Folk

Bob Dylan’s Nobel laurels leave me vaguely discomfited. Maybe a blog exploring these feelings will help us evolve our view of what we do, just as those Swedish solons have evolved their definition of Literature.

There’s an expectation in the air. I’m supposed to be elated, or elevated in some way, by the idea that a songwriter’s oeuvre is here considered Literature. It’s not big news when the Prize goes to a novelist. Steinbeck, Faulkner, Hemingway, Morrison – to name some Americans – easily get us to nod and say, yes: they deserve it. Poets like Yeats? Sure, that’s Literature; nobody would deny it. And I didn’t cry fie! over Fo. Like O’Neill before him and Pinter later, it’s not a radical idea to honor creators of Dramatic Literature.

But Dylan? Without casting aspersions, I think we can all acknowledge that what Dylan does is significantly different than what all the other Laureates did. One pictures him – and for all I know this could be a false vision – strumming a guitar, humming a simple tune, deciding what he wants to say. In my imagination, he doesn’t even write lyrics on paper. Like the bards prior to papyrus, he could sing his song so often, words get committed to memory, not to the page.

In this scenario, Literature is not a thing that’s written down and read. And the word “Bard” connotes a poet who is often appreciated separately from being published. Homer was a Bard; Shakespeare’s the Bard. Now that the printing press exists, we’ve come to think of Literature as a thing widely appreciated by readers. And, all of a-sudden this month, it’s something else. Sure, you can find Bob Dylan lyrics in a book, but his fans are listeners.

Of course, if you’re listening, there’s no separating lyrics from music. And certainly the Nobel folk have heard the tunes. Doesn’t that give a songwriter an unfair advantage? On my bookshelf are all those huge Robert Kimball volumes, The Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin, of Oscar Hammerstein, etc. I treasure them – hell, I study them. But always keep in mind that these are words meant to be heard with tunes. So, if we read

Lay, lady, lay-
Lay across my big brass bed

the lines have limited power; when sung, they’re far more potent.

Here non-fans of Bob Dylan might interject that some of his melodies are too dull to help propel a lyric to eloquence. Like a Rolling Stone starts as a quick chant on one note – little help there.

Songwriting is unique in that way. Music and lyrics work together to get an emotion across. So it feels odd to consider Dylan’s lyrics independent of his music. And what about that voice? Bob Dylan has often been criticized for muddy articulation or an unpleasant – even grating – sound. Surely the Nobel folk aren’t rewarding that. But we listeners usually take Dylan’s words, music and voice as one inextricably interconnected bundle.

Rather than unraveling that ball of interconnection let’s talk about one of my favorite authors, Newark’s own wunderkind, Philip Roth. The man’s written so many of my most-loved novels – they’re often very funny and sometimes political – that each year I hope the Nobel Laurels will be his. But ’twas not to be, because while he turns out book after book with stunning prolificacy, some folksinger swipes his prize.

Of course, nobody really thinks that way. Except a character in a musical: Dr. Abner Sedgewick in It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman! is a mad scientist and by “mad,” I mean angry. And what riles him is that he never wins a Nobel. This leads him to such evil actions, it takes Superman to stop him.

Well, I managed to circle back to musicals. (Were you worried I wouldn’t?) If you’re in the mood, you could hear the words of another Nobel Laureate on Broadway, snarled and hissed at you (by a cast led by my Area 51 ingénue, Mamie Parris). This, if you haven’t guessed yet, is Cats, which takes doggerel by T.S. Eliot and slaps on some eclectic melodies by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Which can be cute for ten minutes or so. I mean, I’ll admit it: There are times I feel like watching a cat video. I see the cuteness. But I can’t understand the felinophiles who make an evening of it. For well over two hours. For well over a hundred dollars.

Poor Tom (I’m talking about Eliot here). He didn’t mean for these silly rhymes to be heard in a theatre. And not sung to what used to be thought of as rock. When he wanted his words heard in the theatre, he wrote plays. Like you do.

But that ugly fate of a Laureate’s output not quite working in a Broadway musical has already beset Bob Dylan. A show created from his songs, The Times They Are A-Changing, flopped ten years ago. The principal creative force behind it, Twyla Tharp, had done something similar a few seasons earlier, Movin’ Out, based on the songs of Billy Joel, and that ran for many years. I’d venture a guess that Billy Joel’s songs work better in a theatrical context because they tend to tell stories, sometimes about interesting characters, using direct and straightforward language.

But Dylan’s not that sort of songwriter. He’s willing to be a bit cryptic, or opaque – qualities that, I hasten to remind you, stop a theatre song dead in its tracks. Show-goers insist on immediate appreciation. But, as many a poem-reader knows, there’s much pleasure to be derived from meanings that slowly unravel. Especially – it must be said – if you’re high, man. Which brings me back to the decision-making in Scandinavia: What were they smoking?

Otto Frank’s song

Today’s post is not about 9/11. But it’s inspired by a musical that takes place on 9/11. And things people said about it without the benefit of having seen it.

On a newsgroup called Cast Recordings, someone posted a link to an article about the Broadway-bound Come From Away. Even though it doesn’t (yet) have a cast recording. But some numb-nuts just can’t resist the opportunity for snark. “Doesn’t this sound like a bundle of joy?? Oy….” It soon became clear that the Original Poster hadn’t seen the show, which has already played some out-of-town tryouts and a NAMT presentation. “It looks like a scaled down version of ONCE. No thanks…”

He was reacting to one photograph and the following blurb: “In a heartbeat, 38 planes and 6,579 passengers were forced to land in Gander, Newfoundland, doubling the population of one small town on the edge of the world. On September 11, 2001 the world stopped. On September 12, their stories moved us all.”

FRANK: Let’s all judge this new original musical based on a three sentence premise and a partial cast list and then move to another thread where we complain that we have too many movie to musical adaptations running on Broadway.

ORIGINAL POSTER: yes, let’s…

OTTO: How much more than “a musical about people stranded on September 11”, do you need to hear before you realize it’s a lousy idea? “A gay romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden”.

FRANK: I’m not sure what seems lousy about that idea… I know nothing about this show but I’d rather wait until I know more than the basic setup of the story before damning it to oblivion.

OTTO: It’s a musical about a tragic time in the US, who wants to relive that in a musical?? I don’t. I lived through it once. That was enough for me!

FRANK: We’ve had plenty of musicals set during tragic times that have done quite well. Considering this musical is set at an airport quite far from the bulk of 9/11’s landmarks, I’m not sure there’s going to be a lot of tragedy in the story.

