Theater: Musicals

American Decades | Date: 2001

Theater: Musicals

Imports

Musicals dominated Broadway in the 1990s as long-running British imports continued to draw audiences. In 1997 Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, which opened in 1982 and finally closed in 2000, became the longest running production in Broadway history, breaking the record set by A Chorus Line. Webber's Phantom of the Opera, which opened in 1988, continued to draw full houses, while his Les Misérables, which opened in 1987, closed down for a short time in 1997 for retuning and then reopened. Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg's Miss Saigon opened in 1991 and was still running in 2000. These imports were all guided by the British whiz-kid producer Cameron Macintosh.

Touring Companies

Musicals that became established as important Broadway "brand names" then toured nationwide. At one time in the 1990s there were at least three national companies of Cats, Les Misérables, and Phantom of the Opera. While Phantom of the Opera, for example, could gross about $700,000 a week on Broadway in the 1,600-seat Imperial Theatre, on the road it could play in much larger theaters, such as those in Buffalo and Tempe, Arizona, and gross more than $1.2 million per week.

Retreads

Revivals of classic American musicals from earlier decades proliferated during the last decade of the century. Frank Loesser's Guys and Dolls had a three-year run on Broadway, beginning in 1992, and toured for nearly three more years. There were also profitable revivals of Loesser's How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Richard Adler and Ross's Damn Yankees, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's Carousel and The Sound of Music, Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate, George and Ira Gershwin's Girl Crazy, and Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun. Perhaps the most successful of the revivals was John Fred Kander and Fred Ebb's Chicago, directed by Bob Fosse, which opened to rave reviews in 1997 and soon had two companies touring and a British production in the West End of London.

Disney Hits Broadway

With a few notable exceptions, new American musicals were not successful on Broadway. The Disney company turned two of their animated films into worldwide theatrical hits. Beauty and the Beast opened in 1994 to decidedly mixed reviews but was still playing at the end of the decade. The Lion King won a total of six Tony Awards in 1998 and has played to 100.1 percent of capacity since opening in New York in November 1997.

Other New Musicals

Five Guys Named Moe celebrated the music of Louis Jordan while Jelly's Last Jam told the story of Jelly Roll Morton. One of the most ingenious musical plotlines of the decade appeared in Stephen Sondheim's Assassins, which opened off-Broadway. The show is based on the concept that assassins constitute a sort of club, with past and future killers inspiring each other in a grand conspiracy that includes John Wilkes Booth, John W. Hinckley Jr., Leon Czolgosz (assassin of William McKinley), and Giuseppe Zangara (who attempted to kill Franklin D. Roosevelt), All of these assassins show up in Dallas to persuade Lee Harvey Oswald to shoot himself. Peter Stone's Broadway show Titanic opened in 1997, before the movie phenomenon, and, although the reviews were mediocre, it made money and was a success at the Tonys.

Social Relevance

Socially relevant musicals failed to generate audience appeal. Parade, directed by Hal Prince with book by Alfred Uhry, retold the story of the 1913 murder of young Mary Phagan and the arrest of Leo Frank, manager of the pencil factory where the girl worked. Leo Frank, who was Jewish, was found guilty of the murder. After his death sentence was commuted, he was lynched. Critics called the play a "somber show" that fell "uncomfortably between the stools of history and art." Music legend Paul Simon tried his hand at Broadway composing with The Capeman, based on the true story of Puerto Rican immigrant Salvador Agron who in 1959, at age sixteen, killed two teenagers in a New York City playground while wearing a flashy black and red cape. He was convicted and later pardoned, dying of a heart attack at age forty-three. The play cost a staggering $11 million to produce and was forced to postpone its December 1997 opening for "retiming." Most of the criticism was heaped on Simon, who had full artistic control. After firing two directors because of "artistic differences" Simon asked choreographer Mark Morris to take over the production. Finally opening in February 1998, the show was critically panned as a "popera" and attracted few theatergoers. Relatives of the murder victims complained about what they feared would be the glorification of Agron. Others complained of a white songwriter perpetuating Latino stereotypes. After a run of only sixty-nine days The Capeman closed. The show may have been the most notorious "bomb" of the 1990s, but it had an excellent soundtrack and a stellar cast, with Ruben Blades as the older Salvador and Latino heartthrob Marc Anthony as the young Capeman. A more successful Broadway history lesson, Ragtime: The Musical, was Garth Drabinsky's adaption of E. L. Doctorow's 1975 novel. The production made a Broadway star out of leading man Brian Stokes Mitchell. Garth Drabinsky, the Canadian producer, has been hailed as the "savior of the American musical theater" for his willingness to mount lavish shows with social themes that restored a "lost grandeur" to Broadway. Drabinsky oversaw every aspect of Ragtime and managed to get Doctorow to help with the adaptation to the musical stage. Doctorow credits Drabinsky for understanding the "American allegory implicit in the text," which deals with "American society's coming to terms with the new century's beckoning potential for both good and bad and the spirit driving its citizens to explore their broadened physical and personal horizons." The stage production made good use of period music—ragtime melodies, lullabies, love ballads, and vaudeville tunes—to move the story along, creating what one reviewer called "a kaleidoscope whose brilliant colors glitter against a constantly threatening darkness" of twentieth-century America.

