For a city that even has the word “new” in its name, it’s perhaps no surprise that New York still puts a theatrical premium on new work, particularly when it comes to the musicals that are this city’s major theatrical life force. Of 26 musicals currently playing on Broadway, 17 of them are in their original productions that were new to Broadway when they first opened there, including seven that hail from the last season alone. (An eighth original musical to have opened, Glory Days, came and quickly went). No wonder there was tight competition for the four available slots for Tony nominations for Best Musical this year.
The West End, by contrast, has 24 musicals on right now, but only ten were “new” shows when they first opened.
That tally includes the long-runners Les Mis and The Phantom of the Opera, as well as the musicals built out of old pop repertoires, Mamma Mia!, We Will Rock You, Never Forget and new arrival The Harder they Come (by way of Stratford East and the Barbican)— so the only recent “new” musicals are the soon-to-shutter Gone with the Wind and The Lord of the Rings, leaving only Billy Elliot and Marguerite, three years apart in terms of when they opened, left to feature new scores.
But what’s particularly thrilling amongst the slate of new musicals in New York is that, for all the inevitable, dumb musical retreads of old films - from Young Frankenstein and The Little Mermaid, both shut out of the Best Musical nominees, to Cry-Baby that unaccountably did make the grade - there’s still room for genuine innovation, surprise and new talent, reaching out to tell their own stories. In the Heights may be a fairly conventional sort of street musical about a slice of contemporary life, but it comes from a new place, with a bright young composer, Lin-Manuel Miranda (who also stars in his own show) reflecting his own Hispanic community. Even more directly personal, Passing Strange is an autobiographical rites-of-passage story of its star and writer Stew.
Some complain that Passing Strange is more of a concert than a musical, but whatever it is, it is breaking the mould of the typical Broadway musical. And if off-Broadway has lately been playing it safe, too, in a contracting market place for new musicals, last night I saw an astonishing mould-breaker there, too: Adding Machine, playing a commercial run at the Minetta Lane, makes few concessions to feel-good pleasure, but has a dark, rich, gripping sensibility that took my breath away. When it first started, I was wondering what was more painful: the toothache I am currently suffering from - and apparently requires root canal treatment to not one but two teeth to fix - or this show’s jangling, confrontational operatic warblings. But it slowly enveloped me, and before the end I was quietly stunned by its uncompromising audacity; and more than anything, I am amazed that someone has given it a commercial run. But I’m thrilled that they have, and it proves that a spirit of musical adventure is still very much alive in New York.
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