OTTO: It may be emotional, but it’s not the kind of thing people want to see on Broadway.

ORIGINAL POSTER: Exactly.

OTTO: Even the pitch makes it sound fringe-y. What about a musical that examines the thoughts of hostages while they’re waiting to be killed? It would be like A Chorus Line, but with beheadings, instead of headshots.

FRANK: This is not a musical about hostages waiting to be killed…are you mad? “Come From Away, the new rock musical that explores the lasting connection forged between a group of travelers whose planes were diverted to a small Newfoundland town on September 11, 2001.” Where does it say that?

SOMEONE ELSE: I haven’t seen it, but it seems many are missing the point: these are the lucky people of 9/11. They were stuck, feeling helpless, and burdened with survivor guilt — much like the rest of us on that horrible day — but they ended up making lifelong friendships and realizing how precious life is (in part because it is so tenuous). I think it could turn out to be a great healing show, much as Oklahoma! was for WWII audiences.

(my song, from A Time for Heroes and Hoagies, 2002)

Another had a similar memory to my own: When I read in the Times that Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler were preparing a show about a killer whose accomplice bakes his victim’s bodies into pies, who then gets caught when a customer bites into an ear. Sounded unlikely. But, intrepid theatre-goer that I am, I bought a ticket and saw Sweeney Todd from a great orchestra seat one month into its run.

NOEL KATZ: People who judge a show by its blurb are one of the biggest problems in the musical theatre biz today. (“You can’t judge a book by how literate it look.” – Sondheim)

Suppose someone writes an excellent musical that audiences love, BUT, the three sentences don’t make it sound good. Judgments based on blurbs stop it from getting produced. Look- you stepped on a hat.

OTTO: Sorry. That argument applies to a show that is badly summarized in the pitch. But this is enough to determine it’s a bad idea. Unless it has nothing to do with September 11, in which case, boy, what a confusing blurb.

NOEL KATZ: Continue to respond to blurbs, if that’s what amuses you. Me, I’ll continue to attend the wonderful new musicals you’ll never see because they sound like they might be bad.

OTTO: Sometimes, you have to pay attention to the warning signs. As Joe Queenan put it, he went to see Cats, which, much to his amazement, “turned out to be about a bunch of cats”.

NOEL KATZ: “Stage mom cows untalented daughter into becoming a stripper.” Ooh, that sounds awful. Can’t be good. Skip it.

OTTO: No, that sounds interesting.

FRANK: I cannot believe this

NOEL KATZ: “Ludicrous” isn’t quite the word for this plague of thinking shows are bad based on their blurbs. “Ruinous?” “Destructive?” Musical theater is a genre in which the audience has to take a leap of faith. Songs you’ve never heard. A plot you don’t know. If you’re unable to take the leap, you’re part of the problem

OTTO: Sorry, the problem is that producers are willing to waste $12 million of people’s money on shows that never looked like a good idea, based on that “You can’t tell from the pitch . . . or the reading . . . or the workshop. You can’t tell if it’s a good idea until you do a full production, on Broadway. ” Then it becomes even harder to get investors. Not good shows that never found their audience, like Ragtime, or Titanic, or Sideshow. Lousy ideas that someone should realize aren’t suitable for Broadway.

I didn’t say it on the thread, but I love that he brought up Sideshow. Its premise sounded terrible to me until I saw it done as a slapstick comedy with a cast of four called From the Hip.

NOEL KATZ: Judging shows by their blurbs, or books by their titles (The Catcher in the Rye – can’t be worth reading) is the scourge of our time. Today, there’d be instant rejection of

“Poor milkman arranges to have his daughter marry wealthy butcher, then reneges. Entire town forced to evacuate at end.”

Or…

“Tart with heart thinks she’s finally broken her cycle of dating men who abuse her. But she’s wrong.”

OTTO: You know, you’re just picking random things and writing bad blurbs, which entirely misses the point. The point is that, as a basis for a Broadway musical, the topic stinks, not the specific details of the story. It’s irrelevant that you can write a dopey description of a good show. We’re not basing our opinion on the blurb. All we need to hear is that it’s a musical about September 11. That’s not the blurb; that’s the topic.

NOEL KATZ: This attitude, of judging by topic rather than by the quality of music, lyrics or book is a significant impediment to the progress of musicals today. “Berliners during Nazis’ rise.” sounds like an unlikely topic for a musical, and yet…

Could be I took such umbrage at Otto’s rush to judgment because some of my shows have been hard sells. I can entertain an audience for an evening. Generating interest with a three-sentence description: a much tougher nut to crack.

(names changed and lightly edited)

The fight

Peter Filichia’s column last week argued in favor of perfect rhyming. I’ve written about the issue before and often find myself debating with those who feel false rhyming is somehow more authentic, or modern, or not so necessary for audiences today. The question inevitably boils down to comprehension: If you want your audience to have an easier time understanding words that are sung, you’ll help them out by using words that truly rhyme.

I’m busy, these days, preparing a new production of my revue, The Things We Do For Love for an upcoming national tour. So, I hope you’ll excuse my taking the course of least resistance, creating a post made up of old notes that were drafted on my phone. I look at them and wonder what point I was rebutting. You might, too.

But here’s what I hear:

• That rhyming correctly is a “mode” that worked in the twentieth century, but no longer.
• Today’s audiences, accustomed to the assonances of pop songs, don’t need perfect rhymes in order to enjoy a show.
• The success of jukebox musicals made up of old rock songs is proof that misrhymed material engages viewers.
• That my insistence that the craft used by Sondheim, Hammerstein, Harnick, et al continue to be employed will inevitably bring about the death of musical theatre.

I wish I was making any of this up. I’m not.

Here are some of my responses:

All the great lyricists – Loesser, Hammerstein, Harnick, Sondheim – used perfect rhyme and had at least four Broadway hits. Perfect rhyme, demonstrably, aids comprehension; it makes a new score more understandable on first hearing. Pop writers don’t get this because they’ve had success, with false rhymes, in a field where repeated listenings are common. Once you’ve rhymed badly, the audience can’t trust you’ll ever rhyme well again and so is forced to listen harder. And can you name an American misrhymer who’s had four shows on Broadway?

There’s a distinction between lyrics that call attention to themselves and those that flow out of the mouths of characters just as naturally as dialogue would. I’ve been talking about the latter. I’m in complete agreement about the squabble rhyme — (Sondheim: Should there be a marital squabble/Available Bob’ll/Be there) –sounding more like a lyricist showing he’s clever than birthday party guests communicating organically. One can (and I’d say one should) utilize perfect rhymes in a way that the audience is never thinking about the writer because they’re totally engaged by what the character has to say. Good writing isn’t noticeable as such. But bad rhyming usually makes me wince: I’m taken out of the play, thinking about some creator who couldn’t bother to do another draft.

