Unit 12 -- The American Musical from the Rock Era to the Present

Unit 12 -- The American Musical from the Rock Era to the Present

 

The creators of Broadway musicals were slow to catch up with the changing styles of music after the advent of rock. The most popular musicals of the 1960s (such as Hello, Dolly! And Fiddler on the Roof) continued to follow the style of the “golden era” musical.
 

The Rock Musical

 

The first successful musical to use rock styles was Hair (1968), a show that explored the counterculture, the Vietnam War, and other issues of the times. (The following clip is from the 2009 Broadway revival of Hair. It gives a good sense of the style and spirit of the original production from 1968, including the interactions with the audience. The annual Tony Awards show is the best record we have of many of the most important Broadway performances of the last several decades.)

 

 

The success of Hair was followed by other musicals in a rock or pop style in the 1970s, including Jesus Christ Superstar, and Godspell. The rock musical has continued to be an influential genre to the present day. Some of the most popular include The Who’s Tommy, Rent, and Spring Awakening.

 

 

The Concept Musical

By the 1970s, some writers and composers were abandoning the traditional plots of the golden era musical for shows that were more episodic or concept oriented. These shows would be organized around a theme or might play with the sequence of time. For example, A Chorus Line (1975) dealt with the real-life stories of professional Broadway dancers

Also in the 1970s, there was a series of successful black musicals—shows with casts and creative teams that were mostly or entirely African American. The most enduring of these shows is The Wiz (1975), a black retelling of The Wizard of Oz.
 

The Megamusical

In the 1980s, Broadway experienced its own British Invasion. Lavish, spectacular musicals originally produced in London took Broadway by storm. Shows in this style have come to be called megamusicals because of their largeness of scale and total integration of spectacle and technology. Andrew Lloyd Webber was the composer associated with many of these shows, which included Cats and Phantom of the Opera. Les Miserables is another of the most successful megamusicals.

 

The opening number of cats is a good example of the use of spectacle, synthesized pop music, and corporate branding that are typical of the megamusicals. The overture playes under images of the cat's-eye logo used to promote the show. The opening number begins around 3:25 in this video.

 

 

The “Disneyfication” of Broadway in the 1990s continued a trend of large-scale shows like Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, produced by Disney and other large corporations with savvy marketing strategies.

 

 

Alternatives to the Megamusical and Other Recent Trends

Composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim is perhaps the most respected figure in musical theater of the past several decades. Known for their wit, sophistication, and skeptical outlook, his shows have often been seen as an important alternative to splashier pop-style genres like the megamusical. His best known works (besides West Side Story and Gypsy, earlier shows for which he only wrote the lyrics) include Company, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, and Sunday in the Park With George. Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd-Webber are often seen as taking opposing approaches to the musical. Sondheim shows are thoughtful and "artistic," gaining a loyal audience that might be small at first but which grows over time. Lloyd-Webber shows are slick and populist, going for the immediate appeal to an audience's emotions and desire to hear soaring melodies.

 

Sondheim's Into the Woods melds together the stories and characters of several well-known fairy tales in a revisionist way to raise questions about the notion of "happy ever after." The clever lyrics and lean musical texture are typical of Sondheim's work. Here is the performance from the Tony Awards show.

 

 

 

Since the turn of the millennium, there has been a resurgence of the American style of musical and of the popularity of musicals in general. Musical comedies like The Producers, Hairspray and Avenue Q have recently rivaled megamusicals and pop/rock musicals for popularity, and Wicked, a retelling of The Wizard of Oz from the perspective of the witch that combines elements of the megamusical and musical comedy with a pop-style score has enjoyed phenomenal success. Disney’s High School Musical films and television programs like Glee and Smash have brought popular attention to Broadway songs and performers. Broadway stars (like Wicked's Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth) make regular appearances on Glee, creating cross-promotion between television and Broadway.