Bohemian Chic

The winner of the 1996 Tony for Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, Rent was one of the shows that redefined the Broadway musical for the 1990s. It was loosely based on the opera La Bohème, but instead of recreating Giacomo Puccini's Parisian locale and colorful characters, this hard-edged musical had its base in the street culture of the 1990s. Originally starring Adam Pascal, Anthony Rapp, and Idina Menzel, Rent focuses on Roger (or Rodolfo), an "HIV-positive punk-rocker struggling to write one great song before his time is up." Puccini's Mimi was reinvented as a dancer in an S&M club. Their friends include an artist/video geek, a musician/drag queen, and a vixen with a lesbian lover. As one critic observed, "these bracingly unromanticized characters and events are sharply observed—in all their complex humanity." Jonathan Larson's music and lyrics included hard rock and reggae, "with bits of gospel, grunge and even a tango heard along the way." Larson died of an aortic aneurysm just before Rent opened on Broadway in February 1996.

Kinetic Fusion

Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk, developed by dancer-rapper Savion Glover and director George C. Wolfe, won four Tony awards in 1996. Another musical for the 1990s, it retold "African-American history through a kinetic fusion of tap and rap." From slave ships to ragtime, from jazz in the cities to caricatures in Hollywood, the show told the story of race in America, ending with a scene in which four well-dressed men cannot attract a New York cabbie's attention because of the color of their skin. Twenty-two-year-old Glover, who was both star and choreographer, had previously performed on Broadway at age twelve in Tap Dance Kid, and starred in Black and Blue and Jelly's Last Jam. Time critic Martha Duffy described the "demon drive" of the dancers, all men, and added: "The sounds vary as strains of jazz, blues, hip-hop and gospel interweave. This is a very raucous show, about as far removed from the classic buck-and-wing as tap can get." Marketing the show through nontraditional, as well as traditional, means brought in a more racially and demographically diverse audience than was usual for Broadway shows. As Ben Brantley observed, Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk struck chords of concern with which its audience was familiar—fears of urban tension, poverty, and loss.

Opening Doors

Because of their commercial success, Rent and Bring in da Funk opened up Broadway for other nontraditional musical productions. New groups of musical composers, artists, and performers had improved chances of being heard by producers concerned for the bottom line.

TAKING BROADWAY BY STORM

Still in her twenties during the 1990s, Audra McDonald captivated audiences at Broadway musicals with her beautiful soprano voice, which various critics characterized as "tangy," "beautifully focused," "warm," and "spellbinding." She earned Tonys for her featured roles in Carouse! (1994), Master Class (1996), and Rag-time (1998). In 1999 she created the title role in the world premiere of Marie Christine, Michael John LaChiusa's adaptation of the Medea myth. She also performed with several symphony orchestras, and made her first solo album, Way Back to Paradise (1998), comprising fourteen songs by five young composers for the musical theater. More than one critic has called McDonald "the best thing that's happened to the theater world in years."

Sources:

Jim Brosseau, "The Era of Audra," Town and Country, 153, (November 1999): 123+.

Marc Peyser, "Back to Paradise with Audra," Newyork 134 (13 December 1999): 94.

Sources:

Ben Brantley, "Flying Feet Electrify the Sweep of History," New York Times, 26 April 1996, pp. C1, C4.

Brantley, "Ragtime: A Diorama With Nostalgia Rampant," New York Times, 19 January 1998, pp. El, Ell.

Martha Duffy, "Is It Taps for Broadway?" Time, 147 (6 May 1996): 80.

Brian D. Johnson, "Bullish on Broadway," Maclean's, 111 (26 January 1998): 72-74.

Patrick Pacheco, "Rhythms of America in Touring Bring in da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk," 19 March 1998, online at <www.playbillonIine.com>.

Michael Portantiere, "The Backstage Odyssey of Rent," 16 April 1996 online at <www.playbillonline.com>.

Michael Tueth, "The Dreams of an Era," America, 178 (28 March 1998): 21-22.

Copyright 2001, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.