Currently I am reading Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes by Stephen Sondheim, and getting ready to go on into Look, I Made a Hat, which covers 1981-2011. So that’s a rich fount of material, and one of these days I’m going to sit in front of YouTube and at least watch some numbers from the musicals I haven’t seen.
But tonight I want to talk about a different book — The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built by Jack Viertel.
From the back cover of the pb edition (2017):
Jack Viertel is the senior vice president of Jujamcyn Theaters, which owns five Broadway theaters. In that capacity, he has been involved in multiple Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning productions. He is also the artistic director of New York City Center’s acclaimed Encores! series and has spent a decade teaching musical theater at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
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The book is basically an analysis of the structure of classic musicals: what makes them so successful? And it’s written in a jaunty style interspersed with anecdotes. The narrative kept me laughing, sometimes in public — definitely I would recommend it to anyone who’s interested in the subject. Of necessity, I will be over-simplifying; otherwise I’d have to just retype the whole damn thing. 😉
Scene One: When the curtain goes up on a new show, the audience knows nothing: not who the characters are nor which are the ones to watch. Viertel notes two different approaches to the problem: You can begin with a production number that introduces everyone, like “Comedy Tonight” from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which was standard procedure throughout the 20th century; or you can begin by introducing characters slowly, as was revolutionary in the opening of Oklahoma! with Aunt Eller churning butter and Curly singing, “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.”
When it comes to novels, I believe the Oklahoma! approach is best. After all, very few novels have big production numbers — How Much for Just the Planet?, a Gilbert and Sullivan Star Trek comedy by John M. Ford, notwithstanding.
Forum’s fate is instructive. The show was dying in its New Haven tryout, so they called in Jerome Robbins for help. His diagnosis: The charming opening number didn’t prepare the audience for the mayhem to follow. Stephen Sondheim went back, and over a weekend wrote “Comedy Tonight.” The show was a smash when it hit Broadway.
OMG. After Nathan Lane left the revival of Forum, Whoopi Goldberg took over for a while. (I actually saw this production with David Alan Grier in the lead. He was terrific.) Anyway, here’s Whoopi, showing why she’s a star. Wow. Enjoy:
I love the way she deals with the latecomers, too.
🌽 🐘 🌽
And this is from the West End production of Oklahoma! that made Hugh Jackman a star:
🐘 🌽 🐘
Who knew that the mating rituals of the great crested grebe were the secret to writing human romance?
A dryly written ornithological monograph was hardly what we had hoped for. But it was only eighty pages long, so we read it. It told us everything we needed to know.
The great crested grebe is a lake bird, and all I really remember about the book today is that it detailed, painstakingly, the odd ritual of courtship that the male and female go through…approaching each other on water, flapping their wings aggressively, retreating from each other, pecking at each other’s necks, retreating again, shaking their bodies in something that looks a little like a dance and a little like a fit, and then, for no discernible reason, building a nest together.
No one knows why they do it that way, but as a metaphor, it’s a study in fear and desire, and humans do it just like the grebe — awkwardly, with a lot of insecure, wasted motion, overaggression followed by apology, sufficient preening, and sufficient modesty.
In classical musicals from, say, the ‘40s and ‘50s, you’d have a hero’s wanting song to set up the storyline and then a conditional love song. Often today, these are merged into one.
Classic wanting song: Julie Andrews from the original cast album.
Classic conditional love song: The “Twin Soliloquies” from South Pacific. I couldn’t find just that song on YT but here’s a rare treat — Mary Martin in the opening of the 1952 London production. “Twin Soliloquies” comes up just after 7:30:
“Adelaide’s Lament” from Guys and Dolls is a sort of comic star vehicle; it functions as a wanting song, but also serves as a showcase. It’s one of the great Broadway character songs.
Vivian Blaine, who played the long-engaged and long-suffering fiancee of Nathan Detroit … was the comic singing star of this particular vehicle. And Frank Loesser hit the mother lode with a number that won the audience’s heart and set up the possibility that this brassy floor show performer actually had one of her own.
