Musical Theatre

Definition, Terms, Examining the History

& Performance of Musical Theatre

What is Musical Theatre?

Musical Theatre Definition:is a stage production utilizing songs and dialogue to tell a story. It is a form of theatre that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance.

The story and emotional content of the piece are communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole.

Taking it way back – Greeks!!!!

• Our records show that Ancient Greeks included music and dance on their stages as early as 5th Century B.C. Staged in open air amphitheaters their plays featured humor, political and social satire, jugglers and any other talents that would entertain.

Ancient Greek Music

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-24611454

The RomansRomans expanded on the Greeks in 3rd Century B.C .and included song and dance routines performed to their orchestral accompaniment. Romans even included metal chips to their footwear so their steps were more audible for the audience, maybe considered the first tap shoes. Stage-crafts and special effects were elaborate and stressed in the Roman theatre.

The Middle Ages

Traveling minstrels and roving troupes of performers in the middle ages in Europe contained popular songs and slapstick comedy. During 12th and 13th Centuries religious dramas were included in this time period and set to church chants and intended as liturgical/church teachings.

The Renaissance1400-1600

The Renaissance period included a comedic Italian tradition of clowns or clown characters as they improvised their way through familiar stories. These included Harlequin, Pulcinella and Scaramouche type characters that became stage comedy and elements on the Western Stage for centuries to come.

The 1700’s

Ballad operas and comic operas were two forms of musical theatre common in Britain, France and Germany by the 1700’s. Ballad operas borrowed popular songs of the day and rewrote lyrics for the stage. Comic operas had original scores/music and mostly romantic plot lines.

The 1700’s

Two forms of musical theatre were popular in Britain: ballad operas, like John Gay's “The Beggar's Opera” (1728), that included lyrics written to the tunes of popular songs of the day (often spoofing opera), and comic operas, with original scores and mostly romantic plot lines, like Michael Balfe's “The Bohemian Girl” (1845).

European 1800’s

In Europe the word “cabaret” referred to any business serving liquor.

Historically, cabaret culture in 1881 included informal saloons with such performers as artists, poets, and composers.

These performers went to share their ideas and compositions while audience members enjoyed an art filled evening for the price of a few drinks.

The mid-1800’sThe best known composers of operettas were Jacques Offenbach from the 1850s to the 1870s and Johann Strauss II in the 1870s and 1880s. Offenbach's rich melodies, combined with his librettists' cleaver humor, formed a model for the musical theatre that followed for many years.

The development of musical theatre has been traced from Offenbach to Gilbert and Sullivan and eventually to Irving Berlin and Rodgers and Hammerstein.

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Sullivan shows…

The mid-1800’s - AmericaIn America, the first original theatre piece in English that conforms to the modern conception of a musical, adding dance and original music that helped to tell the story, is generally considered “The Black Crook”, which premiered in New York on September 12, 1866. The production was a staggering 5 ½ hours long, but despite its length, it ran for a record-breaking 474 performances.

The 1900’s

In New York during the 1910’s, large cafes would employ singers and they came to be known as “cabarets”.

Dance Floors became a requirement for the cabaret environment and led to an ordinance in 1913 that forced the dancing to halt at 2:00 a.m.

This then led to member only clubs, or “nightclubs” that would remain open all night for dancing.

BurlesqueBurlesque is a form of parody in which a well-known opera or piece of classical theatre or ballet is adapted into a broad comic play, usually a musical play, usually risqué in style, mocking the theatrical and musical conventions and styles of the original work.

Sometimes known as travesty or extravaganza, is a genre of theatrical entertainment that was popular in Victorian England and in the New York theatre in the late 1880s and early 1900s.

Burlesque in the 1900’sBurlesque shows were found in cabarets, clubs, theatres. They included bawdy comedy routines and female dancers doing things that we cannot lecture on.

(Definition of Bawdy-indecent or lewd.)

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment popular in the US from the early 1880’s until the early 1930’s.

Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on the same show. Types of acts included: musicians, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, female and male impersonators, acrobats, illustrated songs, and jugglers.

