As the name implies, these performers possess a multitude of skills, all at a professional level. The “triple threat” is someone who can sing, dance and act. More and more musicals require multiple skills from their performers. Lead actors/singers must also be able to dance in production numbers and finales. Chorus dancers must also be able to sing and act at a high caliber. This ensures a strong cast, resulting in a more dynamic performance.
Any individual interested in a performing arts career has already got one talent that they are nurturing, whether it be dancing, singing or acting. It is by studying and perfecting the other two disciplines that changes and enriches the performer. A “triple threat” is a much more desirable cast member to have in a musical and this is becoming the norm in the musical theatre business today.
If one is focused on a performing career, then starting early to develop all three skills is the best way to achieve professionalism in them all. Dancers should take singing lessons or become involved in choral groups as soon as possible to begin to develop their voices. Subsequently, singers who have not had dance experience should sign up for beginner classes in jazz dance for sure. More choreography in musical theatre stems from the jazz dance steps and combinations than any other form of dance. But, it’s never too late to learn tap and ballet as well, knowing that the more dance experience performers can get, the more versatile they will become. Both dancers and singers will benefit from drama classes and acting skills will only enhance their performing abilities. An actor who cannot sing or dance is most certainly cut out of being cast in a musical unless there are non-musical parts but an actor who can sing and dance is suddenly marketable in both theatre and musical theatre.
There are many colleges and universities throughout the world that offer programs in the performing arts and interested candidates for musical theatre careers should seek out those schools that boast their development of the “triple threat”. Not only will it be convenient for the student to learn the three disciplines but costs involved will be significantly lower than if the student majors in drama in college and has to seek out private voice and dance instruction which would be an additional cost to college tuition.
Another way to work toward “triple threat” status is to become involved in community musical theatre from a young age. The exposure to acting, singing and dancing will allow participants to access their strengths and weaknesses in these areas which might determine their decision to choose a career in musical theatre. There are always those with natural talents and abilities in one area who would benefit from working on those disciplines in which they have less natural ability.
Immediately, the name Liza Minnelli comes to mind. Although most might think of her as a singer, she is also an incredible dancer and actor. Gene Kelly, whose first love was obviously dance, also sang and acted in more movie musicals than we can remember. And who knew that Glenn Close, the actress, could deliver such a smashing singing performance in Sunset Boulevard? Did you know that actress Goldie Hawn is also a well trained ballet dancer and singer? The list of famous “triple threats” could go on and on. These people obviously knew that in order to have a shot at making it in the performing arts business, the more skills and talents they could offer to casting directors and agents, the more likely they would be to continue to work in this difficult business. Bette Midler, who most know for her pop hits such as “Wind Beneath my wings”, started acting, singing, dancing and doing comedy in an almost burlesque type scenerio before achieving success on the big screen and on television.
So, if you desire to work in the musical theatre business or any of the performing arts, consider developing your talents and skills to become a “triple threat”. And don’t forget when contacting potential schools to make sure they have the facilities to train and produce the “triple threat” graduates. Check what percentage of graduates actually get jobs in the performing arts and become successful.
Article from Answers.com
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining music, songs, spoken dialogue and dance.
The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words,
music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole.
Musical theatre works, usually referred to as "musicals", are performed around the world. They may be presented in large
venues, such as big budget West End and Broadway theatre productions in London and New York City, or in smaller Off-Broadway or regional productions,
on tour, or by amateur groups in schools, theatres and other performance spaces. In addition to Britain and the U.S. there are
vibrant musical theatre scenes in Germany, Austria, France, Canada, Japan, Eastern Europe, Australia, and other places. Some
famous musicals include Oklahoma!, The Sound of Music, West Side Story, Les Misérables, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, and Rent.
Introduction and definitions
The three main components of a musical are the music, the lyrics, and the book. The book of a musical refers to the
spoken (not sung) lines in the show; however, "book" can also refer to the dialogue and lyrics together, which are sometimes
referred to as the libretto (Italian for “little book”). The music and lyrics together form the score of the musical. Other components are the direction, choreography, and technical aspects, such as set, costumes, stage properties, lighting, etc., that generally change from production to production.