And that it might break. ✂️
“Adelaide’s Lament” grows out of a unique comic situation: Adelaide’s fourteen-year engagement to Nathan Detroit has left her with...a common cold that never goes away. … [Loesser] dreamed up a moment in which a working-class girl tries to decipher the complexities of a psychiatric tome…. It was a perfect fit for Blaine, who specialized in playing the guileless-but-not-clueless blondes who were a fixture of ‘50s comedy.
An awful lot has been accomplished by the time a traditional musical reaches the third or fourth song slot…. We get the milieu, the time, the place, the style, and the point of view…. We get the big picture of what the story’s to be about and begin to understand the details. Time for recess.
✂️
This is where, in some senses, the musical departs from the world of logic and begins to respond to the biorhythms of the thousand or so people who paid their money to sit in the dark….
In other words, time for something fun to perk up the audience. Viertel proceeds to write about my favorite musical, South Pacific — in particular the two beach numbers, “Bloody Mary” and “There Is Nothin’ Like a Dame.” Here are the horny sailors, led by Danny Burstein:
Here’s one I have wondered about: How did we go from the five act plays of Shakespeare to two act musicals? Well, as it turns out, contemporary musicals are structured as three-act plays but Acts One and Two are combined; Act Three comes after intermission. So when speaking of musicals, we only refer to Act One or Act Two — but then must distinguish between the first half of Act One (when it introduces the main players and the basic situation) and the second half of Act One (which introduces the complications). Act Two resolves everything, whether for good (Oklahoma!) or ill (Sweeney Todd).
So the second half (effectively, Act Two) of a musical’s Act One is where a show departs from the standard structure of a musical to develop its own personality. Act Two (effectively, Act Three) is often the downfall of less-than-stellar musicals (see Allegro).
I disagree with the author about Sunday in the Park with George, though. I still don’t think Act Two works. Act One is so brilliant….
📗 📘 📕
[L]aying out a song plot for the late middle of Act 1 isn’t simple, because good shows are happily unpredictable. But it usually involves some of the following: a number for the villain, if there is one; a number for the star, if there is one; and some time spent with the major subplot, whatever it might be. In the Golden Age, and often even now, it usually involves a second romantic couple.
✂️
What distinguishes these second-couple songs that populate the middle third of the first act? People tend to refer to them as “Ado Annie songs,” and, to be sure, Annie and Will Parker have a couple of standard comedy numbers, “I Cain’t Say No,” and “Kansas City,” early on in Oklahoma!
And then there are the villain songs.
What the songs do provide is a performance opportunity based on character — a chance for a good comic to have the stage all to herself or himself and display a unique gift and the craft that goes with it. The tradition probably evolved from vaudeville, and even in modern times it often feels like a throwback to earlier times. That’s certainly the case with one of the most successful of them all, Miss Hannigan’s “Little Girls,” from Annie.
If it’s a good show, by the time we’re an hour in, we’re really getting into the story and sympathizing with the characters. By now,
the authors have led us on quite a long and circuitous ride. The hero is still far from achieving his or her goal…. And, frankly … our energy begins to flag…. [B]ut there’s still another ten minutes of story … before intermission. Almost every show solves this problem in the same way — with a high-energy number that gets everyone’s blood pumping….
Yes: by now our audience is getting restless: some need the bathroom; some want a drink; some want a smoke. High energy is required.
In Guys and Dolls, the number is “Havana,” and it’s done entirely in music and dance, no lyrics. In Company, Viertel says, it’s this:
🎭 🎭 🎭
The first-act curtain will, in a well-structured musical, come down when all the hero’s plans or hopes are in complete disarray. Or are about to be, depending on the show. Sondheim ends Act One of A Little Night Music with a rollicking number:
This one needs some unpacking, if you don’t know the musical. Petra, the maid, has delivered a fancy invitation to Anne, who is the very young wife of middle-aged Fredrik. Petra and Fredrik want to go; Anne doesn’t. She knows that Fredrik’s onetime (and age-appropriate) lover Desiree will be there. And Anne is still a virgin…. Meanwhile, Desiree’s current lover decides that he and his wife will crash the weekend after his wife, Charlotte, tells him the gossip. Sondheim:
With no finale for the first act, Hal [Prince] suggested that I write a mini-operetta about the reactions to Madame Armfeldt’s invitation, preparing the audience for Act Two, in which all the parties would assemble at the chateau. It was my first experience at writing an extended number which was a small play in itself, involving action which takes place over a period of time.