The Prohibition & a Speakeasy Joint

Down the drain!!! In 1918, the sale of liquor was considered illegal and forced American cabarets out of business. This led to “speakeasies”, cabarets, but mobster style, where secretive, intimate places opened up and where people could get their fill of booze and music.

The 1900’s con’t

Although titled “clubs” - with card members only, almost anyone was allowed in that could pay the price for bootleg liquor by simply knocking and telling the doorman “Tell ‘em‘Joe sent me’”.

Speakeasies were controlled by gangsters but live entertainment made things look legit. Saloon singers were part of the American nightlife for decades to come.

Speakeasy Membership Cards

The Great Depression

When prohibition ended in 1933 the Great Depression was at its worst, but large night clubs were big. The theatre-going public needed escapist entertainment during the dark times of World War I, and they flocked to the theatre. Shows featured former vaudeville headliners, customers in formal attire and candlelight to add to the sense of glamour.

The Great Depression

This all led to the popularity of ballroom dancing, swing dancing and the form of entertainment known as musical theatre.

The 1930’s, (the Great Depression) affected theatre audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, as people had little money to spend on entertainment. Only a few stage shows exceeded a run on Broadway or in London of 500 performances during the decade.

The 1900’s cont’d

The musicals of the Roaring Twenties, borrowing from vaudeville, music halls, and other light entertainments, tended to emphasize star actors and actresses, big dance routines, and popular songs, at the expense of plot. Typical of the decade were lighthearted productions like “Sally”; “Lady Be Good”; “Sunny”; “No, No, Nanette”; “Oh, Kay!”; and “Funny Face”.

The 1900’s cont’d

They featured stars such as Marilyn Miller and Fred Astaire and produced dozens of popular songs by Jerome Kern, the Gershwin brothers, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Vincent Youmans, and Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, popular music was dominated by musical theatre composers and lyricists.

The Ziegfeld Follies

The Ziegfeld Follies produced song-and-dance revues, or a series of sketches and songs, with little or no connection between them, on Broadway featuring extravagant sets, elaborate costumes, and beautiful chorus girls. These spectacles also raised production values, and putting on a musical generally became more expensive.

Progress in Musical TheatreProgressing far beyond the comparatively frivolous musicals and sentimental operettas of the decade, “Show Boat”, which premiered on December 27, 1927 at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York, represented an even more complete integration of book and score than the Princess Theatre musicals, with dramatic themes told through the music, dialogue, setting and movement.

Show Boat

1930’s Musical Theatre

Many shows continued the lighthearted song-and-dance style of their 1920s predecessors. The revue “The Band Wagon” (1931) starred dancing partners Fred Astaire and his sister Adele, while Cole Porter's “Anything Goes” (1934) confirmed Ethel Merman's position as the First Lady of musical theatre – a title she maintained for many years. British writers such as Noel Coward and Ivor Novellocontinued to deliver old fashioned, sentimental musicals, such as “The Dancing Years.”

1930’s Musical TheatreSimilarly, Rodgers & Hart returned from Hollywood to churn out a series of Broadway hits, including “On Your Toes” (1936), with Ray Bolger, the first Broadway musical to make dramatic use of classical dance, “Babes In Arms” (1937), and “The Boys From Syracuse” (1938), and Cole Porter wrote a similar string of hits, including “Anything Goes” (1934) and “DuBarry Was a Lady” (1939). The longest-running piece of musical theatre of the 1930s was “Hellzapoppin” (1938), a revue with audience participation, which played for 1,404 performances, setting a new Broadway record that was finally beaten by “Oklahoma!” five years later.

1930’s cont…However, a few creative teams began to build on “Show Boat's”

innovations, experimenting with musical satire, topical books and operatic scope. “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. “As Thousands Cheer” (1933), a revue by Irving Berlin and Moss Hart in which each song or sketch was based on a newspaper headline, marked the first Broadway show in which an African-American, Ethel Waters, starred alongside white actors. Waters' numbers included "Supper Time", a woman's lament for her husband who has been lynched.

