Breaking into Song: Why You Shouldn't Hate Musicals

BREAKING INTO SONG

Musical theatre is a medium full of possibilities. As the intersection between music, song and storytelling there’s literally an infinite amount of different possible musicals. Musicals of different styles and tones and genres. Musicals that use song and scene in vastly distinct ways. Musicals that intersect with varied parts of the theatre ecology.

But musical theatre has come to be publicly defined by an extremely narrow range of examples. The form seems to be entirely defined by a small set of ‘those musicals’. Now I would firstly say that I love a great number of those musicals. However, I am forever amazed by how much power a small selection of shows have over the perception, possibility and range of this form. I don’t need to name them. You know the ones I mean.

I will say again that I love and admire many of these shows. But they are but a narrow fraction of the possibilities of the form. Music and stories are infinite and so are musicals. I also feel that a small group of musicals being collated together, both here and in public consciousness sort of flattens out any of the radical choices that these shows made.

The extreme prominence of a small selection of shows that largely function in a certain way leads to musical theatre being a medium that people think they can understand with very few data points. My sense has always been that people decide what musical theatre is faster and in a more lasting way because the public perception of the medium is linked to this very small range of works. Moreover, even as new data points come into the zeitgeist, I find a startling number of people still refer to the same canonical data points and think of any new shows as anomalies.

For some reason, people seem to think they can understand the form of musical theatre from this incredibly small number of shows. How many films would you say need to be watched before you make a judgement on the possibilities of the medium? How many books would you say need to be read before you can make a judgement on the possibilities of the medium? I’m not trying to sound elitist. I truly believe in the democratisation of form. I just wonder why musicals get judged more quickly and more lastingly.

Time and again I notice that people have made up their mind about musical theatre from having seen or heard only a few shows. Of course, the form has intrinsic traits that some people might find plainly unlikeable. But again, I am amazed by how often people refer to the few shows they hated before deciding the medium wasn’t for them. They rarely take time to seek out shows that function differently. I am also regularly amazed by how many people who hate musicals, love music. The sort of people with hard drives of music and specialised headphones and speakers seem to be the ones who hate musicals the most. But musical theatre is just music and stories. So why do we imagine so narrow a range of possibilities when we hear the term?

I think that the issue with the widespread presumptions being made about musical theatre is that they lead to systemic issues that reaffirm and solidify those presumptions. If only people who like ‘those musicals’ programme musicals, then we just get more shows that resemble those musicals. If people who might see other possibilities for musical theatre don’t produce musicals, then we don’t get new shows or different shows and we don’t build new audiences. Moreover, if we only prize and celebrate commercially successful hit musicals then the ecosystem that leads to the building of other types of musical will slowly crumble and vanish. Leaving only one path to creating musicals and only one resultant type of musical. So when the haters say ‘I hate all musicals’, they will become increasingly correct as the form becomes shallower and more restricted. A series of clones that look, function, and act alike.

Musicals don’t have to look like that, or sound like that, or be about that. Think about it for a second. It’s quite a freeing thought. There might well be things you dislike about the way lots of musicals are produced, or acted, or sung. But they don’t have to be produced, or acted, or sung like that. There might be fundamental things you dislike about too much story being communicated via music. And if so, I admit that musicals might not ever be for you. But I often wonder how many audiences and musicals are being lost because of a series of misunderstandings about what musicals are, or have been, or could be.

And I will say here, that I love musicals. There is something about the stacked verticality of musicals, the layering and interweaving of musicals, the informational overwhelm of musicals that sets me on fire. But I also acknowledge that something about the way musicals have come to be defined and represented and thought about has led to a great deal of restriction on the shows that are seen, and produced, and made.

I will also say here that I often worry that those who love musicals are just as dangerous to the future of the form as those who hate them: because both those who love and hate musicals share the same idea of what musicals are. The same restricted, narrow data set of musicals is what leads a certain group to decry their hatred and another group to pledge their devotion. But what I am asking for perhaps might threaten both of these groups. I am asking for the expansion of what musicals are. The expansion of the musicals we see. The expansion of the musicals we make and produce and support. In asking for this I am also asking for everyone on both sides of the love/hate divide to open their minds.

What I hope most is that people might catch themselves when they make rigid, inflexible statements about a form that is so rich with possibility. The 21st century seems to have awakened a desire for more stacked experiences: people listen to music while they run, they scroll Twitter while they watch TV, they listen to podcasts while they do the cooking. Our brains crave stimulation and more than ever we are looking for experiences that combine and blend other experiences. Gigs, festivals, art installations, television, books, food, games are all blending into one another via the distributed effects of the internet. As I watch this happen, I ask why are musicals stubbornly connected to such few data points? Why is public perception so glued to a type of singing, a type of acting, a type of storytelling that is just one drop in the ocean that is created by music and theatre?

I don’t just want people to re-evaluate their presumptions though. I want more musicals. A wider range of musicals. I want them seen in a wider range of venues and locations and by a wider range of audiences. But, I believe that changing the landscape of musical theatre will start with changing the presumptions that so many hold about the form. It is our core values and our core beliefs that dictate the art we make and the art we consume. I have noticed that musical theatre seems to be allowed less space than I believe it deserves and I have begun to realise that this is driven by deeply rooted core values and beliefs about the form which have become ossified and immovable. This book is my attempt to move them.

