Lecture 5 - Musical Theatre

This is th101 Introduction to Theater and Drama Arts. We are going to begin today with a section on musical theater. I'm going to talk about musical theater and what it is, and also discuss how it developed in this country. Following this, we will have some visitors who will join us and share their involvement in musical theater and their perspectives on it. Now, why musical theater? Why are we singling it out? Well, one reason is because it is unquestionably the most popular form of theater today. In fact, most of you will have to see real theater productions during the semester, and more than likely, what you'll see in the future will be musical productions. So, recognizing the popularity of musical theater with audiences and the fact that it is offered by theater groups in various settings, it is important to study it. There is no doubt that New York City is both the theater and musical capital of the United States. Broadway, in particular, is dominated by musicals. Out of the 40-something theaters that make up Broadway, there are usually at least 15-20 musicals running simultaneously. When people go to New York to see a Broadway production, they often choose to see a musical. Some musicals have been running for many years and have become established hits. For instance, the musical Cats holds the record for the longest-running show on Broadway, with over 20 continuous years at one theater. It originated in London before coming to New York, and even continued its run in London after its Broadway success. Many of these popular musicals also tour across the United States. Cats, for example, had multiple companies touring simultaneously and performed in cities like St. Louis, Kansas City, Tulsa, and even Springfield, Missouri. Therefore, it is important to spend time looking at musical theater and understanding what it is. The term "musical theater" encompasses various forms, including opera. Opera is usually sung all the way through and consists of a series of arias, songs, duets, trios, and other vocal combinations. Dialogue scenes are also typically sung in a sing-song manner called recitativo. While not all operas are completely sung through, with some including dialogue scenes, we can still consider them part of the overall category of musical theater. Opera is a kind of sung-through item, and because of this, most people associate it with music. While it does belong to music and is often referred to as classical music, when fully presented with production values, it becomes a part of theater. There is also a term called Operetta, which can be seen as a little Opera. It developed in the 19th century and includes arias, duets, trios, and other numbers found in Opera, but typically also has spoken dialogue. Operettas, especially in present times, tend to have a romantic nature and are usually set in a distant past. The characters in operettas are quite different from ordinary people and are full of stirring melodies that evoke a romantic response from the audience. The line between Operetta and musical comedy can be blurred. Towards the end of the 19th century, Gilbert and Sullivan, an English duo, wrote a number of works, such as HMS Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado. These works are commonly referred to as operettas but are also considered musical comedy. They fit well in either category, and their classification doesn't matter because they can be enjoyed by any audience. The term "operetta" and "musical comedy" were applied to the particular type of musical theater that developed in the United States after the turn of the 20th century. It was characterized by being lighthearted, emphasizing comedy and the humorous relationships between characters. This genre eventually evolved into what is now called "the musical." By the 1960s, it became clear that not everything being presented in musical theater was classified as musical comedy. The genre began to incorporate more serious subjects and themes, leading to the use of the term "musical" to encompass these different styles. It should be noted that all of these forms of musical theater, whether it's opera, operetta, musical comedy, or musical, revolve around stories and characters, which are developed through a combination of music, words, and dance. There is at least one other form of musical theater worth mentioning. Uh, and that is what uh simply is or what is usually labeled as a musical review. Now, this is a production where one is not going to have a story. One may find that musical reviews may have some kind of theme which is going to unite what is going on within this production, or it may have some other kind of uniting factor of some kind. Or it may not even have any seemingly unifying factor that's going to run through it at all. Uh, but in one way or the other, it is going to be a musical review which is going to have songs, uh, going to have skits, and usually also may well have production numbers. We'll come back and talk about a production number, a production number of some kind or the other. Now, musical reviews of all kinds were enormously popular in the United States in the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century. Uh, and then we find that the musical reviews sort of played out so far as theater is concerned. Uh, but what we find is musical reviews, by the early 1950s, had moved to television. Uh, and during those early days of the 1950s and 60s, what we find is that there were many musical reviews that appeared on television. They were usually frequently united through the factor of the star performer. And so, thus we had the Dino Shore show, the Andy Williams Show, the Carol Burnett show, or maybe not necessarily united around an entertainer, the Kraft Music Hall. By the time of the early 60s and into the early 70s, most of these had begun to fade away. And it is only infrequently that we find these days that there is a musical review that appears on television. There is, however, today one place, or I should say maybe several places, but there is one place in particular, as far as we are concerned, where the musical review is still alive and well. And if you stop and think