Rap is a genre in which slant rhymes and assonance are employed and the listener does think, admiringly, about the cleverness of the lyricist. Fans of hip hop are used to listening with a greater degree of concentration than typical theatre-goers because they derive enjoyment from the rhymes. Stage shows don’t do that much anymore, and the heyday of that sort of thing was the 1930s. After Rodgers & Hart amused with cleverness, Rodgers & Hammerstein taught the world to react to personages on stage, not behind the scenes.

Hamilton is positively a perfect storm of different genres. Like no musical in recent memory, we prick up our ears and appreciate rhyming and verbal wit. There’s also a meta component: In a freestyle rap performance you cheer for the clever improviser. Here, you watch brilliant lines pour forth from various Founding Fathers and applaud Lin-Manuel Miranda, who’s right there on stage. The cabinet rap battle is explicitly a contest: Which character can rhyme with greater wit, brains?

You might not know: I love rap battles. Miranda has spoken in detail about different types of rhymes, when to employ them, and he’s written in many genres. He knows what he’s doing, and gets rewarded with full audiences ready, willing and able to really use their ears.

It’s likely that the topic comes up repeatedly because of our mass obsession with Hamilton. I’m often asked, by those who know my distaste for false rhymes, how I could have enjoyed (nay: loved) the latest Pulitzer Prize winner. My answer is that the boatload of bad rhymes in Hamilton is the flaw in the diamond. Lin-Manuel Miranda intended to draw a parallel between Founding Fathers and recent rap artists so he chose to include the sort of near-rhyme commonly used in rap. The result is a sort of a chore for the audience: We have to listen hard, with far greater than usual concentration to make sure we hear every word. We don’t get the familiar aid to comprehension real rhymes provide. But we’re rewarded for our attention. So much of the text is so brilliant in so many ways (other than rhyming), it’s worth pricking up your ears. Paradoxically, sometimes we’re even amused by the cleverness of a near rhyme:

lock up your daughters and horses; of course it’s hard to have intercourse over four sets of corsets

But here’s the thing: Lyrics have to do a lot of things – fit on music, be “singable” by a human voice, forward the plot, convey subtext as well as text, sound natural coming out of the mouth of the character singing them, use vocabulary reflecting the show’s setting, eschew cliché for clichés are too easily dismissed, make the audience feel emotions, etc. – rhyming is merely one of them. We could talk about those other things (in other posts, when I’m less busy) but rhyming is so much easier to discuss. You can always tell when you’ve heard a false rhyme. Never, ever, in a song of mine.

A revue of my songs, The Things We Do For Love, plays the Duplex May 25, 2016.

You are so fair

It’s OK to disagree. I feel that Sheldon Harnick (of Fiddler on the Roof, and She Loves Me, now playing) is our greatest living lyricist. You probably think Stephen Sondheim is our greatest living lyricist. And that’s fine. We can agree to disagree. What’s not so fine is to hold these two titans to completely different standards.

So, remember the time that esteemed songwriter made a joke about domestic violence? I do. Now, you might believe that wife-beating is so horrifying it must NEVER BE JOKED ABOUT. And, God knows, I’ve encountered enough people who believe Carousel condones or excuses marital abuse – I’ve debunked that before – but at least Hammerstein doesn’t joke about that which must NEVER BE JOKED ABOUT. Brace yourselves, sensitive souls, I’m about to quote two lyrics.

The Very Next Man, from Fiorello:

I shall marry the very next man who asks me
You’ll see
Next time I feel
That a man’s about to kneel
He won’t have to plead or implore
I’ll say “Yes” before his knee hits the floor

No more waiting around
No more browsing through “True Romance”
I’ve seen the light
So, while there’s a chance
I’m going to marry the very next man who asks me

Start rehearsing the choir
Tie some shoes on my Chevrolet
Pelt me with rice and catch my bouquet
I’m going to marry the very next man

If he adores me
What does it matter if he bores me?
If I allow the man to carry me off
No more will people try to marry me off

No more living alone
No more cheating at solitaire
Holding my breath for one special man
Why, I could smother for all he’d care
I’m through being wary
I’ll marry the very next man

No more daydreams for me
Find the finest of bridal suites
Chill the champagne and warm up the sheets
I’m going to marry the very next man

And if he likes me
Who cares how frequently he strikes me?
I’ll fetch his slippers with my arm in a sling
Just for the privilege of wearing his ring.

New York papers, take note
Here’s a statement that you can quote:
Waiting for ships that never come in
A girl is likely to miss the boat
I’m through being wary
I’ll marry the very next man

We’re Gonna Be All Right, from Do I Hear a Waltz, “original” version as heard in Side By Side By Sondheim:

Eddie: Honeybunch,
Sad to say, but I have a hunch,
Screen romances went out to lunch,
That’s no reason to pout.

Don’t look bleak,
Happy endings can spring a leak,
“Ever after” can mean one week,
We’re just having a drought.
Smile and sweat it out.

If we can just hang on,
We’ll have compatibility.
No need to worry,
We’re gonna be all right.
One day the ache is gone,
There’s nothing like senility.
So what’s your hurry?
We’re gonna be all right.

Meanwhile, relax!
I’ll take a lover, you take a lover.
When that’s played out,
They’ll get the axe,
We can retire,
Sit by the fire,
Fade out.

We’ll build our house upon
The rock of my virility.
You better scurry,
We’re gonna be all night,
Oh, boy! we’re gonna be all right.

Jennifer: I was told
“Just be faithful and never scold,”
Sounded easy, so I was sold.
I’ve been miserable since.

I was taught
When the prince and the dragon fought,
That the dragon was always caught.
Now I don’t even wince
When it eats the prince.

I know the perfect pair
Their lives are at the pinnacle.
But how do we know
They’re gonna be all right?

The bride is slightly square,
The groom is slightly cynical.
A little vino,
They’re gonna be all right.

She aims to please,
She has a baby,
Then, though they may be
Having fine times,
When there’s a crease,
She has another,
Now she’s a mother
Nine times!

It all went wrong, but where?
Details are strictly clinical.
She’s out in Reno,
The kids adored the flight,
Hey ho, they’re gonna be all right.
Eddie: Things will heal.
I know couples who look ideal,
They no longer know what they feel,
They’ve been practicing charm.