A musical can be anywhere from a short one-act entertainment to several hours long; however, most musicals range from one and
a half hours to 3 hours. Musicals today are typically presented in two acts, with one intermission fifteen to twenty minutes in length. The first act is almost always somewhat longer than the
second act, and generally introduces most of the music. A musical may be built around 4-6 main theme tunes that are reprised
throughout the show, or consist of a series of songs not directly musically related. Spoken dialogue is generally interspersed
between musical numbers, although the use of "sung dialogue" or recitative is not unknown,
especially in so-called "sung-through" musicals.
Musical theatre is closely related to another theatrical performance art, opera. These forms are usually distinguished by weighing a number of factors. Musicals generally have a greater focus on spoken dialogue (though
some musicals are entirely accompanied and sung through, such as Jesus Christ, Superstar and Les Misérables; and on the other hand some operas, and
most operettas, have unaccompanied dialogue), on dancing (particularly by the principal performers as well as the chorus), on the
use of popular music of various forms (or at least popular singing styles), and on the
avoidance of many operatic conventions. In particular, a musical is almost never performed in any but the language of its
audience. Musicals produced in London or New York, for instance, are invariably sung in English, even if they were originally
written in another language (again, Les Misérables, originally written in French, is a good example). Amplification of the singers is usually approved of in larger theatres where musicals are played, while it is
generally disapproved of in opera houses.
In isolation, at least, none of these features is truly "defining", and in practice it is often difficult to distinguish among
the various kinds of light musical theatre, including so called "operetta", "comic opera", "light opera", "musical play", "musical comedy",
"burlesque" and even "revue". Some works (e.g. by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim) have
received both "musical theatre" and "operatic" treatment. Similarly, some older operettas or light operas have had modern
productions or adaptations that treated them very much as musicals. Sondheim said, "I really think that when something plays
Broadway it's a musical, and when it plays in an opera house it's opera. That's it. It's the terrain, the countryside, the
expectations of the audience that make it one thing or another." This article is primarily about musical theatre works that are distinctively
"non-operatic", but there inescapably remains some overlap between lighter operatic forms and the more musically complex or
ambitious musicals: a grey area, in which production values are almost as important as actual musical or dramatic content.
As with a well-crafted operetta or opera, a "book" musical's moments of greatest dramatic intensity are often performed in
song. Proverbially, "when the emotion becomes too strong for speech (or recitative) you sing;
when it becomes too strong for song, you dance." A song is (ideally at any rate) crafted to suit the character (or characters)
and their situation within the story; although there have been times in the history of the musical (e.g. the 1920s) when this
integration between music and story has been very tenuous.
A show very often opens with a song that sets the tone of the musical, introduces some or all of the major characters, and
shows the setting of the play. Within the compressed nature of the musical, the writers must develop the characters and the plot.
Music provides a means to express emotion. However, typically, many fewer words are sung in a five-minute song than are spoken in
a five-minute block of dialogue. Therefore there is less time to develop drama than in a straight play of equivalent length,
since a musical usually devotes more time to music than to dialogue.
Many familiar musical theatre works have been the basis for popular musical films, such as The Sound of Music, West Side Story, and My Fair Lady (although some movie musicals have been
disappointing, as compared to the stage works) or were adapted or even written for television
presentations (for example Cinderella). Recently, some popular television programs have set an episode in the style of a
musical. There has also been a recent revival of the movie musical, such as Chicago, and the appearance of popular animated film musicals (which are often then turned into
stage musicals, such as Beauty and the Beast. Also, India
produces numerous musical films, referred to as "Bollywood" musicals, and Japan produces a
considerable number of Anime musicals.
History
In the beginning
Musical theatre, the art of telling stories either through or with songs, dates back to the ancient India's Natya Shastra, or at least to the ancient Greeks, who included
music and dance in their stage comedies and tragedies as early as the 5th Century B.C. Sophocles even composed their own music to accompany their
plays. The Third Century B.C. Roman comedies of Plautus
included song and dance routines performed with orchestrations. To make the dance steps more audible in large open air theatres,
Roman actors attached metal chips called "sabilla" to their stage footwear – the first tap shoes. (See Denny Martin Flynn,
"Musical: A Grand Tour" (New York: Schirmer Books, 1997), p. 22.)
In the 12th and 13th centuries, religious dramas, such as The Play of Herod and The Play of Daniel taught the
liturgy, set to church chants. These plays developed into an autonomous form of musical theatre, with poetic forms sometimes
alternating with the prose dialogues and liturgical chants. The poetry was provided with modified or completely new melodies.
