I was 10 years old the first time my mother took me to New York City. I was your cliche musical theatre dweeb of a child; I watched My Fair Lady and Hello, Dolly! back to back when my mother somewhat absent-mindedly put them on as background noise when I was 5 years old and I have been a smitten kitten ever since. My first Broadway show was Annie Get Your Gun with Bernadette Peters and Tom Wopat. Despite the fact that Bernadette seemed equally disproportionate life size as she did in the windowcard (see here) I thought it was magical. Bernadette fit my image of a Broadway star--charismatic, as radiant as all get out, and unique. I had grown up listening to old school recordings of the Pajama Game, Oklahoma, The Music Man, The Sound of Music, Annie, Bye Bye Birdie, Guys and Dolls and the like. These vocalists/performers weren’t always precisely on pitch and they all had a unique sound. Through subsequent visits to NYC and a broadening knowledge of college musical theatre programs, I began to notice a rift between the old school sound of my favorite shows and what seems to be favored now. The last few of trips I have taken to the City that I have taken over the past couple of years have been disheartening in a sense. I feel like the majority of the leading ladies I have seen (aside from Patti in Gypsy, Bernadette/Elaine/Angela in Night Music, etc.--but I'm speaking more of the younger generation) have been practically interchangeable. The ladies are generally very thin, beautiful, smooth-voiced or hardcore belters, and relatively uncharismatic. (There are a couple of exceptions that come to mind immediately—Kate Baldwin in Finian’s Rainbow and Laura Benanti in…everything she does.) The dancers generally have the same plastered smile and dead eyes. They can kick their faces, but that doesn’t necessarily make me want to watch them. Do I have an unrealistic image of what Broadway used to be, or is there really an unfortunate shift in what it has become?
Last week, I finally watched Broadway: The Golden Age. While hearing all the old tales and anecdotes from Elaine Stritch, Adolph Green, Gwen Verdon and oodles of other musical theatre legends fed my soul, it also confirmed my worry and frustration. Broadway is so much less about art than it is about commercialism right now, and I don’t even think it’s doing a good job at that.
Something that I believe has a lot to do with this is the institution of musical theater conservatory. Do I think it’s fantastic that there are places you can go and train in musical theater all day long for four years? Absolutely. Sounds like fun to me. Do I think it’s a double edged sword and it’s also caused us a loss in terms of uniqueness and art? Yes. We’ve made the job more competitive but perhaps not in a good sense. We’ve made it streamlined (and therefore, I feel, boring.) There are hundreds of insanely talented triple threats on Broadway right now, but I can’t tell them apart. I think that’s a problem. Where did the Gwen Verdons, Ethel Mermans, and Gloria Grahames go? They probably didn’t get into a good musical theater school. Or, if they did, they had the same voice teacher and acting professor as the Julie Andrews of the class and their uniqueness got beaten out of them.
Furthermore, what happens when you don’t get into the musical theater program you want? I haven’t auditioned for any, so I can’t really speak personally, but I know several insanely talented out-of-the-norm individuals who weren’t accepted to musical theater programs. Thanks to musical theater audition “coaches,” there’s now a pageant mom-like mafia that you can overpay who have individual relationships with big-wigs at every musical theatre conservatory in the nation. Then, you can overpay the conservatory to sound like everyone else and look like everyone else in hopes that you can become a big star on Broadway.
Sound like art and perhaps what Broadway should and used to be to you? It doesn’t to me.
The plague of jukebox and movie-turned musicals doesn’t really help matters, either. Unless there’s a large amount of awareness raised and a real urgency (raised from producers and casting directors, I suppose) for something different in performers and in shows produced, the Golden Age of Broadway really was a grand yet temporary and singular time in history. Besides jazz, Musical Theater is really the only truly American music form. It seems a shame for us to maintain this overinflated over competitive under talented/charismatic uninventive state we are currently in.
So what do we do?
4 comments:
I blame American Idol. There's too much emphasis on improvisation upon ornamentation and completely ignoring the lyric and character motivation. I was lucky to catch Patti Lupone's GYPSY, but Bernadette can still sell a song better. -- Martin Guerra
I think the issue is that Broadway is commercial theater. The producers are looking to make money. In order to do that in an industry where production costs continue to sky rocket they want to produce a show that has name recognition, i.e. The Little Mermaid, Shrek, The Lion King, Merry Poppins, The Addams Family, or is connected to something with which the public is intimately familiar with, i.e. Billy Joel, Frankie Valli or Elvis Presley. Pre 1965 or so shows were often vehicles for their stars. i.e. Judy Holiday in Bells Are Ringing, Rosalind Russell in Wonderful Town and Ethel Merman in Gypsy to name just a few. Today, the star is the vehicle for the show. The reason drama school graduates seem to be carbon copies of one another is because schools are preparing their students to be infinitely replaceable. If a show is to be truly successful it must be able to be replicated all over the world, have multiple tours sent out across the land and be merchandized to within an inch of it's life. As a result, Elpheba, Glinda, Mufasa, Mary Poppins, Christine, Donna Sheridan, Ariel, shrek, Velma and Roxie must all look alike, sound alike and move alike. I agree! It's not right. It's not artistic but it is the reality of commerical theater especially as it pertains to New York.
That being said, the interesting, original musicals are being produced Off Broadway and in regional theaters. Next to Normal, Spring Awakening, Rent, [title of show], American Idiot, The Light in the Piazza, Caroline, or Change and the like all began this way. The quality of these various shows is arguable BUT each new, original musical that makes it to Broadway, for even a short run, ensures that another original musical will appear next season and another the season after that. This gives me some hope that the flame will stay lit and young composers and lyricists will keep scribbling notes on napkins, table cloths and laptops.
That being said, the interesting, original musicals are being produced Off Broadway and in regional theaters. Next to Normal, Spring Awakening, Rent, [title of show], American Idiot, The Light in the Piazza, Caroline, or Change and the like all began this way. The quality of these various shows is arguable BUT each new, original musical that makes it to Broadway, for even a short run, ensures that another original musical will appear next season and another the season after that. This gives me some hope that the flame will stay lit and young composers and lyricists will keep scribbling notes on napkins, table cloths and laptops.
I think all of the above are very valid comments. I'd like to add that true original stars of modern-day Broadway can't resist going to where the money is. Hence someone like Kristin Chenoweth goes to television and movies, hoping to cash in on her star quality, which in all honesty I don't blame her for doing. She sure can't show hop through many starring roles on Broadway like Ethel Merman was able to do in her heyday; there's just not the quantity of shows being produced -- too expensive.
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