for a moment, where is that? And that is in Branson, Missouri. Yes, that is what when one goes to Branson and one goes to see the shows in Branson, what you are seeing are musical reviews. Many times, the unifying factor is the star performer. And so, thus we have the Shoji Tabuchi show, the Andy Williams show, or the Jim Stafford show. And then in some cases, we have it being united by a group, such as the Bald Knobbers. Those are all musical reviews. And that is through the course of usually about two hours in the evening, you will have a number of songs frequently done by the star performer or by solo singers. And then, in some cases, those people will come together and they will do duets or in some cases, maybe trios. And maybe then there will even be something called the production number. Now maybe we should say what is a production number. Well, what we find is a production number is where we find usually that the whole group, however many may make up the whole group, in a musical, in a Broadway musical that may well be 20, 25 or more people, but what we then have is that the whole group, a soloist, a group, they come together, they sing the number. They may begin in a solo, it begins in a solo, it develops into a group number, and then it moves out of that into frequently what is called the D break. And that is where everybody or certainly some of them begin and go into a dance part of that particular song. So, this is what is called then, usually, a production number. And we will come back and later and talk about how then the production number fits into the musical and how it fits into the totality here. But what we find then, certainly, is the production number is frequently a part of the musical reviews. Now, at this point, what we're going to spend now that we've sort of looked at this overall view of musical theater, what we're going to spend the rest of our time looking at is musical comedy, musical comedy evolving into the musical. Now, we did not invent this in this country, but what we did do is we did take it and develop it. And when I say we didn't invent it because as we can see here and as we look at it, what we will certainly see is that musical. Comedy comes out of some combination of Operetta or Musical review, and you begin to put all of these together and tie them together with a story. And remember, this is what we're doing: tying it together with a story and having characters who will go through the story with actions. This ties it back into the Aristotelian part that we're talking about because a musical presents and shows us characters in action. But what we did do is develop it into something particularly and peculiarly American. It is something that belongs to us now. At this point, you may say, "Well, what's the difference between this and a play with music?" No, it is something more than a play with music. A play may have music in it, and some plays may even have songs in them, but that does not necessarily make them into a musical. A musical is something more and something different from a play with music or a play with songs. Before we get into that, let's clarify some terms. First, let's use the word "book" or sometimes called "libretto". What we mean by that is the story, the dialogue scenes in the musical. These are written by, and yes, we have no better term than "the writer". So, we're going to have a writer who will write a book, which becomes the basis for the development of the story and the characters. However, within that book, you may think, "Isn't it like a play?" In some ways, it's like a play, but the book writer has to leave room for the book to open up somehow and allow the composer and lyricist to write their contributions to the musical. The composer will write the music for the songs in the show. Remember, the music may accompany the songs, the dance, or even underscore certain parts. This is the contribution of the composer. Then, we come to songs, which are certainly a major part of any musical. Those songs have words, and we call those words "lyrics". The lyrics to the songs are written by the lyricist. So, at this point, we have at least three people involved: a writer, a composer, and a lyricist. This distinguishes a musical from a play, where usually a single individual writes the play. In a musical, we have a team of people coming together. Sometimes, a single person may write music, lyrics, and book. However, in most cases, musicals are written by a team. As we have indicated, it is usually at least two or three people. Frequently, the lyricist may also write the book, so one person is writing all the words. But in many cases, the book writer only writes the story, dialogue scenes, and words for the musical. This team then comes together to develop the musical. Now, I'm going to talk about the characteristics of a musical. What is it that makes a musical? Different from a play, what makes a musical different is the incorporation of music. I will give you some examples mostly from the musical Oklahoma. However, one drawback of discussing this on television is that we are unable to play music due to copyright restrictions. Thus, I will be specific with my examples. If possible, I recommend listening to the Oklahoma CD or watching the movie version, which is available in the SMS Library. The movie version is a successful adaptation, except for one exception that I will discuss later. By watching the movie, you can better understand how all the elements work together. The first characteristic is that music provides a different sensory experience compared to listening to words. It may sound complex, but in reality, we respond differently to music than we do to spoken words. When music is incorporated into a musical, it engages different senses and elicits different emotional and physical responses. For instance, the song "Surrey With the Fringe on Top" from Oklahoma showcases this difference. The characters, Curley and Laurey, exchange dialogue, and Curley asks Laurey to accompany him to the Box Social. Laurey challenges him, saying he must have a new buggy with red wheels. Curley counters with a playful proposition: if he were to ask her, he would provide