October 15, 2018
I find myself, this season, looking at a trend that I’m loath to label “dumbing down” or “pandering”—because it’s impossible to write a musical sincerely if such is part of your agenda, cynicism will out you every time—but which nonetheless delivers “audience devolution” as endgame collateral. It manifests itself in different ways, but all include a relentless emphasis on the concerns of youth and the iconography of pop culture.
There’s another layered consideration too. It used to be that audience reaction—in particular the laughter at jokes; the immediacy, intensity and length of applause for musical numbers when they button; the reception at the curtain call; and the level of concentration—was a true, objective indicator of how well your material was shaped, how pointedly and hewed-to-theme your storytelling, how high your level of craft. Even if, as a practitioner or a critic, you found a show to be not your particular cup of tea, you could, if you were honest, regard it outside the box of personal taste. There are many, for example, who decry Man of La Mancha as mawkish sentimentality—but that ignores the fact that it hits all of its marks honestly; the structuring is dead-on, the songs are in the right places and about the right things, and it’s thematically tight as drum. (Currently, there’s Desperate Measures. I don’t for a moment think it’s the classic that La Mancha is, nor do I much like it, but I concede that it legitimately earns its keep: it engages its audience at ground zero, with no culturally ingrained advantage prior to their taking their seats.)
However, I’m not feeling as even-handed as regards the likes of Be More Chill, Head Over Heels and Pretty Woman. For these shows are built upon the comfort-food familiarity of tropes. They employ a heretofore uncategorized, unidentified strategy—after a fashion it may even be a craft, though I can’t yet identify the commonalities that would create codification—which is the manipulation of pop culture triggers. Of more concern, this practice seems in pursuit of less schooled audiences. Indeed, you’ll often hear the power brokers refer to “’our’ audiences,” which never means those we can cultivate, but always means those we can target. And those audiences are by and large being attracted—which explains the disparity between what you experience when watching from within one of those audiences, from reading a consensus of reviews that give the impression of responding to a whole different show, and from hearing the show discussed (intelligently and without snark), among musical theatre practitioners (writers in particular).
Attempting to address this schism coherently automatically puts one in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t box, because, after all, what the hell is wrong with bringing in new audiences? It’s to be desired, no? So is the notion of commercial theatre making a profit. But I wonder if there isn’t at work a philosophy of empty calorie gratification that may lead to a long-game backfire.
Let me go through the shows one at a time, and give you the diagnosis—my diagnosis; your mileage may vary—at the end.
Head Over Heels Is based on a 16th century prose romance (in the classical sense) by Sir Philip Sidney, full of romantic (in the love affair sense) complications within interconnected plots; even this theatrical reduction would elicit a cat’s-cradle summary, so suffice it to say the territory is not altogether dissimilar to that of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: there are characters appearing as people they are not, miscommunications leading to farcical complications, lovers in love with the wrong lovers—you get the drift. And cross-dressing and gender-bending…with the significant difference here being a tacit, contemporary awareness of how variations in gender identification and romantic predilection have been normalized in socially-aware society. Such that there are no subplots about hiding from the consequences of being outed (true sexual identification can be a surprise, but never an aberration)…only subplots about the imperative of true love vs the expediency of a conflicting political union, played out among similar tropes of romantic farce. There are elements of fantasy as well, but the biggest fantasy, of course, is that in this long ago and far away mythical wood, you get to be what you are even when assuming another identity.
Call it new millennium, second decade feelgood. But it wants to lay in that message, too. At least that would seem to be the desire of librettist James Magruder, here given credit for “adapting” the “original book” by Jeff Whitty, who also conceived the show (one assumes this credit configuration is contract-speak for Whitty is no longer associated but gets attribution for prior work and Magruder has had his way with the material.)
And who has written the score for this literal romp in the woods?
The Go-Gos. A 70s girl band.
What?
Why?
Because as female songwriters they represented early gender empowerment or something?
Why go to all the trouble to refashion a classic of world literature to speak to our time and then deliver a juke-box show?
