Lazy producers — and the lazy audiences they serve — have long relied on the ultimate standby: stick with what you already know and like. Hence the plethora of musical revivals on Broadway and in the West End over the last decade or so. In a five year period between 1994 and 1999, there were a staggering 25+ revivals of old musicals on Broadway; but that constant stream now looks like becoming a trickle. Partly, it´s a question of product — they´re literally running out of things to revive.
When Big River (the 1985 Tony Award winning Best Musical) was revived in 2003 in a Theatre for the Deaf staging from a company called Deaf West Theater that used sign-language, some wags commmented that this was the rare case for a musical that actually benefited from being experienced without being able to hear its score. But they´ve even more or less run out of another reliable Broadway revival standy, the Rodgers and Hammerstein back catalogue to revive, and with Flower Drum Song (revived there in 2002), surely the only place left is to look at their “flops” now, like Me and Juliet or Allegro.
Partly, too, it’s a question of economics, changing tastes and the availability of star quality: when even acknowledged masterpieces of the American musical theatre like Gypsy (revived in 2003 with Bernadette Peters, Broadway´s biggest indigenous female lead) or R&H´s Oklahoma! (revived in 2002 in a reproduction of Trevor Nunn´s Royal National Theatre production, but without Hugh Jackman who by then was already a movie star) can´t turn a profit, what hope is there for more minor musicals like Bells are Ringing (revived in 2001) or cult shows like Little Shop of Horrors (finally promoted to Broadway in a 2003 revival, though it was originally created off-Broadway) or The Rocky Horror Show (revived in 2000)?
But then, too, who needs old shows when new ones look (and sound) like old ones, anyway? The two biggest Broadway hits of the last few years are of the self-referential species like The Producers (taken from a 1968 film to the Broadway stage in 2001) or Spamalot (taken from the 1975 British comedy Monty Python and the Holy Grail to the Broadway stage this year) that specifically pastiche and lampoon Broadway musicals themselves.
But there´s also, on both sides of the Atlantic, a renewed confidence in new musicals, too, which is exremely healthy — without new shows today, there won´t be anything to revive tomorrow. Broadway filled its roster of Tony nominees for Best Musical this year with four new shows, all of them still running successfully — as well as the winner Spamalot, there´s also Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The 25th Annual Putnum County Spelling Bee, and The Light in the Piazza. New jukebox compilation shows — whether putting a new story around Elvis songs in All Shook Up or those of the Beach Boys in Good Vibrations — weren´t even needed to complete the category.
In London, the Big Three of last autumn´s roster — with new musicals by Lloyd Webber (The Woman in White) and producer Cameron Mackintosh (a stage version of a 40-year-old film, Mary Poppins, with an augmented score) plus the import of The Producers — has been followed this year by Billy Elliot (that has eclipsed them all in terms of popularity) and The Big Life (We´ll pass a discreet veil over Behind the Iron Mask). So producers haven´t had to rely on revivals to keep them busy or theatres occupied.
Of course, there´s still always the exception that can prove the rule, like the current London production of Guys and Dolls, a show that has intriguingly had more London revivals in the last 25 years than on the home territory of Times Square it so gloriously celebrates. As well as the National Theatre´s 1982 staging, which ran continuously at either the National or Prince of Wales for the next few years and then returned to the National in 1997 to mark Richard Eyre´s departure as artistic director there, is now being given a brand-new look courtesy of Michael Grandage, the Donmar´s artistic director who, like Sam Mendes before him, seems to have a particular affinity for classic musicals. Next up he´s reported to be giving a new look to another iconic staging, when Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice´s final collaboration Evita will be wrestled free of Hal Prince´s original conception.
But Broadway, after years of relying on revivals to prop up their seasons, has few planned on the horizon now: between now and Christmas, there is precisely one scheduled, when the most recent London production of Sweeney Todd (that began at Newbury´s Watermill Theatre) makes the crossing to the Eugene O´Neill. When Sondheim´s 1979 masterpiece was last revived on Broadway at the Circle in the Square with a three-person electronic orchestra that saw it redubbed “Teeny Todd”, what will they now make of a staging that dispenses with an orchestra entirely, and gets the actors to play the instruments instead?
While Trevor Nunn did several classic musicals during his regime at the National, including Oklahoma!, South Pacific and Anything Goes, his successor Nicholas Hytner declared the pool more or less exhausted when he took over, though it didn´t stop him last summer from programming a revival of Sondheim´s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum as part of the Travelex ten pound season. But if Hytner played it safe with that, he had begun his regime the year before with something altogether braver and more important: offering a home to Jerry Springer — the Opera to complete the developmental work that had been begun with it on the fringe.