All is well,
‘Least as far as their friends can tell.
Please ignore the peculiar smell,
There’s no cause for alarm.
Mildew will do harm.

Jennifer: What if her brain is dead?

Eddie: What if he’s ineffectual?

Both: They look delicious,
They’re gonna be all right.

They both go right to bed
When they feel intellectual.
No one’s suspicious,
They’re gonna be all right.

Jennifer: Who’s on the skids?
She’ll go to night school–

Eddie: If it’s the right school,
He’ll permit her.

Jennifer: They love their kids,
They love their friends, too–

Eddie: Lately, he tends to
Hit her.

Jennifer: Sometimes she drinks in bed,

Eddie: Sometimes he’s homosexual.

Both: But why be vicious?
They keep it out of sight!
Good show!
They’re gonna be all right.
And so,
We’re gonna be all right.
Hey ho!
We’re gonna be all right!

Now, with the disinterest of a Supreme Court justice or a Solomon the Wise, try to apply a principle as fairly as you can. Is one acceptable and the other not?

Sondheim mavens know the checkered history of We’re Gonna Be All Right. In a brash and somewhat shocking manner, for 1965, Sondheim’s lyric wittily depicts an unhappy married couple. Composer Richard Rodgers, legend tells us, played it for his wife of 35 years and then told his collaborator all the cynical stuff had to be cut. I know a lot of people who are outraged by this. They take Rodgers refusal to include “sometimes he’s homosexual” as evidence of the composer’s homophobia.

(Rodgers, of course, spent two and a half decades collaborating with Lorenz Hart, and their workday often began with Rodgers finding Hart in the men’s room of a seedy bar, asleep on the floor where he’d had gay sex the night before. Rodgers fed him coffee until he was sober and awake enough to write. Sound like a homophobe to you?)

At this point in their careers, though, nobody knew more about writing musicals than Richard Rodgers. No one had done more to revolutionize the form. Sondheim had three hits behind him, and West Side Story was certainly an innovation, but not for its lyrics, the one aspect he was responsible for. I see the cutting of the sardonic stanzas as evidence that Rodgers was a brilliant musical dramatist, and these mockeries just didn’t fit how these characters were portrayed in the rest of the show.

But the Steve-adores insist that they’re brilliant, as they insist that all Sondheim lyrics are brilliant. Day after day after day after day after day after day after day. (“Brilliant!”) And they knock Richard Rodgers as an old fogie – he was 62 – who couldn’t recognize the genius of “Lately he tends to hit her.”

Whup! – there it is: The thing that NEVER BE JOKED ABOUT, joked about. Except here rabid fans nudge each other, “Oh, that Steve! He’s such a card.”

Around the time of Do I Hear a Waltz, female stand-up comedians started to appear on television. Early Joan Rivers and Phyllis Diller routines routinely featured self-deprecating humor. In real life, there exist gals who are desperate for dates, and maintain they’re not pretty enough to attract men. Distaff stand-ups asserted themselves by making such jokes themselves: “I’d date anyone with a pulse!” “Is he breathing? I’ll marry him!”

Here in the twenty-first century, that type of humor seems, I don’t know, hoary. (Look it up!) But one era’s comedy often seems not-so-funny a half-century afterwards. And it’s not as if we go around asking writers to rewrite their old jokes for an evolved sensibility.

Except that’s exactly what happened to Sheldon Harnick. Someone he knew had a daughter in high school, doing a production of Fiorello. (And it’s here I stop to exclaim: “A high school doing Fiorello? I want to go to there!”)

In a new era, with a new sensibility, the humor of a World War One-era spinster quipping that she’d happily marry a wife-beater, seemed wrong, and Harnick wrote this replacement:

When he proposes

I’ll have him bring me tons of roses

Sweet scented blossoms I’ll enjoy by the hour

Why should I wait around for one little flower?

Which is significantly less funny. And rather show-specific, as you have to understand that Fiorello LaGuardia was known as The Little Flower. The people over at Encores, who have twice done Fiorello (with the new politically-correct line) are now preparing to do Do I Hear a Waltz. Will they include Sondheim’s “Lately he tends to hit her?” Should they? What do you say?

The jury’s still out.

Entreaty

The Hamilton casting notice brouhaha is no even-handed controversy. It’s childish carping by callous and prejudiced people railing against people of color who’ve been mistreated far too often for far too long. I don’t really want to waste a post railing against the railers. So let’s talk about Brigadoon.

Brigadoon is about a magic town in Scotland that disappears and reappears every hundred years. It’s stumbled on by two post-war Americans, and this prompts some excellent songs. I particularly admire how composer Frederick Loewe gets the best-known tune, Almost Like Being In Love, to fit both the contemporary vernacular and also 18^th century Great Britain. I played the lead in this show when I was in Eighth Grade. The following year, my high school did it. And, unsurprisingly, every production I’ve ever seen of Brigadoon has used an all-white cast.

Now, why is that? Well, in the theatre, we blithely accept the idea that a director has a vision for a show. Most directors want to cast their 18^th century Scottish town with nothing but white folks, because that’s how Scotland really was. And they don’t trust that the audience will accept Anglo-Saxons played by People of Color.

Yet, they do trust that the audience will accept that a town has a magic curse placed on it, which involves everybody going to sleep and waking up in the next century. Because, you see, that sort of thing happens all the time.

As does people breaking out in song.

But, yeah, we respect that “director’s vision” thing. And we’re fine with directors casting whomever they want. It’s not as if we require that directors cast the most talented performers that can be found. Some, it seems, would rather see an all-white Brigadoon than a Brigadoon cast with the most talented performers available: a certain percentage of those are minorities. If theatre were a meritocracy, the magical hamlet in the highlands would have a multi-racial population.

actual casting notice for Bright Star

I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Performers of Color truly encounter casting notices that say “only Caucasians will be considered” both literally and in effect, all the time. We writers look at this situation and sometimes respond by creating characters that either CAN be cast non-white, or MUST be cast non-white. Two of my shows starred the rich-voiced actor Jay Aubrey Jones. In one he played a character written as black; in the other he played a character with no race designated. He was wonderful in both roles.

Suppose you’ve written a musical filled with MUST-be-minority roles. And it’s a smash hit. As a result every young performer really really wants to be in it. Your casting notice for replacements for those roles might be totally upfront and honestly state that, this time, no whites will be considered. The writer, in this case, had a vision, and the director shares it, telling a story with ethnic minorities. Who’s going to complain about this want ad?