And it plays like one. There’s a soulless freneticism to it that should be wearying (there’s even a running gag, a vibrating-head, third-rail double-take accompanied by a rock-out music cue that seems to scream Look, look, we’re being funny), but instead seems to satisfy the primal triggers of being worked up to a frenzy. Which, from where I sit, is in keeping with director Michael Mayer’s heavy hand with comedy. But as I say, I think there’s something more deeply cultural at work here, and Mr. Mayer a synergistic enabler.
Pretty Woman: The Musical is based on Pretty Woman the film, a romantic comedy about a rich guy (Andy Karl) who needs a female companion for business-related social events, but isn’t too interested in the responsibility of an actual relationship so, unexpectedly charmed by an L.A. hooker (Samantha Barks) who propositions him, he hires her for a week of showing up and looking good on his dime. Of course romance ensues in a kind of Pygmalion variant.
Pretty Woman is not a movie I know or remember well, but as it happens, my companion of the evening has a minor passion for it, having seen it seven times, and while I was simply feeling indifferent to the musical (during Act One), she, at intermission, methodically went through the story and pointed out structural anomalies. Such as: the heroine starts out only knowing life from the POV of her broken home background and present, daily street survival. For her first song to be about how she’s destined for better things undercuts her later discovery that better things can even exist for her. And similarly—for the hero to immediately start singing about the qualities that make the girl special undercuts what’s supposed to be the growing realization that she means more to him than just fancy hired help.
Thus educated, I started to realize whence my indifference sprang, and realized too that the show’s score committed this sin in a chronic manner, as if devoted to it. As Act Two kicked in, even unfamiliar I could see the tells of bad song strategy, songs that ;never moved the story, just paused to comment on what we already knew, the sins became more egregious still, and I started to get actively pissed off.
Because precious minutes of my life were being wasted on a Hollywood-head musical (HHM). The paradigm for the HHM is built upon the premise that the source movie’s screenwriters (which may include the director) can generate a worthy musical by eschewing authorship-collaboration with properly trained (if not seasoned) musical theatre professionals; by instead doing it themselves and bringing in their film-score or pop-score buddies to provide songs. What makes the HHM so smug and so heinous is that it refuses to recognize (lip service respect aside), that musicals are not just a different form, but involve a different craft. (One of the primary reasons why theatrical-bred writers are able to migrate to film successfully is that they learn, may have already learned—or in a pinch understand that they’re going to be learning—the building blocks of the different medium. When Disney’s resurgence as a force in animated musicals began, after a long fallow period, they were smart enough to make Howard Ashman their guru.)
Not all HHMs make it to Broadway; not all intend to (Happy Days, Gilligan’s Island). When they do, there’s a factor other than artistic craft competence keeping it alive (in the case of Victor/Victoria, it was the opportunity to see Julie Andrews recreate her film role).
The net result of the HHM is a pale simulacrum of the original property. One based on a film will approximate the screenplay structure and try to recreate signature moments as totems for the audience to recognize. But there’s always a cheapening, and it tends to happen in the score.
I’ve already given you the general thrust of Pretty Women’s musical sins, but it’s worth pointing out that a big “tell” of its naïveté happens right at the beginning, with its opening number, called “Welcome to Hollywood.” This is what I call the “travelogue” opening, which is almost never written by genuine dramatists (at least not without a sense of irony). The travelogue opening is all about the geographical locale in which the story is set. And it’s always a bad idea.
Because it’s generic; which makes it a waste of time that doesn’t help focus the storytelliong. Is the opening of Sweeney Todd a song about London? Is the opening of Man of La Mancha about 16th century Spain? Is the opening of Fiddler on the Roof about Russia under czarist rule? Is the opening of any Rodgers and Hammerstein musical about the town, city, country or decade century in which it’s set? Of course not.