(See Rochard H. Hoppin, "Medieval Music" (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1978), pp. 180-181.) By the Renaissance, these forms had evolved into commedia dell'arte, an
Italian tradition where raucous clowns improvised their way through familiar stories, and from there, opera buffa. Moliere turned several of his comedies into musical
entertainments with songs (music provided by Jean Baptiste Lully) in the late
1600s.
By the 1700s, two forms of musical theater were popular in Britain, France and Germany: ballad
operas, like John Gay's The Beggar's
Opera (1728), that borrowed popular songs of the day and rewrote the lyrics, and comic
operas, with original scores and mostly romantic plot lines, like Michael
Balfe's The Bohemian Girl (1845). In addition to these sources, musical
theatre traces its lineage to vaudeville, British music
hall, melodrama and burlesque. What a piece was
called did not necessarily define what it was. The Broadway extravaganza The Magic Deer (1852) advertised itself as "A
Serio Comico Tragico Operatical Historical Extravaganzical Burletical Tale of Enchantment."
The first recorded long running play of any kind was The Beggar's Opera, which ran for 62 successive performances in
1728. It would take almost a century before the first play broke 100 performances, with Tom and Jerry, based on the book
Life in London (1821), and the record soon reached 150 in the late 1820s.[2] New York (and so,
America) did not have a significant theatre presence until about 1750, and Broadway's first "long-run" musical record was a 50
performance hit called The Elves in 1857. New York runs continued to lag far behind those in London, but Laura Keene's
"musical burletta" Seven Sisters (1860) shattered previous New York records with a run of 253 performances.
Development of the modern musical
The first theater piece that conforms to the modern conception of a musical is generally considered to be The Black Crook, which premiered in New York on September 12
1866. The production was a staggering five-and-a-half hours long, but despite its length, it ran
for a record-breaking 474 performances. The same year, The Black Domino/Between You, Me and the Post was the first show to
call itself a "musical comedy." (See Sheridan Morley, "Spread A Little Happiness". New York: Thames and Hudson, 1987. p. 15)
Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart produced musicals on
Broadway between 1878 and 1884, with book and lyrics by Harrigan and music by his father-in-law David Braham. These musical
comedies featured characters and situations taken from the everyday life of New York's lower classes. Hundreds of musical
comedies were staged on Broadway in the 1890s and early 1900s comprising music written in New York's Tin Pan Alley involving composers such as Gus Edwards, John J McNally, John Walter Bratton and George M. Cohan. But, between 1875 and World War I, the longest
running musicals were predominantly British.[3]
The length of runs in the theatre changed rapidly around the same time that the modern musical was born. As transportation
improved, poverty in London and New York diminished, and street lighting made for safer travel at night, the number of potential
patrons for the growing number of theatres increased enormously. Plays could run longer and still draw in the audiences, leading
to better profits and improved production values. The first production to achieve 500 consecutive performances was the London
comedy Our Boys, opening in 1875, which set an astonishing new record of 1,362 performances. This was soon followed in
London by the long-running successes of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera hits, beginning with H.M.S. Pinafore, which were
exceeded by Alfred Cellier and B. C.
Stephenson's record-breaking hit, Dorothy, in 1886 (a show midway between
comic opera and musical comedy) and equalled by many of the most successful London musicals of the 1890s. New York runs continued
to be relatively short, with a few exceptions, compared with London runs, until after World War
I.[4]
Musicals had spread to the London stage by the 1890s. George Edwardes left the
management of Richard D'Oyly Carte's Savoy
operas and perceived that theatregoers' tastes had turned away from comic operas. He
revolutionized the London stage by presenting musical comedies at the Gaiety
Theatre, Daly's Theatre and other venues. His early Gaiety hits included a series
of light, romantic "poor maiden loves aristocrat and wins him against all odds" shows, usually with the word "Girl" in the title,
including The Shop Girl (1894) and A Runaway
Girl (1898), with music by Ivan Caryll and Lionel Monckton. At Daly's Theatre, Edwardes presented more
complex comedy hits. The Geisha (1896) by Sidney
Jones with lyrics by Harry Greenbank and Adrian
Ross and then San Toy (1899) each ran for more than two years, which was unusual
at the time. Other British composers of the period included F. Osmond Carr,
Edward Solomon and Leslie Stuart.
