The Great Return of the Great White Way (December 9th, 2014)
After the Golden Age of musicals (1940-1960), interest in theatre and Broadway began a steady decline. It was difficult for a genre dominated for twenty years by writers Rodger & Hammerstein to compete against the rising popularity of television and movies. By the early 1980’s, Broadway was barely hanging on. “It is difficult to imagine when Broadway will again play a significant role in New York’s literary life,” says William Corbett of New York Literary Lights. “Musicals flourished in the early sixties … By the early eighties Broadway became a tourist attraction mounting fewer shows each year, some years not even ten, and these ten were often star studded vehicles of extravaganzas that depended on sensational stage effects” (Kenrick). Live musical theatre was forced to compete with the rest of the evolving entertainment industry, and although it fell behind in the later decades, it is quickly bouncing back with new record-breaking shows coming on the scene and a younger generation of devoted audience members seeing the magic of musical theatre for the first time.
Television sets became common in the typical American home throughout the 1950’s, during the height of the Golden Age of musicals. For the parents of this generation, live musical theatre had been a huge part of their cultural young life, but their children grew up watching Dorothy following the yellow brick road from the comfort of their living rooms. Musical theatre maintained its popularity through the fifties and sixties, but when the children of that generation reached adolescence, time spent at drive-in movie theatres and bowling alleys exceeded time spent in a plush theatre seat. The seventies and eighties proved to be a rough time for the livelihood of the American musical. Anything worth seeing on Broadway was written by Stephen Sondheim, but viewers could only watch the same musical style so many times before their head started to lull out of boredom. Luckily for Broadway, it was time for a new genre to emerge. Cue: Disney.
Despite attention turning from the theatre to home entertainment, the production of animated films like Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King gave Broadway the open door they were looking for to recapture the attention of the public. Bringing Disney to Broadway in the mid-nineties caught the attention of generations that had grown up on these animations and put them back in those plush theatre seats. Except they weren’t alone. These adults who loved to reminisce with extravagant real-life versions of their childhood favorites also brought their children. “Just think how many future theater goers (and future ticket buyers) are falling in love with musical theater when they thrill to the opening number of Lion King or the swinging monkeys of Tarzan or the merblading sea creatures of Little Mermaid. Let us also not forget that every kid (and parent for that matter) who sees Lion King is sitting through a 3-hour avant-garde puppet show!” (Ozanich). Parents brought their kids to see these shows on Broadway and it resulted in the emergence of a new generation of musical theatre lovers.
Although it’s great the seats are being filled, some theatre followers are disappointed in the “Disneyfication” of their beloved art form. “You get your tickets for The Lion King a year in advance, and essentially a family comes as if to a picnic, and they pass on to their children the idea that that’s what the theater is – a spectacular musical you see once a year, a stage version of a movie” (Sondheim). Today, more shows are claiming their fame simply by being out of the ordinary. In the 1950’s, shows were known for their impressive leading talent and musical scores. Now shows are known for their special effects and over-the-top features like “flying” cast members, pyrotechnics, and elaborate set designs. Although these shows might be entertaining, loyal theatre-goers, especially ones that grew up on Golden Age musicals, feel the Great White Way shifting gears to more of a spectacle than an art form and they are reluctant to see it happen.
When Broadway’s dynamic changed and a reemerging theatrical interest was found in a younger crowd, musical writers and producers adapted well. To appeal to an audience, a writer or producer must do one of two things: identify with their audience or amuse them. Perhaps one of the most game changing and hyped musicals of this decade, Wicked, successfully does both. Elphaba, the story’s sometimes-protagonistic-sometimes-antagonistic leading lady, is a girl born with green skin who struggles with strange powers she can’t control. She ends up completely misunderstood by every citizen in Oz and becomes known as the Wicked Witch of the West. The audience can identify with many elements of the plot of Wicked: Elphaba’s dad despises her existence; she loves someone she can’t have; she is an outcast, defined by her appearance, and she stands for what’s right even when it’s the unpopular thing to do; also, it’s full of witty quips and comical exchanges between the angsty introvert and the vapid, beautiful bubble queen (Fallon). Add that it’s the prequel to the Wizard of Oz, a classic film from the 1950’s, and it proves to be an entertaining show full of good music and special effects that bridges the gap between every generation. It’s no surprise that 38 million people have seen Elphaba tell her story from the stage.
Wicked is not the only turn of the century musical to make an impression. Shows like The Producers, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and Spring Awakening address the changing perceptions of gender and sexuality; The Book of Mormon satirically addresses religion; Hairspray addresses racism through the eyes of a revolutionary teenage girl in the sixties; Rent and Avenue Q address what it’s like to be financially just scraping by in life. In a recent study, it is suggested that being exposed to controversial topics by means of musical theatre “may be a promising method for promoting attitudinal change” (Heide, Porter and Saito). The setting of a musical can use comedy to diminish the tension of these topics, as The Book of Mormon does. Regarding a song called “Hasa Diga Eebowai”, which explains how strongly the citizens of a Ugandan village feel about God, Dave Itzkoff of The New York Times says, “It is a song that can be seen as the ultimate expression of frustration by a group of people who believe God has turned his back on them. Or it might be an outburst of juvenile glee from three scatological satirists allowed to make Broadway actors say the naughtiest words they can think of” (Itzkoff). It addresses an issue that audience members either feel strongly about or don’t care about (the existence and/or characteristics of God) and shows it from the view of a tribal village in Uganda, a view that most of us have never seen. Musical theatre is a medium that brings many of these issues to the forefront when it isn’t socially acceptable in most other places. Placing the topic of religion, sexuality, or racism among a smooth plotline, catchy songs, and characters that capture the hearts of the audience make attitudes toward the topic lighten up.
By changing the basis of what Broadway is about – no longer solely a form of entertainment and distraction from the real world, but of confrontation and a gateway to real world issues – there is a broader appeal to audiences of all ages and backgrounds than there was in the 1950’s. The originality and diversity of twenty-first century musicals is drawing people back to the theaters. A majority of the excitement in seeing a live show is not knowing exactly what to expect and modern developments in technology and innovations in scriptwriting guarantee that you will be pleasantly surprised. Although the recession of the last five years didn’t spare the musical theatre industry, it is predicted that attendance and revenue numbers will return to what they were prior to the recession (Live Performance Theaters in the US: Market Research Report). We are approaching a new era of musical theatre; one that resembles the Golden Age in alacrity but has its own face of change, realism, and vagabond optimism.