In a classically made musical, the modality and arrangement of music, the diction of lyrics, are employed to evoke those settings, but the content sung about is directly or indirectly thematic. The game is about setting the tone, establishing permissions (leeway for the audience to expect and indulge a chosen stylistic vocabulary), getting the audience on the ride that defines the purpose of the enterprise. Because that’s where the universal verities kick in.
What I tell students, when stuff like this comes up, is to imagine being a Parisian about to watch an American-authored musical set in Paris. And to imagine condescended-to they might feel if the opening number was a paean to the city? More than that: what the fig would that number tell them that they didn’t already know? That Paris is exotic? That Paris is romantic and has the Eiffel Tower? That Paris has a dark side too? You don’t need to hear that, you don’t want to hear that. You want to know about the coming story story that just happens to be set in Paris. Like, say, about an obsessive artist and what it means to be driven by the creative urge, at the expense of all other relationships. And that, of course, is Sunday in the Park with George.
Now leap out of your imagined Paris self back into your American self. Would an number about Paris be any more interesting to you, any more relevant to the show’s agenda? By the same token, in what universe do you need to be told that Hollywood is built on dreams that do and don’t come true?
Is the news about Pretty Woman all bad? Well, that’s in the eye of the beholder. Hollywood is usually good at slick, as is director-choreographer Jerry (Kinky Boots) Mitchell: thus, the book, by the late sitcom genius (and I mean that sincerely) Garry Marshall, who also directed the source film, and JF Lawton, the original screenwriter is, no surprise, professionally facile; and also thus, pop writers Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance have created an almost relentless-backbeat score of polished chart-album style respites.
Subsequently, Mr. Mitchell keeps the book moving along briskly enough to keep you from giving at least Act One too much critical thought, and stages the songs like a series of music videos. And sure enough, much as with Victor/Victoria, nearly two decades ago, the show functions not as a musical, but as a theme park attraction based on the movie. And as such, it doesn’t emotionally engage so much as it provokes a conditioned response to familiar cues.
Say this is splitting hairs if a certain audience is having a good time?
We’ll get back to that.
Finally, there’s Be More Chill, currently finishing a run in the largest theatre within the Signature Center and soon to move to Broadway. This one has a libretto by Joe Tracz, who wrote The Lightning Thief for Theatreworks/USA and similarly, it’s based on a popular novel for young adults. The score is by Joe Iconis. This one has to be regarded with more respect, in the sense that it does happen to be carefully crafted. And though its score is also pop-rocky in nature, the songs are indeed dramaturgically functional, and the vocabulary is suited to the story.
The problem—no, I’ll correct that: the issue at hand—is the story.
It’s about this geeky kid who can’t seem to fit in. He has a best friend who’s even more geeky, to whom he has promised undying got-your-backness; and there’s a girl he has a gigunda crush on, an aspiring actress, that he tries out for the school play to meet. But he bungles his nice-guy overtures and the class bully and hunk makes his move better. But not long after, the bully-hunk shares the secret of his coolness. A pill that implants a computer chip in the brain that overrides all the geek impulses and—
Let’s stop there. And review.
The geek kid.
The best friend he’s sworn never to betray.
The girl he’s too shy to speak his feelings to.
The hunk-bully.
The means to coolness.
Do I have to tell you that in becoming cool, the former geek becomes more callous? Do I have to tell you that only at the start is this pill induced coolness gratifying, and that in short order it becomes addicting, and takes over, and causes Our Guy to betray his best friend and endanger the girl, and more, that the pill downside could be catastrophic, and to the point where he might go full out mad if he can’t purge it from his system?
It’s a little bit Dear Evan Hansen, it’s a lot more in the shadow of Mean Girls and it’s basically a retread of several dozen things you’ve seen before.
Now, in a recent social media blast, Joe Tracz expressed his (understandable) joy at the success of the show being more than he ever dreamed, and mentioned two things worth noting here: (1) That he’d meant the show to be for “anyone who’s ever been a teenager” and (2) that he considered the source novel by Nick Vizzini to be brilliant.