THE WOUND

Musical theatre writers rarely start at the beginning. They start somewhere I tend to call ‘the wound’. I don’t mean to sound disgusting or provocative but again and again I find that the first song written for a musical tends to be the most emotional or cathartic song of the piece. It is often the song that most typifies the writer’s grappling with something that terrifies them, something that haunts or worries them, something that provokes them, something that excites them. It tends to be a puzzle, a problem, a misunderstanding, a challenge. Something that keeps them up at night.

Again and again, I have noticed that musicals are made because music and lyrics have a great and undefinable power and they can be used to solve something that is gnawing at the edges of a writer’s understanding. Something they find difficult to put into words, something they find difficult to explain, something they want to change about the world. Even when the story is plotted out, the first song that is written tends not to be anywhere near the beginning and often exists to test whether the show is able to use music at the sharpest and most difficult edge of the storytelling mechanism. Musicals are very good at doing things that traditional text finds difficult and I believe that this is because music is non-linear and non-naturalistic. It is expressive and hence tends to work first as a way of expressing something deep and mysterious. Something philosophical and ineffable, something impossible.

It has often been said that people break into song in musicals when words are no longer enough. But I have always found that people break into song in musicals because words aren’t sufficient. And there is a difference. The best musicals use songs not only to talk about grand, heightened emotions but also to talk about small, tiny, emotions. But they use songs because words are ineffective at describing the thing that needs describing, that lurking feeling, that passionate excitement, that strange understanding, that difficult knowledge that nothing stays the same for long. Songs are good at doing things that nothing else can do.

But why is this relevant? Because time and again with writers I find myself discussing this wound, this thing in any idea or story as a way of finding how to begin, rather than where things begin. Rather than chronology, it is often about the chronic. The thing that keeps throbbing.

So, I wanted to identify what the biggest wound was for me. What is the most difficult thing to express or talk about when talking about musicals? And I think my answer is, they are so very misunderstood. But in order to get people to understand them better you have to explain things to them. Ronald Reagan said, ‘If you’re explaining, you’re losing’. I have found over the past decade a strong desire to say things like:

but not all musicals are like that

but musicals don’t have to sound like that

but musicals can do that thing

but musicals don’t have to be a good night out

but musicals don’t have to be large in scale

but musicals don’t have to have flashy lighting

but musicals don’t have to have mega mixes and dance numbers

but musicals don’t have to be uplifting

but musicals don’t have to anything

But the thing is, no one likes a mansplainer. No one wants someone to tell them why musicals are great, why they’re wrong, why they’re misunderstanding. In the end, the best way of showing someone why something is good, is just to show them. But how do you find the money, and the time, and the expertise to show people what they’re missing without showing them something? And how do you get the resources and the time and the money to show people what they haven’t seen before?

Something that has happened in recent years is that people in musical theatre point to Hamilton and say, ‘See! Musicals can sound like that, they can look like that, they can be different than you think.’ But again and again I see people suddenly think that Hamilton is musicals. That musicals are best at telling historical stories, or that musicals are best at transposing one sort of story with a radically different aesthetic or type of music. But I’m not sure that’s the answer either. Not all musicals are Hamilton. The thing is, musicals don’t have to be anything. But how on earth can we get that across to audiences without putting on shows. And how can we put on shows when producers and audiences both have fixed ideas of what musicals are and think that they will always stay the same, as will the audiences and producers who make them and care about them.

But surely people love musicals? They sell out. They have devoted hardcore fanbases of people who see them over and over. Of people who listen to the soundtracks and buy merchandise. Everyone has heard Les Mis and Cats, everyone knows what an affirming, life-changing form the musical is. But here’s my nasty secret. People who love musicals, people who adore what musicals are, are as unhelpful as the people who hate them, who misunderstand them. And the reason? Because both groups share an agreement of what a musical is, of what it looks like, of what it sounds like. It looks like that, it sounds like that, it feels like that, it costs that, it does that. For some reason, musical theatre has a very, very rigid identity and it has become a wound for me. Because I don’t feel like musicals are as rigid as people perceive. There are already tonnes of musicals that play against our perceived notions of the form. Musicals with sad endings, musicals without kick lines, musicals with subversive, unlikeable characters, musicals that use genres of music traditionally unseen onstage. But no matter how many types of unexpected musical there are, these are always seen as outliers. Everyone knows what a musical looks like, what it sounds like. Everyone knows how they feel about musicals. Everyone knows how they feel about characters ‘breaking into song’. Everyone knows how they feel about stories of triumph over adversity that take audiences and divert them. That gives them something escapist. But music has never been an escape for me. It has been a way of speaking words I didn’t have the vocabulary for. It was a way of expressing and connecting with things where I had no other method of doing so.

At some point in my life, I was studying to be a doctor. I think this was because I was interested in the reasons and mysteries behind why we are alive. The unseen mechanisms that find us here. I found something comforting in the incredible complexity of the human body and that we had a way of obtaining answers and using them to make people healthy. In fact, I was quite ill as a child and had to have major heart surgery, so this probably contributes to that longing to know why we are alive. But when it came to picking a life as a doctor, I found something strangely bland about it. Like it couldn’t satisfy this wound. This yearning, this impossible desire to understand why I’m alive. So, I decided to park medicine and study philosophy. I found this hugely interesting, but I also found that rather than finding interest in emotions it found interest in structure and thought. But it was at this point in my life while at university that I discovered musicals properly.

As a kid I had been to see Joseph and Les Misérables but it was at university that I properly discovered Sondheim. It was here that I realised that musical theatre had a way of drawing together everything that I had been longing to find. Philosophy, art, science, emotion. A tool kit for understanding why we are alive, what connects us, what enlightens