like Sondheim who helped make the musical what it’s, a present like Merrily — with unknown songs, a conceptual plot tailored from a little-known play, and a story advised in reverse — may by no means make it to the Nice White Means immediately. That’s as a result of immediately’s successes are usually jukebox musicals and reveals based mostly on very well-known films you already know.
This doesn’t imply, nonetheless, that musicals are doomed to wither on the vine as consumerism pushes us towards ever extra spinoff, watered-down franchise variations stacked with mediocre songs. It’s simple to imagine this, and to cling to Sondheim because the final nice theater composer. However maybe there’s a special perspective on the present state of the musical: That it isn’t dying in any respect, that many probably worrying points that appear distinctive to the fashionable panorama are as previous because the medium itself, and that the artform is evolving into one thing new and equally attention-grabbing.
The brand new trendy musical is arguably discovering its approach right into a hybrid kind that routinely performs with construction and style expectations, pairs self-aware storytelling and progressive design with conventional crowd-pleasing parts, and deploys the mechanisms of social media and TikTok to bolster viewers interactivity and unite reveals with their core fanbases. No, it’s not Sondheim — however in a brand new period of storytelling, we don’t but know what the following Sondheim will look or sound like.
Broadway reveals have all the time relied on pop hits to drive their success
To know precisely the place we’re headed, it’s useful to grasp that the musical as we all know it has been by means of all this earlier than. First, consider the musical as a sum of its elements. There’s the story — the e-book or the libretto — and the songs that go together with the story. No matter no matter else you set onstage, how nicely these two parts mesh determines whether or not you’ve created one thing coherent.
That may sound like a foregone conclusion, however the historical past of the shape begs to vary. The musical advanced from two completely reverse impulses: vaudeville, which paired standard songs of the day with entertaining skits and brief sketches, and operettas, which had dense, refined scores descended from operas. So, in a single nook, reveals whose songs had been random and interchangeable — within the different, reveals whose tales couldn’t be advised with out the music.
Within the center, you had Tin Pan Alley, the place lots of America’s most well-known Twentieth-century songwriters churned out songs at a feverish tempo. On this period, songwriters akin to George and Ira Gershwin and Irving Berlin thrived, churning out still-popular hits that helped kind the spine of what’s known as the American Songbook. Typically, these songs discovered their approach into frothy reveals whose plots had been negligible and served as little greater than advertising and marketing for the music — which hardly ever had something to do with the story. Florenz Ziegfeld’s Follies, which reigned over the Twenties, was much more obscure, delivering conceptually progressive spectacle however functioning primarily as a style present with music.
In 1928, nonetheless, this began to alter, when Ziegfeld produced Jerome Kern’s Showboat, a difficult drama steeped within the affect of operetta and teeming with social points. Not solely was Showboat’s rating practically steady all through, however the songs had been designed to relay data and perception into the characters. In 1943, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II additional codified these substances once they took a holistic strategy to their first collaboration. In Oklahoma!, the music, lyrics, and choreography had been all utilized to deepen characterization and advance the plot. However, crucially, whereas Rodgers’s lush rating was influenced by operetta, the songs had been all bangers. The songs from Oklahoma! had been so standard that for the primary time in Broadway historical past, the manufacturing made a recording to protect the unique forged, thereby turning the Authentic Broadway Forged Recording) into an indelible a part of the musical theater expertise.
For many theater lovers, the unique forged recording is an introduction to the present itself, lengthy earlier than they ever get an opportunity to see it. However whereas these recordings are an important advertising and marketing instrument, it could actually decontextualize songs from the efficiency. Thus, paradoxically, on the similar time Rodgers and Hammerstein had been nailing residence the substances for a totally constructed musical, their forged album was instigating the method for its deconstruction.
What even is a Broadway musical anymore? It’s a surprisingly tough query to reply
Most up-to-date Broadway productions fall into certainly one of two camps. Within the first camp, we now have musical revues — jukebox musicals — that are loosely plotted automobiles for beforehand written well-known songs from pop songwriters or performers. Suppose Jersey Boys, Moulin Rouge, or the current Britney Spears musical, As soon as Upon a One Extra Time.
Within the second camp, we now have musicals written within the Disney vein, including songs or different parts to a beforehand beloved, well-known franchise. Suppose Imply Ladies, Legally Blonde, Again to the Future, or the upcoming musical adaptation of The Pocket book.
Excluding revivals, the overwhelming majority of current Broadway musicals fall into both class, with various levels of success. An ever-dwindling third class is what we’d consider because the “conventional” American musical — the Hamiltons and Hadestowns, constructed not round a beforehand present juggernaut franchise or pop hitmaker, however round an authentic thought or story adaptation, with a totally authentic rating.
There are apparent limitations to those categorizations. You’ll be able to argue, completely appropriately, that reveals constructed round beforehand present franchises are additionally “conventional” musicals — they have a tendency to have absolutely or principally authentic scores with a two-act plot construction. On the similar time, these distinctions have develop into ever extra blurry in a musical panorama the place reveals must attraction to the tastes of each vacationers and hardcore musical lovers with refined palettes and large fan energy. It’s more and more frequent for jukebox musicals like Jagged Little Tablet and the current Neil Diamond revue A Lovely Noise to not solely interpolate their pop hits however to deconstruct, interrogate, and recontextualize them. Is that also a revue? In the meantime, reveals based mostly on films like The Lion King and Matilda are simple story variations, however really feel recent and transformative based mostly on their musical and theatrical strengths.
