As any reader of these posts knows by now, I have long been a follower of musical theater. I have seen most of the classics, many of them in their original Broadway incarnations. My shelves are crammed with original-cast CDs and LPs, video tapes, and DVDs. My heroes are Richard Rodgers, Irving Berlin, John Kander, Fred Ebb, Stephen Sondheim, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and their contemporaries who gave us so many wonderful memories. I have read their biographies. I play their songs on my piano.
I take my children to musicals every chance I get, and I rattle on about them when we are together. As a result, they probably think their dad knows more than anyone alive about musical theater. Sorry, kids, but a man named Ethan Mordden knows a thousand times as much about musicals as I do. His knowledge is encyclopedic, and, what’s more, he is a fine writer. If you have even a wisp of interest in the subject, I strongly recommend his series of books on Broadway musicals. The more familiar you are with the great and not-so-great shows, the more you will get out of the books, but even if you’re only dimly aware of South Pacific and The Sound of Music, you’ll enjoy the stories.
The six books in the series cover six decades, to wit:
Make Believe; The Broadway Musical in the 20s.
Sing for Your Supper: The Broadway Musical in the 30s.
Beautiful Mornin’: The Broadway Musical in the 40s.
Coming Up Roses: The Broadway Musical in the 50s.
Open a New Window: The Broadway Musical in the 60s.
One More Kiss: The Broadway Musical in the 70s.
Most people believe that the golden age of the musical was the period from the 40s (Oklahoma!, Carousel) through the 60s (Cabaret, My Fair Lady), and the best of Mordden’s work are the three books covering those decades. As the century wound down, the musicals became less innovative, the music less melodic, the lyrics less clever, and Mordden skewers the musicals of the last 25 years in “The Happiest Corpse I’ve Ever Seen.” In this acerbic wrap-up, he doesn’t mince words: Musicals, he laments, have been going downhill, for a variety of reasons. (If you doubt this, consider the number of revivals playing the Great White Way these days.)
Mordden’s writing sparkles. Here, for instance, is an excerpt from his loving description of one of my favorites, the 1963 musical She Loves Me:
It’s a superb story superbly told, an acknowledged glory of the day. The Gay Life tells a good story, but it boasts a more outgoing score and enjoyed excellent production values. The production, now, is gone and the score just a cast album. She Loves Me is a classic, because it will always surprise a willing public. Remember my matinee ladies? As She Loves Me reaches its curtain, Georg and Amalia are leaving the store on Christmas Eve. They’re about to part company. But he knows that he’s Dear Friend. And we know that he’s Dear Friend. Now she has to know. So he quietly sings to her the words of the letter she composed during “Ice Cream.”
Now she knows.
And, as Barbara Cook turned to Daniel Massey with a look at once relieved, ecstatic, and terrified, the Eugene O’Neill Theater broke into tremendous applause even before Cook reached Massey’s arms for the curtain tableau.
I was waiting for that, those women were saying. You presented a lovely tale in a unique way, and now I realize that if I am to be stimulated, inspired, and touched, it needn’t be a musical play that does it. Musical comedy can have magic moments, too.
And here is some of what Mordden has to say about The Music Man:
Now a book scene fixes Hill up with an old crony, who warns him about the local music teacher and librarian, smart and a purist in everything. But Hill’s got a band to sell, and he smoothes into “Ya Got Trouble,” setting the plot proper in motion. Why, that pool table promises nothing less than the arrival of sin in River City! The good people of the town can only protect themselves by herding their youth into a marching band of …yes! Seventy-six trombones!
Okay, we’ve had a startling novelty in the salesmen’s rap number, a mock-traditional “opening” chorus of “merry” villagers – Sigmund Romberg gone sour - and the action has kicked in painlessly, naturally. One thing’s missing – the romance. No: Here comes the music teacher, to prim, self-righteous “walking” music. Hill follows her, masher-style. We’re on.
Clearly, one of The Music Man’s unique qualities is a resuscitation of a culture that, after two world wars, television, and Elvis Presley, had utterly disappeared. Knickers, pianola, cistern, corncrib, dime novels, “so’s your old man,” stereopticon slides, Montgomery Ward, canoodling, - a goodly portion of the show’s content had been retired to the American memory bank by the 1950s. Willson is telling a story that is all but faerie today.
Spending a couple of hours watching a talented company perform one of the classic musicals is one of life’s greatest pleasures. If you can’t get to a theater, listening to an original cast recording is the next best thing. Or reading one of these books and having the plays come to life on the printed page.