a fancy carriage pulled by Snow White Horses. This transition from dialogue to song highlights the shift in sensory experience. The example from Oklahoma demonstrates how music enhances the storytelling by creating a different emotional response and engagement of the senses. Transported, we are transported from words into another realm. We are now transported into song, and Curly begins singing. Eventually, Lori will answer him back, and this develops into a kind of duet. At that point, we have definitely entered into something different from the way a dialogue scene would be with only words. Let me use one other number from "Oklahoma!" This is the number called "Kansas City," performed by the comic leading character, Will Parker. Will Parker has just returned from a rodeo in Kansas City. For him, this is a significant experience, as it's about 1955, turning to the 20th century, and going to Kansas City was quite eye-opening. He tells us about everything that's up to date in Kansas City and all the sights he saw in the city that are different from living on the plains of Oklahoma. This includes telephones, indoor plumbing, and many other things that are brand new to him. Will Parker is then joined by the chorus, who have come to welcome him home and hear about his adventures. They sing along with him, and this whole thing develops into a solo dance break for Will Parker and eventually into a full-fledged production number with the chorus and everybody singing and dancing. Now we have words, music, and dance all combined, and each evokes a different sensory response. This is certainly quite different from what may happen in a play when we are dealing only with words. Characteristic number two: music allows the emotional moment to be sustained. When we are in words only, we reach a point where there's nowhere else to go. We have reached the end with words. But when music enters, it allows elongation. Music has its own time and way of developing. So we move from words to words combined with music, and we enter into music time. This moment can now be sustained. There are many examples of this, such as a love duet, where two characters explore how much they love each other. Saying "I love you" over and over again can run out of ways to express it, but when music is added, we can prolong that moment and allow the characters to continue exploring their love for each other. This can be found in "Oklahoma!" and other musicals. Between LRI and Curley, when they do a reprise for the second time, people will say "we are in love." At that point, they now explore the situation. Another example is the song called "Many a New Day." This is a solo for LII, where the girls tease her about Curly and the fact that Curly has been taken by the Cummings girl. LII is asked what she's going to do about it, and she says she doesn't care. Then the music enters and LRI sings, "Why should a woman who is healthy and strong blubber like a baby if her man goes wrong?" She declares that she won't cry, and she'll start all over again. This is perhaps an early version of a feminist track, where LRI proclaims her independence and that she can move on if one man leaves. Now, let's talk about simultaneous expression in dialogue and music. In dialogue, we can usually only absorb one person speaking at a time. It's linear and develops in a linear fashion. However, in music, we can hear multiple expressions simultaneously. We call this duets, trios, quartets, etc. where different individuals express different emotions. Typically, each individual starts with a solo and then gets joined by others. This allows us to distinguish each character and hear their musical moments separately. I was surprised to find that "Oklahoma" doesn't have moments of simultaneous expression of emotions. While there are chorus developments, there aren't different sets of emotions being expressed simultaneously. One great example of simultaneous expression is the "Tonight Quintet" from "West Side Story." It involves more than five people and has five musical lines being developed. This moment occurs in the first act, scene 8. There are rival ethnic gangs, the Jets and the Sharks. There are individual characters here who come out of the gangs and become The Soloist within the musical. In fact, what this really is, is the Romeo and Juliet story moved to New York City in the 1950s, a point when there were ethnic gangs in New York. What we have here, then, in this tonight quintet, is the introduction of the warring gangs, the Jets and the Sharks. We are introduced to Anita, who is the sister of the leader of one of the gangs and who is in love with the leader of the other gang. We also have Tony, a member of one of the other gangs, and Maria, who is the sister of the leader of the other gang. Each of these characters begins singing and tells us how they feel about what's going to happen tonight. Tonight, there is going to be a rumble, and the Jets and Sharks sing about their preparations for it. Anita plans to have a private moment with her boyfriend. Tony reflects on the significance of the night. Riff, one of the leaders, counts on Tony to be there. Maria mirrors Tony's words about the night. Eventually, all of these characters and the groups they belong to sing at once, expressing their feelings and emotions simultaneously. Through the musical line, we are able to understand what is going on. Songs in a musical allow for personal revelation, just like soliloquies in plays. Shakespeare frequently used soliloquies to reveal a character's inner thoughts and emotions to the audience, and modern and contemporary playwrights are now exploring this more often. Option and to go back and to see how it may be used in contemporary theater, but it is certainly alive and well in the musical. Almost all musicals, at some point or the other, will have songs which specifically allow for a character to reveal in some way the other how he or she feels. Now, this may be a moment in which the character has a very private moment in which he or she is singing about how he or she feels, and it is being sort of shared or given very directly to the audience. In some cases, it may be that a character is