Porgy and Bess“Porgy and Bess” (1935), by the Gershwin brothers and DuBose Heyward, featured an all African-American cast and blended operatic, folk, and jazz idioms. It has entered the permanent opera repertory and, in some respects, it foreshadowed such "operatic" musicals as “West Side Story” and “Sweeney Todd.”

Despite the economic woes of the decade and the competition from film, the musical survived. In fact, the move towards political satire in “Of Thee I Sing”, “I'd Rather Be Right” and “Knickerbocker Holiday”, together with the musical sophistication of the Gershwin, Kern, Rodgers and Weill musicals and the fast-paced staging and naturalistic dialogue style created by director, George Abbott, showed that musical theatre was beginning to evolve beyond the gags and showgirls, musicals of the Gay Nineties and Roaring Twenties, and the sentimental romance of operetta.

The Golden Age of TheatreThe 1940s would begin with more hits from Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hart, Weill and Gershwin, some with runs over 500 performances as the economy rebounded, but artistic change was in the air.

Irving Berlin

Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart

George & Ira Gerswhin

Oklahoma!Rodgers and Hammerstein's “Oklahoma!” completed the revolution begun by “Show Boat,” by tightly integrating all the aspects of musical theatre, with a cohesive plot, songs that furthered the action of the story, and featured dream ballets and other dances that advanced the plot and developed the characters, rather than using dance as an excuse to parade scantily clad women across the stage.

Agnes de MilleRodgers and Hammerstein hired ballet choreographer Agnes de Mille, who used everyday motions to help the characters express their ideas. 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 Mornin' unaccompanied.

1950s – moving forwardDuring the 1950s, the music of Broadway was the popular music of the western world. Every season brought a fresh crop of classic hit musicals that were eagerly awaited and celebrated by the general public. Great stories, told with memorable songs and dances were the order of the day, resulting in such unforgettable hits as The King and I, My Fair Lady, Gypsy and dozens more. These musicals were shaped by three key elements:

Composers: Rodgers & Hammerstein, Loesser, Bernstein Directors: George Abbott, Jerome Robbins, Bob FosseFemale stars: Gwen Verdon, Mary Martin, Ethel Merman

Gwen Verdon Mary Martin

The 1950’s cont

Another record was set by The Threepenny Opera, which ran for 2,707 performances,becoming the longest-running off-Broadway musical until The Fantasticks. The production also broke ground by showing that musicals could be profitable off-Broadway in a small-scale, small orchestra format.

The Sound of Music

The 1950s ended with Rodgers and Hammerstein's last hit, The Sound of Music, which also became another hit for Mary Martin. It ran for 1,443 performances and shared the Tony Award for Best Musical. Together with its extremely successful 1965 film version, it has become one of the most popular musicals in history.

1960sAt first, the 1960s were more of the same, with Broadway turning out record setting hits like Hello, Dolly! and Fiddler on the Roof, but as popular musical tastes shifted, the musical was left behind. The rock musical "happening" Hair (1968) was hailed as a landmark, but it ushered in a period of confusion in the musical theatre.

1970sComposer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim and director Hal Prince refocused the genre in the 1970s by introducing concept musicals – shows built around an idea rather than a traditional plot. Company (1970), Follies (1972) and A Little Night Music (1973) succeeded, while rock musicals quickly faded into the background. The concept musical peaked with A Chorus Line (1974), conceived and directed by Michael Bennett. No, No, Nanette (1973) initiated a slew of popular 1970s revivals, but by decade’s end the battle line was drawn between serious new works (Sweeney Todd) and heavily commercialized British mega-musicals (Evita).

1980s

The public ruled heavily in favor of the mega-musicals, so the 1980s brought a succession of long-running "Brit hits" to Broadway – Cats, Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera and Miss Saigon were light on intellectual content and heavy on special effects and marketing.

1990s

By the 1990s, new mega-musicals were no longer winning the public, and costs were so high that even long-running hits (Crazy for You, Sunset Boulevard) were unable to turn a profit on Broadway. New stage musicals now required the backing of multi-million dollar corporations to develop and succeed – a trend proven by Disney’s Lion King. Even Rent and Titanic were fostered by smaller, Broadway-based corporate entities.

