A good friend has been ribbing me mercilessly for daring to imply, in a recent blog headline here that Jersey Boys was a musical of magnificence – and perhaps I should indeed clarify. Worn down, as those of us who know and love our musicals, by the endless parade – or maybe that should be charade – of jukebox shows lazily constructed out of past pop hits, I was hankering after a glint of originality and style; and Jersey Boys finally delivered a bit of both, in its smart storytelling device and equally smart production.
However, as Martin Samuel suggested in a recent feature in The Times, “Musicals don’t arrive neatly packaged in a CD case at the Virgin Megastore like a series of dots waiting to be joined at a planning meeting by a producer hard-up for ideas and original material. They are new concepts, fresh works. Jersey Boys might have risen above the jukebox-musical formula with its clever take on the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and it pitches up from Broadway clutching four Tony Awards, including Best Musical, but it has not introduced one fresh note of music, one lyric that hasn’t been heard, to the world. You want a sing-song? That is what the piano in the pub is for. I like a show.”
Samuel then counts 25 shows that might be called musicals that are currently playing in the West End, and suggests that despite the good numerical numbers, “the idea of a revitalisation of the form is very much overplayed”. He notes, “Of that number, six are blockbuster films reworked in the hope that they will already have a receptive audience, five are jukebox musicals using the well-worn hits of popular artists such as Abba or Buddy Holly, five are revivals of old favourites such as The Sound of Music, one is a catalogue show of the works of the composer-lyricist William Finn, another an African take on Mozart, which leaves seven original works, some of which have been running for close on 20 years, such as Phantom of the Opera or Blood Brothers.
The problem, as he identifies it, is that “few producers take a chance”. That’s hardly surprising – with the amount of money it now takes to put on a show, it’s a costly gamble to put on a genuinely new and original musical. Cameron Mackintosh, of course, scored big time by doing just that with shows like Cats, Les Miserables (albeit, in that case, first staged in a different production in France) and Miss Saigon, but his subsequent backing of Boublil and Schonberg’s Martin Guerre ran aground; since then, Boublil and Schonberg gone on, with different producers, to the failure of The Pirate Queen on Broadway, and now – working with Michel Legrand – are moving on to Marguerite that comes to the Haymarket in May.
At least that is one new musical on the West End horizon; so – using the well-worn route of re-working a literary and cinematic blockbuster — is the imminent arrival of yet another stage musical version of Gone with the Wind, which starts previewing at the New London a week on Saturday, courtesy of director Trevor Nunn and a hitherto unknown composer/librettist, Margaret Martin; but it’s also hardly an original idea. There was a previous stage version at Drury Lane in 1972, in which a very young Bonnie Langford appeared – and gave rise to one of the great theatrical quotes of the century: when a horse defecated on stage on the first night, Noel Coward was reported to have said, “If they had shoved the child’s head up the horse’s arse they would have solved two problems at once.”
But you don’t need to actually step into the shit, so to speak, before the smell hits you; and though one always tries to travel hopefully to each new musical, some shows reek from afar. Bad smells attach to some shows early on and are difficult to shift, no matter how hard they try, as has recently been shown by Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein on Broadway – with bad publicity partly self-generated by the hubris of massive over-charging for premium tickets, now swiftly abandoned (as I recently blogged here), but then the failure of the show to deliver on its promise has been even more fatal. It’s not just that expectations were, of course, running sky-high after Mel Brooks’ incredible 2001 musical debut with The Producers, that turned into a glorious valentine to Broadway and the business of show itself; but even on its own inflated terms, it failed to generate any heat (or worse, given the source material, laughter).
But Broadway is still brilliantly undaunted: what I love there is that despite all the vast sums sunk into shows that don’t fly, this time of year brings a succession of openings that are still trying to break the mould (and sometimes the bank of their producers). I’m heading over the pond again tomorrow, and will be seeing Cry-Baby, A Catered Affair, Passing Strange and In the Heights, all of them new musicals, as well as revivals of Gypsy and South Pacific. Will I have a great time at all of them? Almost certainly not; but at least Broadway is trying again – and again – to do something not just familiar, but also some things that are decidedly peculiar.
In The Times feature with which I began this entry, Martin Samuel concludes, “The best musical theatre - like the best pop music - has brains, heart and creativity. It is exciting, occasionally subversive and daring. What it is becoming is safe, safe, safe. Jersey Boys< may be a fun night out, but the modern impresario is obsessed only with something familiar; the days of something peculiar happening in the forum are a memory now.” Perhaps he needs to join me in New York on Saturday afternoon when I sit down to watch Passing Strange, a new musical whose arrival on Broadway may indeed be passing strange – but surely gives hope for the future of the genre that, I hope, is not yet “wondrous pitiful”, to continue the quote from Othello that its title comes form.
It must have been the prospect of seeing your name under the words "...Musical of Magnificence !" in the front of the Prince Edward that has made you see the light. All I can say is : Thank Heaven! As for the state of the musical in the West End it is sorry indeed even with 25 shows running . The sad fact is that the bar for a West End show is seriously low in part because the majority of the critics ( you're an exception Mark) simply don't respect the form - a new musical is nothing more than a Panto with serious aspirations. Until that bar is raised by the critics ( who stop letting sub par shows get away with decent notices - Daddy Cool anyone? Dirty Dancing? )the creatives and producers involved with musicals will continue to present recycled crap. Of course all of this would change if there were places where young aspiring British composers, lyricists, and librettists could learn their craft. Then, like the New York theatre their would be new musicals for people to produce.
London is also hampered by the fact that there are very few small theatres which either host or produce new musicals, unlike off-Broadway.
That's why I love the Menier Chocolate Factory - it can produce musicals that wouldn't be commercially viable in larger theatres (Jason Robert Brown's 'Last Five Years' comes to mind).
The majority of Fringe venues in London either seem to have a limited appetite for musical theatre (with some exceptions like the King's Head and Finborough), or just don't have enough space for musicals requiring a full band.
Until it gets more theatres like the Menier, I suspect London will continue to rely on Broadway transfers for much of its creativity.
Othello musical? I've been waiting for over 20 years to see Jack Good's Catch My Soul, either on stage or in the Patrick McGoohan-directed (!) film version.