Nonetheless, there’s a transparent distinction between reveals that exist to additional the artwork kind and people who exist to additional develop an present IP. With the franchise and jukebox musicals dominating Broadway, it feels essential to separate the “originals” from the ever-growing crop of reveals that appear to satisfy the latter function. It’s arduous to disregard that many of those latter sorts of reveals aren’t solely spinoff but in addition sloppy and creatively vapid — and that since Broadway reopened, these reveals have been turning earnings even at their most muddled and cringe, as different, extra inventive and progressive reveals shut up store early.
Making use of the entire Lease sellout debate to a crop of reveals which can be bringing Instances Sq. again to life practically 4 years right into a pandemic that debilitated the American theater, nonetheless, appears at minimal ill-timed and misguided. It additionally isn’t solely correct to say that solely the spinoff musicals get all the eye. Of the 10 highest-grossing reveals of the final decade, solely two, Lovely — The Carole King Musical and Jersey Boys, had been jukebox musicals, and solely two, The Lion King and Aladdin, may very well be stated to suit underneath the “franchise musical” heading. Nonetheless one feels about the remainder of the musicals on the record, nobody can say they aren’t progressive. This was a decade that noticed a gradual effusion of authentic musicals, from Enjoyable Residence and Expensive Evan Hansen to Be Extra Chill, and One thing Rotten, lots of which discovered passionate fanbases. And whilst Broadway limped alongside for many of final season, the three reveals that recouped post-pandemic — up to now together with girl-powered historical past romp Six, the Michael Jackson musical MJ, and the revival of Humorous Lady — arguably represented a variety of concepts and artistic ideas reasonably than a narrowing of the sphere.
Nonetheless, the concept that Broadway must be about extra than simply milking money cows feels noble. It’s arduous to let go of the Twentieth-century dream of an elevated musical kind the place each tune feels inextricably linked to a singular character and story dropped at us by consummate songwriters. It’s additionally arduous to not resent the Imply Ladies and the & Juliets for robbing the Unusual Loops of their probability to discover a mass viewers.
The dictum that not even Sondheim may develop into Sondheim within the present setting of American theater is supposed to underscore the truth that culturally, we’ve moved previous the age of visionary composers driving what will get a Broadway manufacturing. The present glut of jukebox/franchise reveals make it extremely tough for less-known and experimental reveals to interrupt by means of. Whereas everyone nonetheless needs to be Sondheim, solely a handful of immediately’s musical composers have the type of fan following and identify recognition that enables them to mount a Broadway present and recoup its funding on the energy of their rating. It’s not simple, as Brantley noticed for the Instances, “to think about any of them ascending to the unapproachable dominance of their career that was Mr. Sondheim’s for roughly half a century.” A facet issue is that lots of them have moved away from the theatrical trenches after recruitment into the Disney fold — a much less dangerous, extra profitable profession path, however not one which results in new reveals.
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However this concept — that there’ll by no means be one other Sondheim to innovate and push the musical ahead — additionally obscures the fact that the majority of Sondheim’s musicals barely made it to Broadway to start with. (Merrily solely ran for 16 tortured performances.) For many of his profession, Sondheim handled vital dismissal and audiences who didn’t know what to do along with his work. It took a long time for a lot of of his reveals, with their famously “unsingable” scores, to develop into the cultural icons that established him not solely as certainly one of America’s most essential composers, however a popular culture mainstay.
In different phrases, even Sondheim typically persevered regardless of, not due to, the modes and technique of Broadway success. For all we laud “the American musical” as a pure artwork kind, the reality is that Broadway has all the time been a business enterprise, before everything, extra intently tied to High 40 pop music than to excessive artwork. The Gershwins, Cole Porter, Lerner and Loewe, even Leonard Bernstein — many of the Twentieth century’s honored musical composers had been primarily hitmakers.
This can be a arduous capsule for a lot of theater lovers to swallow. Musical theater’s relationship to classical music and opera has traditionally been such an incendiary topic that each few a long time somebody drops an impassioned rant on the general public about it. The ever-present rigidity between perceptions of “intellectual” and “lowbrow” artwork implies that theater composers and critics incessantly wage warfare over which realm the musical belongs to. It additionally implies that critics have been handwringing that the fashionable musical is lifeless for roughly 20 years — no, make that 40 years. The fashionable musical has allegedly been in its loss of life throes since earlier than many people had been born, and but one way or the other these loss of life throes have produced most of Broadway’s longest-running and profitable reveals, from The Phantom of the Opera to Depraved.
The extra I contemplate the period we’re in, the much less I’m bothered by the state of issues. The present Broadway season already holds promise past the remnants of Sondheim: The upcoming jukebox musical Hell’s Kitchen, loosely based mostly on the lifetime of Alicia Keys, guarantees to unite the usual jukebox biopic with the thematic complexity of Jagged Little Tablet. Elton John’s Tammy Faye appears like it would inject a wanted quantity of satirical froth into the combination. Revivals of Cabaret and The Wiz already really feel like they’re arriving at precisely the second we’d like them most. In the meantime, audiences proceed to return to theaters — and these audiences include fewer vacationers and extra locals and a extra various, younger crowd total. In different phrases, nature is therapeutic, and it needs to sing present tunes.
