There seem to be only a few really great musical composers/writers in every generation, and there seem to be fewer and fewer since the number of entertainment options has expanded. Nowadays, Broadway seems obsessed with revivals, blockbuster spectaculars, and sure-things, as a way of making sure that money flows into the coffers, now that people have not just films and radio, but also the internet and iPods and watches that can download and show movies on demand.
In the 1920’s we had George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Vincent Youmans, and Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein. Yes, movies existed but they were black and white, while theater was in living color. So our eyes turned to the stage.
The 1930’s were hard on musical theater because the money really wasn’t there for long runs. Instead, the movies became more important. However, Porter and Gershwin et al. kept writing. They had to – it was what they did for a living, and did well.
Then, once money came back and folks needed to keep their minds off war, there were many great writers in the 1940’s, including more hits from Porter, Irving Berlin, and Rodgers and Hart, and new hits from Leonard Bernstein and others. And it was then that Rodgers and Hammerstein got together and started writing “blockbuster” shows, ones where everything advanced the story or defined the characters. Half-naked ladies weren’t on stage just to titillate, and the action dealt with real world problems, such as miscegenation (South Pacific).
The 1950’s and 1960’s continued the development of the “new” style of musical that was entertaining and relevant at the same time. Lerner and Loewe got into Broadway, Leonard Bernstein continued, Laurents and Sondheim worked together, and musicals reached a huge number of people because Hollywood turned so many of them into terrific movies. However as the 1960’s became the 1970’s, rock musicals became the show du jour.
More recently, musical theater has become mostly revivals or great special effects (remember the helicopter in Miss Saigon? And of course, all the Disney productions). Shows have become so incredibly expensive to produce that ticket prices have soared, investors want to go for “sure-thing” revivals, or you get giant monoliths such as Disney involved. Nowadays, shows end up with corporate sponsors or don’t get to Broadway, so composers have gone looking for other ways to make money. Also, a lot of shows are made up of a minimal plot to fit a collection of songs that have already been hits. There are new musicals, but they start off somewhere else than Broadway and many never get there.
It seems to me that we are having an explosion in wonderful film music these days, and that may be the new “Golden Age” that is attracting the great musical composers.
As Stephen Sondheim said: “You have two kinds of shows on Broadway – revivals and the same kind of musicals over and over again, all spectacles. You get your tickets for The Lion King a year in advance, and essentially a family… pass on to their children the idea that that’s what the theater is – a spectacular musical you see once a year, a stage version of a movie. It has nothing to do with theater at all. It has to do with seeing what is familiar…. I don’t think the theatre will die per se, but it’s never going to be what it was…. It’s a tourist attraction.”
And then there is what Broadway historian John Kenrick wrote: “Is the Musical dead? ...Absolutely not! Changing? Always! The musical has been changing ever since Offenbach did his first rewrite in the 1850s. And change is the clearest sign that the musical is still a living, growing genre. Will we ever return to the so-called “golden age,” with musicals at the center of popular culture? Probably not. Public taste has undergone fundamental changes, and the commercial arts can only flow where the paying public allows.”
While there are some good musical theater happening, it is harder to find because it is tucked away in regional theater or overseas. Sometimes it gets here (as in The Boy from Oz and Kat and the Kings) and sometimes it doesn’t. You may have to look harder. And of course, it is rather difficult to hum along with Sondheim. That is some difficult music.