Taking them in order:
(1) A clichéd trope is only recognizable as such if you’ve seen it before. To some younger audiences, this stuff is news. An older sensibility…has to make allowances, and contribute fond recognition. I didn’t have the fondness in me. But my companion of the afternoon did.
(2) I grabbed an e-copy of the novel. I had a feeling that it probably was brilliant, or at least of a high kickass order, and that it featured the kind of brilliance that I, at least, wasn’t seeing sufficiently in evidence onstage; that being, I suspected, a tone and narrative style so engaging—probably in the first person—going so deep into its hero’s psyche, that you didn’t see the familiar tropes diagrammatically telegraphing the trajectory of the story, but one-by-one as challenges to the hero’s journey, sparking a universal sense of empathetic recognition, each one a discovery. By the time they added up to an age-old scenario, you’d be too hopelessly caught up in the people to care about the familiar outline being thus camouflaged. And sure enough, that’s what Vizzini delivers. (Not to put too fine a point on it, I recently read a classic crime novel cum character study from the 60s, called An Exile, by Madison Jones [filmed not long after its publication as I Walk the Line]. It’s about a southern sheriff leading in an unhappy, loveless marriage, nonetheless leading a strait-laced existence, unambitious and thus incorruptible…who one day unexpectedly crosses paths with a young criminal temptress from a family of bootleggers…and of course he yields to his passions and of course one compromise leads to another, greater one; and of course the trajectory is just as tried and true as it is tragic. But, same thing: It’s the uniqueness of the characterizations, the spell woven by the prose [this time in the third person, but always through the sheriff’s eyes] that hooks you. That in fact, makes you wish there was a way to tell the sheriff, Oh please, don’t go down that path, can you not see what’s coming? The magic is in how rivetingly Jones—and decades later, Vizzini—provide a fresh variation on a theme.)
What I personally experienced, though, with the musicalization of Be More Chill, was a fairly utilitarian reduction of the story’s elements. The outline of the novel without enough of the flavor, or—allowing that in any dramatization, the adapters inevitably make the piece and the characters somehow their own, whether they go purposefully toward another muse (not usually wise) or deliver the illusion of faithfulness (the ideal)—sufficient enough substance to take its place. It’s undeniably a cannier and more craftsmanlike adaptation than Pretty Woman, but it presents no less a theme park hit-the-marks rendering. And I say this putting aside the high tech aspects of the story that have been rendered in actual theme-park fashion, with the addictive graphics of a gigantic phablet. (Yes, yes, the evil force in the story is a malignant high tech addiction. But in being fun to witness, it’s not a little Pirandellian. Look it up; smiley emoticon.)
I worry that, because musicals like those discussed here are well into dominating the landscape, the art of the musical is in almost as much danger as the future f the Republic. Indeed, there are others: like Getting the Band Back Together, which recently ended its relatively brief Broadway run, that are not as successful, less because they’re appreciably inferior in quality, than because they don’t show up at quite the right moment; and worse, like This Ain’t No Disco, which was a conceptual train wreck.
But the fact that they show up at all, during a period in which such musicals show up in relative profusion, is the red flag. They’re creating the impression, and in some higher echelon enclaves, nurturing the conviction, that contemporary musical theatre has an obligation to be presented in these terms; and adding smoke to the confusion between luring audiences and pandering to them; between creating an audience for a particular show with a unique vision, and targeting an audience that has been pre-conditioned by media triggers.
Which brings us back to that most chilling of terms that has crept into the argot: “our audiences.” Used in a sentence: We want to create shows for our audiences, that relect our audience’s interest and provide what our audiences can relate to. That’s not about art; that’s about product. That’s about passing off a subjective projection based on stuff that has already been popular. Which is very different than a sincere artistic effort to find universal verities along unexplored (and not just unexploited) paths.
You can occasionally guess right, I suppose, dealing from the our audiences deck. But that’s playing short game odds.
And nothing living grows up healthy and strong, with the desire to sample complex, varied flavors, when most of the time it’s gorging on junk food, and little else for comparison.
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