Finishing the Hat, p. 271
Intermission
One of the joys of reading these books is reading the behind-the-scenes anecdotes. Another is finding interlocking reminiscences. To wit: I have already noted that Viertel was brought into the Jujamcyn organization. By Rocco Landesman. Who produced August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson.
The Piano Lesson won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play. Landesman and Viertel made a commitment to Wilson: Jujamcyn would produce any play he wrote.
None, including The Piano Lesson, would ever make money on Broadway. But that did not matter…. “If you don’t do an August Wilson play, then why are you here? No one is going to remember the ledger,” Landesman said. ✂️
Jujamcyn’s commitment to American works would soon pay off.
Michael Riedel, Singular Sensation: The Triumph of Broadway, pp. 82-83
“The lights is blinkin’!”
- Lily Tomlin, The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe
...after which our musical must pack up all the revelations/complications Act One has successfully unpacked. All the major and secondary plots must be wrapped up in a way that satisfies the people out there in the dark. We mavens of the theater — whether we are creatives or fans — all want a show that is worthy of a standing ovation. How will we get that ovation?
[O]ne aspect of writing for the theater has barely changed since the flapper era. As if we were still lingering in the lobby, most second acts begin with something virtually expendable: the song that has nothing to do with anything. Also, in case you are there to hear it, it’s usually light and entertaining.
Here’s how the retooled Porgy and Bess (2012) opened Act Two:
Of course, the throwaway second act opener solves the problem Whoopi had with her latecomers to Forum. 😆 She handled it like a pro with lots of experience in standup...oh, yeah, she IS that pro. 😂
Exposition next, of course. And then: in early musicals (and by that I mean pre-Oklahoma!) the second number in Act Two would often be a visit with the star — a mostly scripted early standup that let audiences feel like they really got to see the star in an open moment. These moments, Viertel says, were integrated into their shows post-Oklahoma! and survive in such numbers as “This Nearly Was Mine” from South Pacific or another of my favorites (Mame):
Please keep in mind that none of the rules Viertel lays out are actual Rules. What he is trying to do is expose the spine of a successful musical; infinite variations exist. But I think I know what he means. When applied to fiction: there is an arc to a story. A brilliant writer might not need to adhere to that arc — but most will, without knowing or acknowledging it, just b/c it makes for a better story. Better? Yes: More gripping. More compelling. And there had better be characters we care about.
Second acts should come with a notice like the one you get when you order a deck chair from Home Depot: “Assembly Required.” Often there are a few apparently extraneous parts in the box that don’t seem to fit anywhere.
The reason for this is simple: subplots.
In South Pacific, of course, the Second Couple have a tragic ending when Lt. Cable is killed.
In Guys and Dolls, comedy veterans Faith Prince and Nathan Lane have what was originally a throwaway duet — but they turn it into an exploration of character...and love.
“If you have an idea, bring it to me,” [Director Jerry] Zaks said. “Don’t talk to anyone else.”
“Jerry’s rules fall somewhere between direction and Riker’s Island,” said Lane. But Lane and Prince violated Zaks’s rule. They had a duet — “Sue Me” — they felt could be more than just a throwaway comic number. Zaks was busy with so many other things they worked on the number in secret, terrified he’d find out.
Michael Riedel, Singular Sensation: The Triumph of Broadway, p. 94
Which is followed by this showstopper:
The story of Guys and Dolls is hardly resolved, or even pushed along in any meaningful way. And the credibility of the moment does not bear close scrutiny. … But who cares? “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” remains one of the glories of the American musical’s ability to lift a thousand people out of their troubles and their seats at the same time in a way that no other art form does it.
By the end of Act Two, then, all loose ends should be tied up; plotlines resolved. And then there’s the 11:00 showstopper. Sutton Foster was terrific in Anything Goes:
Fiddler does it neatly by marrying off the three oldest girls, then destroying the shtetl:
...and Curtain
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