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 way of the rave evaluations 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 12 months’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 price taking inventory of what American musical theater has grow to be on this period the place Sondheim is each all over the place and nowhere. Whereas Sondheim’s reveals are presently enjoying throughout New York, his affect over the fashionable musical itself has grow to be considerably more durable to trace.
“There’s a half-voiced concern amongst musical acolytes, comprehensible in a time wherein theater itself is newly underneath siege,” former New York Occasions critic Ben Brantley lately wrote, “that on some degree Stephen Sondheim represents the tip of the road for a once-flourishing artwork type.” 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 varieties; they advanced inside American popular culture to grow to be a world export and considered one of our hottest, enduring types of leisure. Nevertheless it’s additionally broadly 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 instructed in reverse — may by no means make it to the Nice White Manner immediately. That’s as a result of immediately’s successes are typically jukebox musicals and reveals based mostly on very well-known motion pictures you already know.
This doesn’t imply, nonetheless, that musicals are doomed to wither on the vine as consumerism pushes us towards ever extra by-product, 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 distinct perspective on the present state of the musical: That it isn’t dying in any respect, that many doubtlessly worrying elements 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 fashionable musical is arguably discovering its means right into a hybrid type that routinely performs with construction and style expectations, pairs self-aware storytelling and progressive design with conventional crowd-pleasing components, 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 grasp precisely the place we’re headed, it’s useful to know that the musical as we all know it has been by way 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 properly these two components mesh determines whether or not you’ve created one thing coherent.
Which 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, subtle 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 instructed with out the music.
Within the center, you had Tin Pan Alley, the place a lot of America’s most well-known Twentieth-century songwriters churned out songs at a feverish tempo. On this period, songwriters corresponding to George and Ira Gershwin and Irving Berlin thrived, churning out still-popular hits that helped type the spine of what’s known as the American Songbook. Typically, these songs discovered their means into frothy reveals whose plots had been negligible and served as little greater than advertising 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 imprecise, delivering conceptually progressive spectacle however functioning primarily as a vogue 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 almost 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 elements 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 Solid 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 software, it may possibly decontextualize songs from the efficiency. Thus, mockingly, on the identical time Rodgers and Hammerstein had been nailing residence the elements for a completely 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 considered one of two camps. Within the first camp, now we have musical revues — jukebox musicals — that are loosely plotted automobiles for beforehand written well-known songs from pop songwriters or performers. Assume Jersey Boys, Moulin Rouge, or the current Britney Spears musical, As soon as Upon a One Extra Time.
Within the second camp, now we have musicals written within the Disney vein, including songs or different components to a beforehand beloved, well-known franchise. Assume 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 current juggernaut franchise or pop hitmaker, however round an unique thought or story adaptation, with a completely unique rating.
There are apparent limitations to those categorizations. You possibly can argue, completely appropriately, that reveals constructed round beforehand current franchises are additionally “conventional” musicals — they have a tendency to have totally or largely unique scores with a two-act plot construction. On the identical time, these distinctions have grow to be ever extra blurry in a musical panorama the place reveals must enchantment to the tastes of each vacationers and hardcore musical lovers with subtle palettes and super fan energy. It’s more and more widespread for jukebox musicals like Jagged Little Capsule and the current Neil Diamond revue A Stunning 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 motion pictures 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 type and those who exist to additional develop an current IP. With the franchise and jukebox musicals dominating Broadway, it feels necessary to separate the “originals” from the ever-growing crop of reveals that appear to satisfy the latter objective. It’s exhausting to disregard that many of those latter sorts of reveals usually are not solely by-product 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 creative and progressive reveals shut up store early.
Making use of the entire Lease sellout debate to a crop of reveals which can be bringing Occasions Sq. again to life almost 4 years right into a pandemic that debilitated the American theater, nonetheless, appears at minimal ill-timed and misguided. It additionally isn’t fully correct to say that solely the by-product musicals get all the eye. Of the 10 highest-grossing reveals of the final decade, solely two, Stunning — The Carole King Musical and Jersey Boys, had been jukebox musicals, and solely two, The Lion King and Aladdin, could possibly be stated to suit underneath the “franchise musical” heading. Nonetheless one feels about the remainder of the musicals on the checklist, nobody can say they aren’t progressive. This was a decade that noticed a gentle effusion of unique musicals, from Enjoyable Residence and Expensive Evan Hansen to Be Extra Chill, and One thing Rotten, a lot of which discovered passionate fanbases. And at the same time as Broadway limped alongside for many of final season, the three reveals that recouped post-pandemic — to date together with girl-powered historical past romp Six, the Michael Jackson musical MJ, and the revival of Humorous Woman — arguably represented a spread of concepts and inventive ideas reasonably than a narrowing of the sphere.
Nonetheless, the concept Broadway needs to be about extra than simply milking money cows feels noble. It’s exhausting to let go of the Twentieth-century dream of an elevated musical type the place each music feels inextricably linked to a singular character and story delivered to us by consummate songwriters. It’s additionally exhausting to not resent the Imply Ladies and the & Juliets for robbing the Unusual Loops of their likelihood to discover a mass viewers.
The dictum that not even Sondheim may grow to be Sondheim within the present atmosphere 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 way of. Whereas all people nonetheless needs to be Sondheim, solely a handful of immediately’s musical composers have the form of fan following and identify recognition that permits them to mount a Broadway present and recoup its funding on the power of their rating. It’s not simple, as Brantley noticed for the Occasions, “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 a lot 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 almost all 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 important dismissal and audiences who didn’t know what to do together with his work. It took many years for a lot of of his reveals, with their famously “unsingable” scores, to grow to be the cultural icons that established him not solely as considered one of America’s most necessary 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 type, the reality is that Broadway has all the time been a industrial enterprise, initially, extra carefully tied to Prime 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.
It is a exhausting 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 many years somebody drops an impassioned rant on the general public about it. The ever-present pressure between perceptions of “intellectual” and “lowbrow” artwork implies that theater composers and critics continuously wage warfare over which realm the musical belongs to. It additionally implies that critics have been handwringing that the fashionable musical is useless for roughly 20 years — no, make that 40 years. The trendy musical has allegedly been in its demise throes since earlier than many people had been born, and but in some way these demise throes have produced most of Broadway’s longest-running and profitable reveals, from The Phantom of the Opera to Depraved.
The extra I think about 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 Capsule. Elton John’s Tammy Faye seems to be like it would inject a wanted quantity of satirical froth into the combo. Revivals of Cabaret and The Wiz already really feel like they’re arriving at precisely the second we want them most. In the meantime, audiences proceed to return to theaters — and these audiences comprise 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.