Only a beneficiary of White Privilege who is blind to the realities Performers of Color face. A typical day in the life of a non-white actor involves auditioning for white directors who don’t, can’t or won’t imagine any dark faces in the cast. This season’s two most notable musicals, Hamilton and Shuffle Along, represent a rare reversal of the status quo. They’re celebrations of not-so-pale talent. If you’re going to complain about that, you’re an asshole.

The so-called “civil rights attorney” who started the current kerfuffle is right in line with bigots you hear calling in to right wing talk radio, shouting about white folks’ rights being taken away. As if fair treatment of other ethnicities will lessen their white privilege somehow. I long ago gave up listening to talk radio in disgust. I’m incensed to read about something similar in theatre-related media.

But here’s another problem. So-called “theatre journalists” aren’t really doing their job. They print press releases as truth; they don’t take the trouble to figure out whether a story’s worth reporting. This one was not, and only served to make a lot of people angry and give publicity to an undeserving asshole lawyer. [Insert joke here.]

It’s easy to imagine this on a broader scale: What if national journalists gave free media exposure to an asshole plutocrat who regularly made racist statements?

Nah: That could never happen here.

Don’t hang up

Today is the birthday of the musical theatre’s two most famous composers, Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Last year, I made some criticisms of Sondheim the day after his 85^th birthday that greatly upset some people. And this reaction, I think, is evidence that the man has some rabid fans. Of course, every artist has fans of many a type: These two have written musicals that have entertained a whole lot of people over the years. They’ve earned a certain amount of adulation. But a rabid fan is one who sees red when even a small critique is heard. And that’s not using the old noggin. It simply can’t be that each and every thing any artist has done is automatically wonderful.

This year, Andrew Lloyd Webber has a new hit musical on Broadway, School of Rock. Good for him: I congratulate him on this accomplishment because it’s been 22 years since he had a new hit in New York, and 22 years is quite a long time. And 29 years is an even longer time: That’s the number of years since the last new Sondheim success.

And yet, to much of the world, Lloyd Webber and Sondheim are the big deal creative forces; everybody else is obscure, small potatoes. And that’s so, so… 1980s. Looking back, there was a 17-year stretch where Sondheim spoiled us all by producing eight really interesting shows. (Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along, Sunday in the Park With George, Into the Woods) It’s very disappointing that the 29 years after Into the Woods we got to see so little from a formerly prolific artist. One show on Broadway, and two off-Broadway, one of which was later remounted by a subsidized theatre on Broadway. And here I’ll throw in an opinion: the two shows that played The Great White Way were less than great and a little dim, Passion and Assassins.

I don’t think Lloyd Webber’s nearly as good as Sondheim, but at least he kept trying. The second richest of all British composers, he could have sat at home in his palatial estate counting royalty checks. Instead, he made the effort to premiere a number of new shows since Sunset Boulevard:

• Whistle Down the Wind
• The Beautiful Game
• The Woman In White
• Love Never Dies
• Stephen Ward

Heard of them? His blockbusters of the 1980s – Evita, Cats, and Phantom of the Opera – had a lot of us believing he might come up with another hit far sooner than he did. Many cattily assert that these efforts failing to catch fire have a lot to do with the Lord Lloyd Webber’s talent. And yet very few criticize Sondheim for not giving us more to see for so many years. I am shocked – shocked, I say! – that the rest of the world lets him off the hook. As I jocularly like to put it, “Hey Stephen Sondheim: Whatcha done for us lately?”

We’ve got nothing like “publish or perish” in the theatre, but at what point does your inaction mean you deserve to get your poetic license revoked? And is someone’s 86th birthday an inappropriate time to ask this question? Ach, I’m in more of a mood to look at who are the true leaders of the last three decades, and also who influenced me.

The dominant show-writers of the 1990s were Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens. While Flaherty often reveals a pop sensibility in his repeated accompaniment figures (oo-la, oo-la), the team’s strong suit is their theatricality. While the level of craft is exceptionally high, what impresses me is their ability to dig into the dramatic core of the story. This leads to some of the most emotional songs I know, such as Princess, Ti Moune and Our Children.

Ahrens also collaborated with Alan Menken, a musical Midas who writes the songs the whole world loves. Now, you might attribute Menken’s stunning success to having highly-promoted Disney films to write for. But his songs keep charting, and, yes, there’s an inevitable drive to bring these properties to Broadway, where, owing to the fact that today’s audiences love a familiar title and score, they run for quite some time.

A generation younger is Bobby Lopez, who’s also had chart-topping success for Disney, and, for the stage, wrote the two funniest musicals of the century, Avenue Q and The Book of Mormon. I’m proud to have been aware of Bobby’s work years before others were, and can say the same about Jeanine Tesori – a much higher number of years in her case. It pleases me, but doesn’t surprise me, that the world has finally caught on the impressively varied brilliance of Violet, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Fun Home.

Great as those five are, I personally feel I’m more influenced by William Finn and the smart team of Richard Maltby, Jr. and David Shire. Here on my desk are complex numbers I’ve been working on in which people argue. It’s the sort of thing Finn does brilliantly. His songs have fire and energy, but never seem to be far away from a touch of madness. I also love how his songs rarely outlive their welcome. They make a point, and end, and the show moves on – the brevity I aspire to. Maltby & Shire, I’d argue, are the best lyricist and best composer working today. Those tunes make turns: the melodies travel to unexpected places; the lyrics tickle and delight and pack an emotional wallop. When I hear What Could Be Better?, or One of the Good Guys, or, nowadays, Stop Time, I think, my God: these guys are writing the story of my life.

Flaherty, Ahrens, Menken, Lopez, Tesori, Finn, Maltby & Shire, I guess, are the great eight, far more important and influential (and, damn it, better) than today’s birthday boys. But let’s wish Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim many happy returns. …To the theatre!

Chorale

Cabin In the Sky, the Encores reconstruction at City Center is a cheerful earful from 1940 that speaks to our fraught present in some intriguing ways. Composer Vernon Duke had some initial doubts that he, a Russian émigré, was the right writer for the project. And you think about his reticence and you might go, damn straight: This is a musical about black people, and religion is an important element, and the story would be best told by black artists – the one Duke who should be on this project is Ellington.

75 years later, we don’t particularly want to hear what white people have to say about the African-American experience. We, as a theatre community, sometimes bend over backwards to ensure the authenticity of shows about minorities. I can now reveal that I once thought of writing an opera about Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill. One thing that stopped me was that it’s considered wrong, in certain circles, for a white guy to give voice to black characters. Years later, I was writing a musical about Jewish characters at a religious retreat. Something nagged inside of me: I’m not a religious person; I have no spiritual beliefs. Ergo, I’m the wrong guy to write this show.