2000

As the 20th century ended, the musical theatre was in an uncertain state, relying on rehashed numbers like Fosse,and stage versions of old movies Footloose, as well as the still-running mega-musicals of the previous decade. But starting in the year 2000, a new resurgence of American musical comedies took Broadway by surprise. The Producers, Urinetown, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Hairspray -- funny, melodic and inventively staged, these hit shows offered new hope for the genre.

Since 2000Since 2000, there have been many new musicals introduced to the American, theatre going, public.

Legally Blonde, Jersey Boys, The Color Purple, Grey Gardens, Billy Elliot, Newsies, Tick, Tick… Boom!, In the Heights, Fun Home, The Drowsy Chaperone, Wicked, Avenue Q, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, The Last Five Years, The Book of Mormon, The Light in the Piazza, Spring Awakening, Next to Normal, Urinetown, Add1ng Machine, and many, many more…

Even shows about what happens when you scramble to write a musical, like [title on show] a musical about the creation of a musical, inspired by the actual conversations they had as the composers were struggling to write a new original work.

Sometimes they are original works and sometimes they’re based on a book or movie.

Where are things going?

Musical Theatre has evolved and changed throughout history, and the content of future musical theatre will no doubt continue to change to reflect the social customs, values, and behaviors of any given period. Looking back 100 years, musicals were traditionally frothy, lightweight diversions; song and dance showcases designed to give audiences a jolly good night out “thank you very much have a lovely evening.” Then certain key writers emerged who took the genre in an altogether more ‘dramatic’ direction: Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, and so on. Shows started to engage with themes and material which said something about society and culture of the time –dealing with race, violence, sex and love in ways that would have been unheard of 20 years earlier (and that’s just West Side Story).

Cut to where we are today: the Tony Award for Best Musical a year ago went to Fun Home, the coming out story of a lesbian cartoonist and her father’s subsequent suicide; The Scottsboro Boys musicalizes the racist trial of a group of black teenagers falsely convicted of raping two white women; and Next to Normal - a two-act rock musical about grief, mental illness and the pharmaceutical industry.

Writers and (more importantly) audiences are coming to realize that there is no limit to what can be successfully musicalized in the right hands. The genre is becoming unpredictable, and we must wait with bated breath to see whatever ‘they’ come up with next. As popular music progresses, no doubt new writers will match it beat for beat, and musicals in 40 years will sound as fresh and à la mode as Hamilton does to us today.

More great shows to come…After Oklahoma, Rodgers and

Hammerstein were the most important contributors to the musical-play form. The two collaborators created an extraordinary collection of some of musical theatre's best loved and most enduring classics, including Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951), and The Sound of Music (1959).

More great shows to come…Some of these musicals treat more serious subject matter than most earlier shows: the villain in “Oklahoma!” is a suspected murderer and psychopath with a fondness for lewd post cards; “Carousel” deals with spousal abuse, thievery, suicide and the afterlife; “South Pacific” explores mixed racial relationships even more thoroughly than “Show Boat”; and the hero of “The King and I” dies onstage!

Golden Age of American Theatre

The show's creativity stimulated Rodgers and Hammerstein's contemporaries and ushered in the "Golden Age" of American musical theatre. Americana was displayed on Broadway during the "Golden Age", as the wartime cycle of shows began to arrive. An example of this is “On the Town” (1944), written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, composed by Leonard Bernstein and choreographed by Jerome Robbins. The story is set during wartime and concerns three sailors who are on a 24 hour shore leave in New York City, during which each falls in love. The show also gives the impression of a country with an uncertain future, as the sailors and their women also have.

Inspiration!

“Oklahoma!” inspired others to continue the trend. Irving Berlin used sharpshooter Annie Oakley's career as a basis for his “Annie Get Your Gun” (1946, 1,147 performances);

Burton Lane, E. Y. Harburg, and Fred Saidy combined political satire with Irish whimsy for their fantasy “Finian's Rainbow” (1947, 725 performances);

And Cole Porter found inspiration in William Shakespeare's “Taming of the Shrew” for “Kiss Me, Kate” (1948, 1,077 performances).