The British musical comedy Florodora (1899) by Paul Rubens made a splash on both sides of the Atlantic, as did A Chinese Honeymoon (1901), by British lyricist George Dance and American-born composer Howard Talbot,
which ran for a record setting 1,074 performances in London and 376 in New York. The story concerns couples who honeymoon in
China and inadvertently break the kissing laws (shades of The Mikado). After the turn
of the century, Seymour Hicks (who joined forces with American producer Charles Frohman) wrote popular shows with composer Charles Taylor and others, and Edwardes and Ross continued to churn out hits
(The Toreador (1901), A Country Girl,
The Orchid (1903), The Girls of
Gottenberg (1907), Our Miss Gibbs (1909), and The Boy (1917)). However, only three decades after Gilbert and Sullivan broke the stranglehold
that French operettas had on the London stage, European operettas came roaring back to Britain and America beginning in 1907 with
The Merry Widow.
Operetta
Musicals were at first influenced by light opera and operetta and then competed with operetta. Probably the best known composers of operetta, beginning in the
second half of the 19th century, were Jacques
Offenbach, Johann Strauss II, and Franz
Lehár. In England, W. S. Gilbert and Arthur
Sullivan created an English equivalent to French operetta, styled at the time simply as comic opera, and including H.M.S. Pinafore,
The Pirates of Penzance, and The
Mikado, that became hits in Britain and the U.S. in the 1870s and '80s. The works of these composers (together with
the extant forms of burlesque, vaudeville and music hall) influenced the development of the musical, as described above. Their
colleagues, Edward Solomon, Harold
Fraser-Simson and Alfred Cellier, began writing comic operas but moved to musicals
as that form began to dominate the London stage.
After the turn of the 20th century, the sentimental operettas of a new generation of
operetta specialists, such as Franz Lehár and Oscar Straus, among others, spread from Europe throughout the English-speaking world, displacing
the early light British and American musicals. They were joined by British and American operetta composers and librettists of the
1910s (the "Princess Theater" shows) by Jerome Kern, P. G.
Wodehouse, and Guy Bolton, who paved the way for Kern's later work by showing that a
musical could combine a light popular touch with real continuity between story and musical numbers, and Victor Herbert, whose work included some intimate musical plays with modern settings as well as the
operettas for which he's best remembered. These were all heavily influenced by Gilbert and
Sullivan and the earlier composers.[5] The legacy of G&S and these earlier composers continued to serve as an
inspiration to the next generation of composers, such as Sigmund Romberg,
George Gershwin, and Noel Coward, and these, in
turn, influenced the musicals of Rodgers, Sondheim and many others, later in the century.[6]
The Roaring Twenties
The motion picture mounted a challenge to the stage. At first, films were silent and presented only a limited challenge to
theatre. But by the end of the 1920's, films like The Jazz Singer
could be presented with synchronized sound, and critics wondered if the cinema would replace live theatre altogether. The
musicals of the Roaring Twenties, borrowing from vaudeville, music hall and other such entertainments, tended to ignore
plot in favor of emphasizing star actors and actresses, big dance routines, and popular songs (throughout the first half of the
twentieth century, popular music was dominated by theater writers). Many shows were revues with little plot.
Typical of the decade were lighthearted productions like Sally,
Lady Be Good, Sunny, Tip Toes, No, No, Nanette, Oh, Kay!, and Funny Face. Their books may have been forgettable,
but they produced enduring standards from George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Vincent Youmans, and Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, among others, and stars like
Marilyn Miller. Audiences tapped their toes to these musicals on both sides of the
Atlantic ocean while continuing to patronize the popular operettas that were continuing to come out of Europe, and also from
composers like Sigmund Romberg in America. Clearly, cinema had not killed live theatre.
Leaving these lighthearted entertainments behind, and taking a cue from Herbert and operetta, Show Boat, which premiered on December 27, 1927 at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York, was a complete integration of book and score, with dramatic themes, as
told through both the music and dialogue, woven seamlessly together. Up to this point, Florenz
Ziegfeld had been known for his spectacular song-and-dance revues featuring extravagant sets and elaborate costumes, but
there was no common theme tying the various numbers together. Show Boat, with a book and lyrics adapted from
Edna Ferber's novel by Oscar Hammerstein II
and P. G. Wodehouse, with music by Jerome Kern,
presented a new concept that was embraced by audiences immediately. Despite some of its startling themes - miscegenation among them - the original production ran a total of 572 performances.
