It’s the music, man!
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BY JEFF KORBELIK / Lincoln Journal Star
The hottest ticket on Broadway right now is for a revival of “South Pacific,” a show that originally premiered in 1949.
This year’s Tony Award for best actress in a musical went to Patti LuPone for her portrayal of Gypsy Rose Lee in “Gypsy,” which first hit the Great White Way in 1959.
The Lincoln Community Playhouse recently staged “Cabaret,” the Kander and Ebb musical that was first produced in New York in 1966.
What: “The Music Man” Where: Pinewood Bowl, Pioneers Park When: 8 p.m. July 10 through July 13 and July 17-20
Tickets: $10, $3 children ages 6-12; children age 5 and younger are admitted free
Note: Discounted tickets are available at Russ’s Markets in Lincoln
And this summer’s musical at Pinewood Bowl is Meredith Willson’s ever popular “The Music Man,” a show that came to fame in 1957.
So what in the name of Harold Hill is going on here?
It seems that what’s old is new again.
Or is it?
“People still want to see traditional musicals,” said John Prignano, a senior operations officer at the licensing agency Music Theatre International. “They never go out of style, and they never will.”
Prignano, who was in Lincoln two weeks ago for the International Thespian Festival, has a point.
For community theaters or high school drama departments scheduling their seasons, the golden era of musical theater offers a treasure trove of great American musicals, from “Oklahoma!” to “Cabaret.”
Prignano said MTI’s catalog lists more than 300 plays and musicals, with such shows as “The Music Man,” “Guys and Dolls” and “Fiddler on the Roof” consistently ranking in the top 20 of those purchased.
In addition, according to the Educational Theatre Association, “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Oklahoma!” and “Guys and Dolls” were among the top 10 shows produced by high schools in 2007, ranking right up there with Disney’s “High School Musical” and “Grease.”
The big question is whether Broadway will see an era like that again — when every time Richard Rodgers collaborated with Oscar Hammerstein II, they had a hit.
“That IS the question,” said Fred Stuart, Haymarket Theatre executive and artistic director and soon-to-be sales, marketing and materials director for Theatrical Rights Worldwide. “I adore ‘Legally Blonde,’ but I’m not quite sure it will be remembered 100 years from now.”
But you can bet “The Sound of Music,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and “West Side Story” still will be. And, possibly, such contemporary shows as “Rent” and “Hairspray” too.
“They will if (audiences) can identify with them and have them mean something to them,” said Alisa Belflower, a voice professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
That’s what those great American musicals did during the golden era.
So when was the golden era?
Stuart said it began as far back as 1927, when composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Hammerstein teamed up on “Show Boat,” which often is referred to as the “first musical play” — a drama with music.
“Certainly, Rodgers and Hammerstein cemented it when they had their long ride,” Stuart said.
Most historians generally agree the era really kicked into gear when Rodgers and Hammerstein produced “Oklahoma!” in 1943. It was unlike any of the pre-World War II fluff that dominated Broadway stages.
Not that fluff was bad. Songwriters such as Kern (“Music in the Air,” “Roberta”) and Cole Porter (“Anything Goes,” “Red Hot And Blue”) helped people endure the Depression, giving them an escape into their lighthearted fare.
“Oklahoma!” was a musical with some bite to it, however. It featured songs and dances, including a 15-minute dream ballet choreographed by Agnes de Mille, that helped tell rather than complement the story about a romance between a cowboy and a farm girl.
“The music enhanced what already was a great story,” Stuart said of “Oklahoma!” and the shows that soon would follow. “One song can take you where a book may need 100 or more pages to do. Great lyrics can take you there in a moment.”
Heck, “Oklahoma’s” opening number did it with the first five words: “Oh, what a beautiful mornin’.”
The musicals from that era featured strong, well-drawn characters, male and female. Harold Hill. Eliza Doolittle. Gypsy Rose Lee. Tevye the Dairyman. Mrs. Dolly Gallagher Levi.