But let’s consider the alternate universe in which nothing held me back and Clarence and Anita got produced at New York City Opera. Then the title roles would be filled by black performers who’d get raves, adulation and career propulsion. Here in the real world, there are tons of performers-of-color who are underused, and get typed out at auditions for The Sound of Music and Fiddler on the Roof. And New York City Opera ceased to exist.

If you’re miffed that the world of musical comedy is not a meritocracy, seeing an all-black cast can be cathartic. LaChanze is one of the outstanding performers of our time but the opportunities to see her are far too few. (Compare Mary Testa, for instance.) Norm Lewis has the voice that melts, a honeyed resonance. Chuck Cooper can still bring it. I’m not an expert on dance, but the original Cabin in the Sky had Katherine Dunham and it’s easy to imagine a dancer in this ensemble going on to change the world. Nine blocks downtown, audiences accept people of color cast as the faces you see on money. We don’t flinch when characters break out into song. And yet a black Henry Higgins or Asian Dolly Levi – well, that’s just not done.

The Motion Picture Academy has been under heavy criticism for the lack of black nominees in the acting award categories. A black friend tweeted, during the big blizzard: “It looks like the Oscars out there.” One observation about all of this: Artists thrive on freedom. We need fewer unwritten rules about what we can’t do. And, sometimes, a bunch of white dudes writing about black people can produce a wholly positive piece of entertainment. The history of race relations in this country is harrowing, disturbing in the extreme. But it hasn’t been 100% bad, and, in the rarely-seen musical Cabin in the Sky, well, nab yourself a ticket and see for yourself.

First and foremost is Vernon Duke’s music. When he was young, George Gershwin took him under his wing. In this score, song after song makes use of jazz, just as George might have. (He died a few years before it was written, but he saw brother Ira collaborate with Duke, most notably on the standard, I Can’t Get Started.) Melodies like these constantly surprise us. We can’t predict where they’re going, when the next blue note will pop up. I’m reminded of Stephen Sondheim’s criticism of my favorite song, which mentions a constantly surprising refrain. Sondheim says there’s no such thing. Well, he’s wrong and Duke’s achievement here is the perfect rebuttal.

One odd thing: The score is not wholly original. There are a couple of traditional numbers for gospel choirs. The Duke songs (with lyrics by John LaTouche) stand side by side with The Real Thing and manage to hold there own. I was particularly taken with a duet about a Virginia home on the Nile, but every unfamiliar number tickles with its unpredictability.

As I was appreciating this, God help me, I thought of the current shlockmeister Frank Wildhorn. His tunes are so obvious, I can predict most of the notes before they arrive. As a result, I’m bored, uninterested and unengaged. Duke, like Gershwin, employs the element of surprise to most pleasing effect. At Encores, the songs are put across by brilliant vocalists such as LaChanze and Norm Lewis. The large orchestra, under the baton of Rob Berman, is in shimmering Big Band Era form. And the dances are especially entertaining: Camille A. Brown’s responsible for these, as no evidence remains of what George Balanchine did originally.

The other thing that doesn’t remain: orchestrations. So who should Encores call upon to whip up new ones, but Jonathan Tunick. Both Brown and Tunick’s work enabled me to fantasize I was taking in what audiences did in 1940.

Do I have anything negative to say? I do. Something that the authors didn’t understand is that a character, alone on stage, expressing sadness about her love life is less than riveting. We’ve seen the story; we know she’s sad. We really don’t need to hear about it. That’s telling us something we already know, and no matter how mellifluous the tune, or how vibrant the singing, self-pity is bound to be uncompelling on stage. Shows like this, pre-Oklahoma!, didn’t know better. But we do today, so you can all stop writing those doormat dirges, O.K.?

But listen to Duke. Study the way he applied his classical Russian music education to the realm of jazz, and you’ll begin to understand the fascination of a well-wrought tune. The example’s on stage though Valentine’s Day. Go give that sweet gift to yourself.

Moo-goo-gai-pan

A few weeks ago, Broadway actress Samantha Massell had the chutzpah to tweet something that needs to be said. Thought about. Discussed. It’s about those omnipresent bootleg videos taken of Broadway shows. I loved the way she dealt with those who tweeted back their views. And, over on Facebook, I got involved in a parallel discussion.

Since I write these musings in advance, I’m writing this during a holiday. So, I’m going to attempt to adapt my comments into an essay about bootlegging. That’s not as easy as it sounds, but hey, you gotta let me slack off a bit on a holiday, right?

To the gentleman in the third row BLATANTLY filming our whole show on his iPhone. Shame on you!

A fellow cast member (the show is Fiddler on the Roof) chimed in:

So apparently there was a dude filming our show tonight. It would be appropriate if I choked him instead of Tevye with my pearls yes? #Fruma

Someone tweeted back:

the thing is, I’m too poor to see the play IRL. I live for those people who record the shows.

Massell answered:

I DEEPLY appreciate that, but live theatre is LIVE for a reason. I’m NOT paid extra when my work appears on youtube

And when someone else offered that video-takers could be subtler about it, Massell retorted:

The distraction, while annoying, is NOT the issue. The issue is that filming a live show is THEFT

Bootleggers, and people who watch bootlegs, don’t see it as “theft” but make a variety of specious arguments justifying the practice of surreptitiously recording videos of Broadway shows. Let’s look at a few of these:

     I can’t afford it.

Broadway performers train for years, paying large sums to voice teachers, acting coaches, dance lessons, etc. It costs many millions to mount a Broadway show. Anyone who steals a peek at a bootleg is robbing the hard-working performers and the angels who back the show. “I steal only what I can’t afford,” is something Aladdin sings, the scamp.

But theatre should be affordable because stage artists want their work seen by the highest number of people possible.

Do they? You know, there already is entertainment professionally recorded and available on Netflix for a small fee, something called “motion pictures.” Less-than-rich folk enjoy them all the time. Broadway is a luxury item, like a Rolls Royce; it’s not supposed to be affordable to most. Broadway artists, deservedly or not, are considered the best in the business. “Theft” was the term used by the Fiddler actress. I assume because she signed a contract to perform for a maximum of 1900 people 8 times a week for a couple thou. So, if you’re not among those 1900, and also aren’t compensating her, you’re “stealing” her work.

But, sometimes, theatres outside of New York decide to produce shows they wouldn’t have otherwise been familiar with without the bootleg.