The 1930s
Encouraged by the success of Show Boat, creative teams began following the "format" of that popular hit.
Of Thee I Sing (1931), a political satire with music
by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and Morrie
Ryskind, was the first musical to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
The Band Wagon (1931), with a score by Arthur
Schwartz and Howard Dietz, starred dancing partners Fred Astaire and his sister Adele. While it was primarily a revue, it served as the basis for two
subsequent film versions that were "book" musicals in the truest sense. Porter's Anything
Goes (1934) affirmed Ethel Merman's position as
the First Lady of musical theatre - a title she maintained for many years.
Gershwin's Porgy and Bess (1935) was a step
closer to opera than Show Boat and the other musicals of the era, and in some respects it foreshadowed such "operatic"
musicals as West Side Story and Sweeney
Todd. The Cradle Will Rock (1937),
with a book and score by Marc Blitzstein and directed by Orson Welles, was a highly political piece that, despite the controversy surrounding it, managed to run for
108 performances. Kurt Weill's Knickerbocker
Holiday brought to the musical stage New York City's early history, using as its source writings by Washington Irving, while good-naturedly satirizing the good intentions of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The Great Depression affected theatre audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, as
people had little money to spend on entertainment. Only a few shows exceeded a run on Broadway or in London of 500 performances.
Still, for those who could afford it, this was an exciting time in the develoment of musical theatre. The musical had finally
evolved beyond the gags and showgirls musicals of the Gay Nineties and Roaring Twenties, integrating dramatic
stories into the earlier comic forms (e.g., burlesque and farce), and building on the romantic and musical heritage that it had
received from operetta.
The Golden Age (1943 to 1968)
The Golden Age of the Broadway musical is generally considered to have begun with Oklahoma! (1943) and to have ended with Hair (1968).
Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! had a cohesive (if somewhat slim)
plot, songs that furthered the action of the story, and featured dream ballets which advanced the plot and developed the
characters, rather than using dance as an excuse to parade scantily-clad women across the stage. It defied musical conventions by
raising its first act curtain not on a bevy of chorus girls, but rather on a woman churning butter, with an off-stage voice
singing the opening lines of Oh, What a Beautiful Morning. It was the first "blockbuster" Broadway show, running a total
of 2,212 performances, and remains one of the most frequently produced of the team's projects. The two collaborators created an
extraordinary collection of some of musical theater's best loved and most enduring classics, including Carousel (1945), South
Pacific (1949), The King and I
(1951), and The Sound of Music (1959).
Americana was displayed on Broadway during the "Golden Age", as the wartime cycle of shows began to arrive. An example of this
would be "On The Town" (1944), written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, composed by Leonard Bernstein and choreographed by Jerome Robbins. The
musical is set during wartime, where a group of three sailors are on a 24 hour shore leave in New York. During their day, they
each meet a wonderful woman. The women in this show have a specific power to them, as if saying, "Come here! I need a man!" The
show also gives the impression of a country with an uncertain future, as the sailors also have with their women before
leaving.
Oklahoma! inspired others to continue the trend. Irving Berlin used sharpshooter
Annie Oakley's career as a basis for his Annie Get Your Gun (1944, 1,147 performances);
Burton Lane, E. Y. Harburg, and Fred Saidy combined political satire with Irish whimsy for their fantasy Finian's Rainbow (1944, 1,725 performances); Cole Porter found
inspiration in William Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew for Kiss Me, Kate
(1948, 1,077 performances); Damon Runyan's eclectic
characters were at the core of Frank Loesser's and Abe
Burrows' Guys and Dolls, (1950, 1,200
performances); and the Gold Rush was the setting for Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's Paint Your Wagon (1951).
My Fair Lady Playbill with Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison
The fairly brief run - 289 performances - of that show didn't discourage them from collaborating again, this time on an
adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion - My Fair Lady (1956), with Rex Harrison and Julie
Andrews, which at 2,717 performances held the long-run record for many years. Popular Hollywood movies were made of these
musicals.