sharing this with some other character. Here, let's look first at, again, Oklahoma! In this particular case, let's look at Ado Annie. Ado Annie is the comic character we spoke earlier of Will Parker. She, of course, is the person whom Will Parker is interested in. While we have the entanglement or the attempt for Lori and Curly to come together and form a romantic relationship, which is the sort of serious note in Oklahoma!, the comic one lies in the relationship between Ado Annie and Will Parker. So, what we find here is that Ado Annie and Lori are having a conversation. Ado Annie is sort of a free spirit, and Lori is not at all sure about this. Lori is much more restrained in her feelings and expressing her feelings. They've been conversing back and forth about how they feel about men. Annie finally comes near the end of this dialogue and says, "Don't you feel kind of sorry when a fella looks like he wants to kiss you?" And Lori looks, "Well, you just can't go around kissing every man that asks you. Didn't anybody ever tell you that?" And Annie says, "Yeah, well, they told me." And at that point, the music comes in and then Annie begins: It Ain't So Much a question of not knowing what to do. I know what's right and wrong since I've been 10. I've heard a lot of stories, and I reckon they are true, about how girls are put upon by men. But I know I mustn't fall into the pit. But when I'm with a fella, I forget. And she goes on from there and tells her how she gets very sorry when she gets around men and she just can't say no. So, we have what is indeed a comic moment of character revelation. We have another one here, and this is a very intense private moment. This comes in the house scene. Curly has gone down to visit the farmhand who lives there on the farm that Lori owns. In fact, the individual who is going to carry Lori to the Box social that night. In the sparring that went on in earlier points between Lori and Curly, they couldn't quite figure out how to get together. In spite of all this, Lori agrees that she will go to the social with Jud Fry. Now, in the Smokehouse Scene, Curly goes down to visit Jud and wants to find out a little more about him. Curly goes in very sure of himself, and they have a comic number or a number which has both its comic and its serious side that they develop. Curly sings "Poor Jud is Dead." Finally, they get it out in the open, the enmity which exists between the two of them. Curly warns Jud to be careful, and Curly leaves. At this point, Jud Fry has a moment which he is going to share with the audience. Curly has gone out, and Jud Fry says, "Don't want nothing from a peddler's bag. Want real things. What am I doing shut up here like that? Feels like I'm crawling and festering. What am I doing in this lousy Smokehouse?" And then he goes into what is unquestionably one of the most poignant songs, certainly the most poignant song in this particular musical. It is one of the really poignant moments in musical theater. And when it's done right, it can go a long way in really making things quite difficult for Lori and Curly. Because the audience begins to have sympathy for Jud Fry, he goes into the song called "Lonely Room." The floor creaks, the door squeaks, there's a fi Mouse nibbling on a broom, and I sat by myself like a cobweb on a shelf, by myself in a lonely room. And he then goes on to develop all of this, and finally concludes the song with, "I ain't going to dream about her arms no more. I ain't going to leave her alone. Go outside, get myself a bride, get me a woman to call my own." It's a marvelous, wonderful moment in this particular musical, and it certainly makes for, as in many musicals, the character revelation becomes one of the high points of the particular musical number. Musicals allow for a chorus to develop. I've mentioned the chorus a number of times already in reference to "Oklahoma," and the chorus is a group of people who frequently sing together and who frequently will, in some way or the other, back up the soloist in a particular number. But in good musicals, the chorus is something more than just a chorus, although there are musicals in which that's exactly what they are, i.e., they are a chorus. One of my favorite moments happens in a 1920s musical called "No, No, Nanette." At a point in which one of the characters has been singing a song alone on stage, suddenly, for no reason whatsoever, other than a musical reason, all the doors of the house (this is an interior setting) open up and all these people pop in. They begin singing and dancing, backing up the soloist. We finish the number, and when the number is over, they all just go back through the doors again and disappear. Absolutely no dramatic reason for their showing up at all. So what we find then here is, however, in music as they began to develop, and especially in the late 30s and then on down to the present day, the chorus becomes a community. A community that allows the musical to broaden beyond just the story of the soloist. It now broadens and becomes a story about the community. The scope increases more here than we've had earlier. There's a good example in "Oklahoma," and that is the song that opens the second act, called "The Farmer and the Cowman." We develop and set up this community, in which we have the two groups: the farmers and the cowmen. Together, we mentioned Kansas City early on. And, when we get to the very last scene of the show, we have the title song of the show, "Oklahoma!" In this song, Curley points out that he and Laurie have just come in from their wedding and have been wed. Curly says, "There couldn't be a better time to make a start in life. It ain't too early and it ain't too late. Starting as a farmer with a brand new wife, soon be living in a brand new state." Remember, this is Oklahoma territory just before it becomes a state. So now, they celebrate Oklahoma becoming a state, and everything becoming all new. What we have seen here then, is this becomes a big number in terms of the chorus, the solo, and breaks into a dance number. We find that we call for extravagance and spectacle, in some way or another, and that makes up the fifth characteristic of the musical.