Interesting point. I know I’d like it if a bootleg of one of my shows led to new productions. What show were we talking about, again? Fiddler on the Roof? Ever hear of it?

A bootleg’s my only option.

I realize some people are shut-ins with medical reasons they can’t travel to Broadway. I’m sympathetic to that plight, and am reminded of an old friend who had a moderate income, is confined to a wheelchair, lived in Pennsylvania and attended Broadway shows frequently. Me, I worked until 4 a.m. at jobs that threatened to kill my soul just so I could earn enough to attend NY theatre. So: Really? A bootleg’s your only option?

Theatre people want their work seen by as wide an audience as possible.

No: you’re thinking of TV & film people. The actress tweeting is an artist performing for a full house at the Broadway. She does what she does for them, and not for the surreptitious camera. Performing for the camera is another beast entirely.
Now, I agree it might be nice if all parties agreed to a wide distribution like the Met Opera and National Theatre experiments. But the chorus of fans insisting they somehow deserve Broadway entertainment for free isn’t helping to bring that about.

But what about performers and writers who are glad that they are made?

I’ve no doubt there are plenty of Broadway artists who are glad that bootlegs have been made. But one can’t therefore assume everybody’s pleased. There were, years ago, hard-fought negotiations with various stage unions that created the Lincoln Center Library archive: In that case, every party agreed to a rather limited showing. Why can you only see each video once? So you can’t steal the staging. I empathize with directors who’ve worked hard to create stage pictures that are then copied by hundreds of creativity-deprived directors for no compensation. Would you feel flattered, or robbed?

If someone gets a bootleg of a performance by the OBC of The Golden Apple, how is that preventing anyone from getting the pay that they should be getting?

The mention of The Golden Apple gets me thinking about its composer, Jerome Moross, who only wrote one Broadway musical. I don’t know much about him, but let’s speculate that one of the reasons he didn’t write more is that he didn’t feel he was fairly remunerated for the tremendous amount of work it took to create that incredible score. He didn’t live to see the world we have today, in which income for Broadway composers hasn’t risen significantly, but the number of consumers has grown exponentially. And it’s not that theatres have gotten bigger. It’s that cultural thieves have discovered a way to enjoy Broadway shows without giving one penny to the people who’ve worked so hard to put the show on. Several of the best musical theatre writers of my generation stopped writing musicals because they could earn much more money in Hollywood. Bootleggers provide a disincentive for many musical theatre creators to stay in the business.

I don’t point all this out in order to say “shame on you for watching bootlegs!” But something is rotten when an entitled class sups on our art when we didn’t authorize it. I’m led to fantasize the following revenge scenario: Some guy whose bootleg has been viewed a million times on the internet gets sued for a million dollars times the price of the show’s ticket. If he claims “I can’t afford it,” he’ll be drawn, quartered, and forced to sit through Mamma Mia again and again.

Casual sex Fridays

Way back in the forties, my favorite songwriter, Frank Loesser, wrote a humorous duet for him and his wife to perform at Hollywood parties. Everybody loved it; so much so that eventually one of the party guests put it into a movie where it promptly won an Oscar. Over the seventy plus years, two unintended things happened to the song: It became associated with the Christmas season and it’s become criticized as a callous depiction of date rape.

WTF?

How can such a thing happen to a song? Baby, It’s Cold Outside has unhappily evolved from universal appreciation to widespread condemnation. I believe this has less to do with the song itself than the ways society has evolved. George S. Kaufman quipped that satire is what closes Saturday night. In this case, poking a little fun at – what to call this? – a mating ritual, lasted over sixty years before a committed band of killjoys drew it to its close.

Let’s be frank. (And then, later, let’s be Frank.) There is a scenario that occurs in life. Couples who feel an attraction think about having sex. In the stereotypical twentieth century situation, the male works his charms in hopes that the female will agree to sexual contact of some sort, while the female is bound, by societal restrictions, to put up some resistance. I’m calling this a stereotype: it truly happens with a certain frequency. Sometimes it doesn’t happen at all: There are times when the woman is the aggressor and the man puts on the brakes. Sometimes, the couple has mutual willingness, or mutual unwillingness. The male-pursuer/female-resistor thing has been portrayed, in various works of art, thousands of times.

You got a problem with that? Does any of this bother you? Is there some harm in admitting these sorts of scenes go on? Or is your view of heterosexual tussling clouded by the existence of tragic and traumatic male-female interactions?

There’s gotta be a word for you, for the purposes of this discussion. I’ll make up one, SenSoul, and I don’t mean that as an insult. There’s plenty of reasons to be a SenSoul these days. For instance, there’s been greater awareness, in this new century, of a different but not wholly dissimilar scenario: when women are coerced or forced into having sex. That, it should be needless to say, is a terrible thing. And here we must pause to define two types of men.

I’m reminded of a line Joel Grey once sang in a musical set in the middle ages, decrying rape: “It’s no fun unless they want to rape you back.” Gentlemen, to use an old-fashioned term, are interested in mutually-desired sex. They may employ many a technique to get the gal in the mood (beaux’ stratagems?), but if she doesn’t want it, he doesn’t want it either. What word for the ungentlemanly? Punks? Punks don’t care what the woman wants. Her “no” is trumped by his bestial desire. His strategies might include plying with excessive amounts of alcohol, or slipping her a drug while she’s not looking.

In 1944, nobody wrote comedy songs about people like that. We can rail against our paternalistic and misogynistic society until the cows (sorry, bulls) come home but the general public doesn’t consider that amusing. So, now, let’s be Frank. Creating a duet for him and Lynn Loesser, his subject is a gentleman and a certain kind of lady. They’re a happy romantic couple with some amount of mutual desire. In his charming way, the man humorously offers reasons the woman should spend the night. In her charming way, the woman offers reasons why she really can’t stay. And yet, at the end of the song, “Ah, but it’s cold outside” agreement to stay the night has won the day (or night).

The “certain kind of lady” Frank wrote for his better half to play is, I feel, a rather extraordinary character. There is a shibboleth about mid-century musical comedies, that they make the women sexless, somehow, and I relish exceptions to this non-rule. Here is an unmarried woman who is actively considering having some sort of intimate contact, through the night, with a man that appeals to her (pun intended). She is in control of her destiny, and the lyric has her consider the ramifications of staying. (“My father will be pacing the floor.”) And why consider those ramifications? Because she feels sexual desire and is willing to act upon it.