As in Oklahoma!, dance was an integral part of West Side Story
(1957), which transported Romeo and Juliet to modern day New York City and converted the
feuding Montague and Capulet families into opposing ethnic gangs, the Sharks and the Jets. The book was adapted by
Arthur Laurents, with music by Leonard
Bernstein and lyrics by newcomer Stephen Sondheim. It was embraced by the
critics but failed to be a popular choice for the "blue-haired matinee ladies," who preferred the small town River City, Iowa of
Meredith Willson's The Music Man to the
alleys of Manhattan's Upper West Side. Apparently Tony
Award voters were of a similar mind, since they favored the former over the latter. West Side Story had a
respectable run of 732 performances (1,040 in the West End), while The Music Man ran nearly twice as long, with 1,375.
Laurents and Sondheim teamed up again for Gypsy (1959, 702 performances), with Jule Styne providing the music for a backstage
story about the most driven stage mother of all-time, stripper Gypsy Rose Lee's mother
Rose. The original production ran for 702 performances, but proved to be a bigger hit in its three subsequent revivals, with
Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, and Bernadette Peters tackling the role made famous by Ethel Merman.
Stephen Sondheim would be one of the most important composer/lyricists from
1960 on. His first project for which he wrote both music and lyrics was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962, 964 performances), with a book based on the works of Plautus by
Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, and starring
Zero Mostel. Sondheim was not one to concentrate on the romantic plots typical of
productions of the time; his work tended to be darker, exploring the grittier sides of life both present and past. Some of his
earlier works are Anyone Can Whistle (1964,
which - at a mere nine performances, despite having star power in Lee Remick and
Angela Lansbury - is a legendary flop), Company (1970), Follies
(1971), and A Little Night Music
(1973), which featured the only standard ever to emerge from the extensive Sondheim catalogue,
Send in the Clowns. He has found inspiration in the unlikeliest of sources - the opening of Japan to Western trade for Pacific Overtures, a legendary
murderous barber - Sweeney Todd - seeking revenge in the Industrial Age of London, the paintings of Georges Seurat
for Sunday in the Park with George, and a collection of
individuals intent on eliminating the American President in
Assassins. His works are generally known for their lyrical sophistication and
musical complexity, which many critics argue has led to his works receiving relatively little popularity among the general
public.
Jerry Herman, too, has played a significant role in American musical theater, beginning
with his first Broadway production, Milk and Honey (1961, 563
performances), about the founding of the state of Israel, and continuing with the smash hits
Hello, Dolly! (1964, 2,844 performances), Mame (1966, 1,508 performances), and La Cage aux Folles
(1983, 1,761 performances). Even his less successful shows like Dear World (1969) and
Mack & Mabel (1974) have had memorable scores (Mack & Mabel was later reworked into a London hit). Writing both words and music, many of
Herman's showtunes have become popular standards, including "Hello, Dolly!",
"If He Walked Into My Life", "We Need a Little Christmas",
"I Am What I Am", "Mame", "Shalom", "The Best of Times", "Before
the Parade Passes By", "Put On Your Sunday Clothes", "It Only
Takes a Moment", "It's Today!", "Open a New Window",
"Bosom Buddies", "I Won't Send Roses", and "Time Heals Everything", recorded by such luminaries as Louis
Armstrong, Eydie Gorme, Barbra Streisand,
Petula Clark and Bernadette Peters. Herman's
songbook has been the subject of two popular musical revues, Jerry's Girls
(Broadway, 1985), and Showtune (off-Broadway, 2003). Jerry Herman is to
traditional musical comedy what Stephen Sondheim is to the avant-garde.
The musical started to diverge from the relatively narrow confines of the 1950s. Rock
music would be used in several Broadway musicals, beginning with Hair,
which featured not only rock music but also nudity and controversial opinions about the
Vietnam War. Other important rock musicals of the 1960s
and 1970s included Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, and Two Gentlemen of Verona. In fact,
some of these rock musicals began with "concept albums" and then moved to film or stage, such as Tommy. Some of these had no dialogue or were otherwise reminiscent of opera, with dramatic, emotional themes,
and were styled rock operas.
The musical also went in other directions. Shows like Raisin,
Dreamgirls, Purlie, and The Wiz brought a significant African-American influence to Broadway. More and more different musical genres
were turned into musicals either on or off-Broadway. Automotive companies and other types
of corporations hired Broadway talent to write corporate musicals, private shows
which were only seen by their employees.