Many of the stories were complicated, tackling the issues of the day.
In “South Pacific,” Rodgers and Hammerstein addressed an interracial romance, a subject they explored again in “The King and I.”
In “Gypsy,” the overbearing mother seems monstrous as she attempts to manipulate her daughters’ lives, yet appears more sympathetic when you realize this is a single woman raising two daughters alone during the Depression.
In “Fiddler on the Roof,” Tevye must come to terms with his Jewish daughter wanting to marry a Gentile.
And in “The Sound of Music,” Captain Von Trapp puts up a brave front for his family while his world literally collapses around him as the Nazis make their way across Europe.
“When people saw (these musicals), they recognized the human experience onstage,” Belflower said. “It was captivating.”
Hollywood thought so, too.
“Hollywood became enamored with the Broadway stage musical,” Belflower said, noting the film industry paved the way to a musical theater boom.
“You didn’t have to go to New York to see a professional production,” she said. “All you needed was a local cinema.”
Indeed, several Broadway musicals found movie box office success. Academy Awards for best picture went to film adaptations of “West Side Story,” “My Fair Lady” and “The Sound of Music.”
Not only did the films do well, but the songs from them did, too. “Luck Be a Lady” from “Guys and Dolls” became a Frank Sinatra standard, and “My Favorite Things” from “The Sound of Music” is a favorite of recording artists from John Coltrane to Herb Alpert to Kenny Rogers to Rod Stewart.
The “golden age” ended in the late 1960s with the advent of the rock musical, when composers and lyricists found new avenues for telling stories, in musicals such as “Hair” and “Godspell.”
“Each generation of musical theater writers tries to respect and rebel against the musical theater tradition,” Belflower said.
The 1980s saw the British invasion, with Andrew Lloyd Webber dominating the scene with “Cats” and “Phantom of the Opera,” Cameron Mackintosh successfully producing an English version of the French musical “Les Misérables” and Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil teaming on “Miss Saigon.”
Disney became a major player on Broadway in the 1990s with “Beauty and Beast” and “The Lion King.”
And there’s more. With its lifelike puppets, “The Lion King” gave the word “spectacle” a whole new meaning.
Broadway is still big on spectacle, with the flying witches in “Wicked” drawing audiences to New York and various touring productions.
“The (golden era) did not rely on spectacle in the way that Broadway does now,” Stuart said. “There’s nothing wrong with spectacle. ‘Wicked’ and ‘Spamalot’ turn people on to musical theater. (But) Rodgers and Hammerstein did not rely on flying witches.”
Today’s Broadway is a mix of jukebox musicals (“Jersey Boys,” “Mamma Mia!”), original fare (“Avenue Q,” “Curtains”) and movicals (“Young Frankenstein,” “Mary Poppins”).
Will any of these stand the test of time, the way those of the golden era did?
“It depends on who you ask,” Belflower said.“‘Hair’ is a great American musical. ‘Wicked’ should be years from now, with the success it’s had. ‘25th Annual Putnam Spelling Bee’ is a great American musical because it shows a slice of American life.”
Prignano said it’s difficult to define the “great American musical.”
“The normal reaction is to say it’s the musicals of the 1950s and ’60s,” he said, “but current ones are great musicals in their own rights. ‘Hairspray,’ ‘Avenue Q’ … they have put their own personal stamps on the American musical.”
And so 50 years from now, we’ll see if producers feel compelled to revive the witches from “Wicked” and the puppets from “Avenue Q.”
But who would have thought “South Pacific” would be packing them in again? Or that people would respond to a fourth revival of “Gypsy”? The original, with Ethel Merman, ran for just two years and 702 performances.
“But those shows are so powerful, you get a rush every time you see them,” said Prignano, who has seen both. “It never gets old.”
Pinewood Bowl is hoping that holds true over the next two “Music Man” weekends.
Reach Jeff Korbelik at 473-7213
or jkorbelik@journalstar.com.
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