“Nah-nah!” I can hear the SenSouls retorting. She firmly states “The answer is no” and the man doesn’t cease with the implorations. For decades now, we’ve been told that a woman’s “no” means “no” and never yes. That’s a Platonic ideal of twenty-first century heterosexual relations (again, pun intended) and it doesn’t jibe with how both genders viewed the mating dance seventy years ago.

But what of the expression, “Say, what’s in this drink?” Ever-focused on the recent publicity about the date rapes of the once-beloved actor Bill Cosby, SenSouls reflexively glom on to a more modern and malevolent interpretation. But think about it: “Say, what’s in this drink?” is what you say when you’re feeling a bit intoxicated or uninhibited. You choose to joke about the drink rather than stating that you find a man intoxicating. (He can be intoxicating because he’s charming, handsome, sings well, or maybe being alone with him has you all a-flutter.) If you seriously suspect your drink is drugged, the last thing you’d say is “Say, what’s in this drink?”

Tellingly, the song concludes with harmony. Characters harmonize when they’re in some sort of agreement. On the final title, the lady concurs that spending more time inside with the gentlemen is more appealing than going outside in the cold. Whoopee will be made, and I think of that as a happy ending.

But the history of an Oscar-winning song ends less happily. Adding her voice to the chorus of disapproval is Casey Wilson, who many years ago, in a revue, sang my song celebrating the mating of office-mates called Casual Sex Fridays. I wonder how that would sound today.

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/6f9f628aed/baby-it-s-cold-outside?_cc=__d___&_ccid=n5l2w3.nzihua

 

Here’s a sticky wicket

Once upon a time, an antique Japanese sword fell off a wall, where it had been hanging as a decoration, in a world-famous musical theatre writer’s home. At the time, W. S. Gilbert had been stuck for an idea. You see, what he loved to do, and what he unquestionably did best, was to poke fun at British society, its institutions, its illogical laws, the dumb ways people act in the name of being polite. Some of his hits, such as Iolanthe and Patience, had been set in contemporary England. But he held an impulse I can relate to: the desire not to repeat himself. Mind you, he still wanted to satirize Brits, holding up a fun-house mirror to their foibles, but he feared his routine had grown tired. Then the sword fell.

And, legend has it, suddenly Gilbert knew what to write. At the time, the English had a big-time fad going on, for Japanese design. There was even a precursor to EPCOT, an amusement park created to give visitors the experience of walking through a Japanese village. Now, this might strike you as ridiculous – and I’m certain Gilbert would agree with you – but, when I was a boy, Orange County, California had, not far from Disneyland, an attraction built on the same premise, called Japanese Village and Deer Park. (If you grew up in New York, you’re now shouting “That’s good water!”) So, both the late 19^th century Londoners and mid-20^th century Los Angelinos had a fascination with Japan.

In Patience, an ever-in-vogue character admits he’s a fraud: “I do NOT long for all one sees that’s Japanese.” It’s funny to think that those who follow fads are doing it just to be trendy, not because of genuine feelings. And then there’s the issue of loving Japanese things with no real understanding or appreciation for the actual Japanese people and culture.

You can look at this mania as a serious problem, or, as Gilbert did, you can look at it as stuff to ridicule. And ridiculing the British craze is totally different than ridiculing the Japanese, right?

The show Gilbert wrote, with Arthur Sullivan, was his masterpiece, The Mikado. Gilbert was, originally, an attorney, and the main lampoon of The Mikado is that characters follow the law so precisely, the Lord High Executioner is unable to execute anyone because he’s the next person scheduled to have his head removed and suicide is illegal. Follow? Well, even if you don’t, I hope you can grasp that Gilbert is spoofing British insistence on legal procedure, not anything truly Japanese. And so the world took to The Mikado, laughing heartily at its jokes about the British, for well over a hundred years.

In recent months, though, troubling questions have been asked about this remarkably hysterical musical comedy. In countless productions over the years, Caucasian performers have donned black wigs and applied make-up to their eyes in order to convey the idea that the characters are Japanese. In the present century, there’s a critical mass: a large quantity of talented Asian performers. In New York, at least, one could easily fill the stage with great singing actors who’d need no make-up to convince the audience they’re gentlefolk of Japan. Unfortunately, players of Asian descent are often denied jobs by producers and directors who lack the imagination to see the roles traditionally cast with Caucasians any other way. Economic forces, I feel, inevitably would lead some to question why a show set in the Japanese town of Titipu is so frequently cast with people who resemble Gilbert and Sullivan rather than George Takei.

Making matters worse was the venerable New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players, known by its acronym, NYGASP. They, too, had the relatable desire not to repeat themselves. Over the decades, their productions of The Mikado evolved to include the addition of a character Gilbert never would have dreamed of. It was a little girl dressed in male garb, and called “The Axe Coolie” who ran around the stage yelling “high-ya.” I haven’t seen their production, but if that description is remotely accurate, it’s not in keeping, at all, with the original intent. And it led, understandably, to the accusation known as Yellowface.

We hear that term and are supposed to think of the more familiar Blackface, when whites would don burnt cork and hyperbolically racist stereotypes. In Blackface, the humor is derived from expounding on certain white folks’ belief that African-Americans act certain ways. And that’s about the most troubling form of entertainment America has known: humor built on prejudice.

So, NYGASP scrapped their production, uttered a mea culpa, and fights for survival in a world that seems to have turned against them. In my view, the addition of Axe-Coolie was not only racist, it was wholly unnecessary. Savoyards understand that The Mikado is funny enough to thoroughly entertain an audience without adding a single prejudiced trope. What kind of G & S company feels the need to add shtick to the most humorous operettas ever written? (Many, apparently.) There ought to be a way of mounting a bit of Victorian silliness in a way that gives no offense.

But it can’t be denied, either, that certain people live to be offended. Yes, bigotry exists in the world, and you may have suffered traumas and indignities: that’s sad but true. But if you can’t see the humor in what a Victorian English satirist did 130 years ago, setting a silly story in a distant country nobody knew much about, well, nobody’s forcing you to attend. The existence of The Mikado and the audiences who enjoy it is no insult to the Japanese.

Similarly, there’s a stunning quantity who get deeply offended by Carousel. Many months ago, I wrote a piece for another blog suggesting that those who see Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1945 masterpiece as somehow excusing or sentimentalizing wife-beating are ignoring much of the script, perhaps willfully. Hammerstein is musical theatre’s greatest humanist, and he wrote musical plays for adults. If you can’t stand a show about a three-dimensional character who does some truly awful things (besides hitting his spouse, armed robbery leads to his death) as well as some good things, don’t go to Carousel. Leave it and The Mikado to those who have the ability to understand historical context and evolving sensibilities.