More recent eras
1970s
1976 brought one of the great contemporary musicals to the stage. A Chorus Line emerged from recorded group therapy-style sessions Michael Bennett conducted with Gypsies - those who sing and dance in support of the leading players -
from the Broadway community. From hundreds of hours of tapes, James Kirkwood, Jr.
and Nick Dante fashioned a book about an audition for a musical, incorporating into it many of
the real-life stories of those who had sat in on the sessions - and some of whom eventually played variations of themselves or
each other in the show. With music by Marvin Hamlisch and lyrics by Edward Kleban, A Chorus Line first opened at Joseph Papp's
Public Theater in lower Manhattan. Advance
word-of-mouth - that something extraordinary was about to explode - boosted box office sales, and after critics ran out of
superlatives to describe what they witnessed on opening night, what initially had been planned as a limited engagement eventually
moved to the Shubert Theater uptown for a run that seemed to last forever. The
show swept the Tony Awards and won the Pulitzer Prize, and its hit song, What I Did
for Love, became an instant standard.
Clearly, Broadway audiences were eager to welcome musicals that strayed from the usual style and substance. John Kander and Fred Ebb explored pre-World
War II Nazi Germany in Cabaret and Prohibition-era Chicago, which relied on old vaudeville techniques to tell its
tale of murder and the media. Pippin, by Stephen Schwartz, was set in the days of Charlemagne.
Federico Fellini's autobiographical film 8˝ became
Maury Yeston's Nine. But old-fashioned
values were embraced, as well, in such hits as Annie, 42nd Street, My One and Only, and popular revivals of
No, No, Nanette and Irene.
1980s and 1990s
The 1980s and 1990s saw the influence of European "mega-musicals" or "pop operas," which typically featured a pop-influenced
score and had large casts and sets and were identified as much by their notable effects - a falling chandelier, a helicopter
landing on stage - as they were by anything else in the production. Many were based on novels or other works of literature. The
most important writers of mega-musicals include the French team of Claude-Michel
Schönberg and Alain Boublil, responsible for Les Misérables and Miss Saigon (inspired by
Madame Butterfly); and the British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, who wrote Evita, based on the life of
Argentina's Eva Perón, Cats, derived from the poems of T. S. Eliot, The Phantom of the Opera derived from the novel "Le Fantôme de l'Opéra"
written by Gaston Leroux , and Sunset
Boulevard (from the classic film of the same name). These decades also saw the influence of large corporations that
produced musicals. The most important has been Disney, which adapted some of
their animated movie musicals - such as Beauty and the Beast and
The Lion King (which is said to have been responsible for the revitalization of
42nd Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, previously a strip of tourist trap souvenir shops, arcades, peep shows, and porn
theaters) for the stage - and also created original stage productions like Aida with music
by Elton John.
The growing scale (and cost) of musicals led to some concern that musicals were eschewing substance in favor of style. The
1990s and 2000s have seen many writers create smaller musicals (Falsettoland,
Passion, Little Shop of
Horrors, Bat Boy: The Musical). The topics vary widely, and the
music ranges from rock to Sondheimesque to pop, but they generally are produced off-Broadway (or for smaller London theatres) and
feature smaller casts and generally less expensive productions. Some of these have indeed been noted as imaginative and
innovative.[7]
There also had been the concern that the musical had lost touch with the tastes of the general public in America and that the
musical was increasingly doomed to be something viewed by a smaller and smaller audience. One of the most important writers who
attempted to increase the popularity of musicals among a younger audience was Jonathan
Larson, whose musical Rent (based on the opera La Bohčme) featured a cast of twentysomethings and whose score was heavily rock-influenced. The musical
has been a smash success, even with its composer dying of an aortic aneurysm on the night of the final dress rehearsal at
New York Theatre Workshop, before he could see it reach Broadway. He
ultimately succeeded, and a groups of young fans began to come to the Nederlander
Theatre hours early in hopes they would win the lottery ($20 front row tickets). They named themselves the
RENTheads and some have seen the show more than 50 times. The show one of the longest running
musicals on Broadway. Other writers who have attempted to bring a taste of modern rock music to the stage include
Jason Robert Brown, and the UK's Komedy Kollective whose musical Restart
combines urban dance with non-traditional music scores.
Another trend has been to create a plot to fit a collection of songs that have already been hits. These have included
Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story (1995), Mamma Mia! (1999, featuring songs by
ABBA), Movin' Out (2002, based on the tunes of
Billy Joel), and three that opened in 2005, Good Vibrations (the Beach Boys),
All Shook Up (Elvis Presley), and
Jersey Boys (The Four Seasons).