The 1950’s

Damon Runyon'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). The relatively brief seven-month run of that show didn't discourage Lerner and Loewe from collaborating again, this time on My Fair Lady (1956), an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews, which at 2,717 performances held the long-run record for many years. Popular Hollywood films were made of all of these musicals. The Boy Friend (1954) ran for 2,078 performances in London, briefly becoming the third longest-running musical in West End or Broadway history (after Chu Chin Chow and Oklahoma!), until it was demoted by Salad Days. It marked Julie Andrews' American debut.

The 1950’s cont

Another record was set by The Threepenny Opera, which ran for 2,707 performances,becoming the longest-running off-Broadway musical until The Fantasticks. The production also broke ground by showing that musicals could be profitable off-Broadway in a small-scale, small orchestra format.

West Side Story

The 1950s ended with Rodgers and Hammerstein's last hit, The Sound of Music, which also became another hit for Mary Martin. It ran for 1,443 performances and shared the Tony Award for Best Musical. Together with its extremely successful 1965 film version, it has become one of the most popular musicals in history.

West Side Story

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 Jets and the Sharks. 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 performances.

Gypsy

Gypsy Plot Line

Gypsy is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. Gypsy is loosely based on the 1957 memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, the famous striptease artist, and focuses on her mother, Rose, whose name has become synonymous with "the ultimate show business mother." It follows the dreams and efforts of Rose to raise two daughters to perform onstage and casts an affectionate eye on the hardships of show business life. The character of Louise is based on Lee, and the character of June is based on Lee's sister, the actress June Havoc.The musical contains many songs that became popular standards, including "Small World", "Everything's Coming up Roses", "Some People", "Let Me Entertain You", "All I Need Is the Girl", and "Rose's Turn". It is frequently considered one of the crowning achievements of the mid-20th century's conventional musical theatre art form, often called the "book musical".Gypsy has been referred to as the greatest American musical by numerous critics and writers, among them Ben Brantley ("what may be the greatest of all American musicals...")[1] and Frank Rich.[2]Rich wrote that " Gypsy is nothing if not Broadway's own brassy, unlikely answer to 'King Lear.'"[3] Theater critic Clive Barnes wrote that " 'Gypsy' is one of the best of musicals..." and described the character of Rose as "one of the few truly complex characters in the American musical...."[4]

Gypsy Business

However, the film of West Side Story was extremely successful.[51] Laurents and Sondheim teamed up again for Gypsy (1959, 702 performances), with Jule Styneproviding 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, and was given four subsequent revivals, with Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone later tackling the role made famous by Ethel Merman.

Although directors and choreographers have had a major influence on musical theatre style since at least the 19th century,[52] George Abbott and his collaborators and successors took a central role in integrating movement and dance fully into musical theatre productions in the Golden Age. Abbott introduced ballet as a story-telling device in On Your Toes in 1936, which was followed by Agnes DeMille's ballet and choreography in Oklahoma!. After Abbott collaborated with Jerome Robbins in On the Town and other shows, Robbins combined the roles of director and choreographer, emphasizing the story-telling power of dance in West Side Story, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962) and Fiddler on the Roof (1964). Bob Fosse choreographed for Abbott in The Pajama Game (1956) and Damn Yankees (1957), injecting playful sexuality into those hits. He was later the director-choreographer for Sweet Charity (1968), Pippin (1972) and Chicago (1975). Other notable director-choreographers have included Gower Champion, Tommy Tune, Michael Bennett, Gillian Lynne and Susan Stroman. Prominent directors have included Hal Prince, who also got his start with Abbott, and Trevor Nunn.

Good Links

Middle Ages

http://www.cwu.edu/~robinsos/ppages/resources/Theatre_History/Theahis_4.html

Caberet & Vaudeville

http://www.thekillerdillers.com/?tag=cabaret