This style is often referred to as "jukebox musicals".
The 21st century
Familiarity may breed contempt - but it's also embraced by producers anxious to guarantee they recoup their very considerable
investments, if not show a healthy profit. Some are willing to take chances on the new and unusual, such as Avenue Q (which utilizes puppets to tell its very adult-themed story), Edit:Undo (a by-students for-students musical about high school in the digital age), or
Bombay Dreams (about the "Bollywood" musicals churned out by Indian cinema). But
the majority prefer to hedge their bets by sticking with the familiar - revivals of family fare like Wonderful Town or Fiddler on the Roof or proven
hits like La Cage aux Folles. Today's composers are finding their sources in already proven material – cult films like
The Producers, Spamalot, or
Hairspray; or classic literature such as Little Women and Dracula – hoping they'll have a built-in
audience as a result. The reuse of plots, especially those from the Walt Disney
Company, has been considered by some critics to be a redefinition of Broadway: rather than a creative outlet, it has
become a tourist attraction. The lack of
new concept shows like Sunday in the Park with George and
Into the Woods futher underlines this.
The musical is being pulled in a number of different directions. Gone are the days when a sole producer – a David Merrick or a Cameron Mackintosh – backs a production.
Corporate sponsors dominate Broadway, and often alliances are formed to stage musicals which require an investment of $10 million
or more. In 2002, the credits for Thoroughly Modern Millie listed ten
producers, and among those names were entities comprised of several individuals. Typically, off-Broadway and regional theaters
tend to produce smaller and therefore less expensive musicals, and in recent times more and more development of new musicals has
taken place outside of New York. Wicked, for example, first opened in
San Francisco, and its creative team relied on the critical reviews there to
assist them in retooling the show before it reached Broadway, where it ultimately became a major success.
It also appears that the spectacle format is on the rise again, returning to the times when Romans would have mock sea battles
on stage. This was true of Starlight Express and is most apparent in Toronto,
Canada where David and Ed Mirvish recently presented the world premiere of "The Lord Of The Rings", billed as the biggest stage
production in musical theatre history.
Renaissance of the movie-musical and TV "musicals"
With Moulin Rouge! (2001), Baz Luhrman revived
the moribund movie musical. This was followed by a string of film successes, including Chicago in 2002 and Phantom of the
Opera in 2004. High School Musical, in 2006, appealed to teen and
young adult viewers. Disney and other animated musicals and more adult animated musical films, like South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, paved the way for these. In addition,
India is producing numerous "Bollywood" film musicals, and Japan is producing "Anime" film musicals.
Some recent television shows have set an episode as a musical as a play on their usual format (examples include episodes of
Ally McBeal, Buffy the Vampire
Slayer's episode Once More with Feeling, Oz's Variety, or
Space Ghost Coast to Coast's O Coast to Coast!/Boatshow -- or
have included scenes where characters suddenly begin singing and dancing in a musical-theatre style during an episode, such as in
several episodes of The Simpsons, South
Park and Family Guy. The television series Cop Rock, which extensively used the musical format, was not a success.
The international musicals scene
This article has been mainly concerned with the musical theatre scene in the U.S. and Britain, because those were the most
active sources of book musicals from the mid-19th century through the mid-20th century (although Europe produced various forms of
popular light opera and operetta, for example Spanish Zarzuela, during that period and even earlier). But the light musical stage in many other countries has become
more active in recent decades.
Musicals from other English speaking countries (notably Australia) often do well locally, and occasionally even reach Broadway
or the West End (e.g., The Boy from Oz).
Successful musicals from continental Europe include shows from (among other countries) Germany (Elixier and Ludwig II ), Austria (Dance of the Vampires and Elisabeth), and
France (Notre Dame de Paris, Les Misérables, and
Romeo & Juliette).
Japan has recently seen a growth in an indigenous form of musical theatre, both animated and live action, mostly based on
Anime and Manga, such as Kiki's Delivery Service and Tenimyu). Beginning in
1914, a series of popular revues have been performed by the all-female Takarazuka Revue, which currently fields five performing troupes.
The Indian Bollywood musical, mostly in the form of motion pictures, is tremendously
successful.
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