Songs come true

My amazing daughter is six today. What does this mean to you, reader of this blog about musical theatre writing? Well, in this season where SpongeBob SquarePants is one of the biggest Broadway musicals, it might make sense to look into the overlap ‘twixt musical theatre and a kindergartner.

A bundle of unrelenting energy, filled with jokes, dances, songs at all different volumes – Wait: am I talking about my daughter or a musical here? My girl usually stays up past ten, which is a cross to bear. If your musical runs past ten, it’s probably too long. But even if it doesn’t, it can seem long if the energy flags for too many ballads, or quiet moments. Writers tend to love their ballads, and you might think your quiet bits are the best work you’ve done. Unfortunately, your audience enters the theatre with an expectation of a dynamic (rather than quiet) experience. I was recently staring at my storyboard and an alarm went off: energy flagging towards the middle. Or maybe the alarm was actually a kid running in and jumping on my back.

OK, now I just sent her off to get dressed, giving me the opportunity to listen to an application I’m mailing in this month. Music heard while clothes get changed. Hmm… Is this something you’ve considered? Of course, magic transformations have become a fun component of modern musical theatre. Groundhog Day required such speed, it actually injured its star, and Andy Karl is strong enough to have previously played a boxer. Or, thinking of a show we saw as a family, Cinderella twirls and her dress of rags becomes a beautiful ball gown before our astonished eyes. We should all be so lucky to have directors and costumers who can come up with clever ways of keeping our works aloft.

Recently, I worried out loud that I’m now cut off from what was my main method of discovering new show tunes. Used to be, savvy students would plop good material on my piano, like Pasek & Paul’s Along the Way or Sara Bareilles’ When He Sees Me. So I’m going to have to more actively research what worthwhile new songs are out there. But there are plenty of previously unheard examples of characters breaking into song accompanying my cooking. You see, when I prepare meals for my daughter, I allow her to watch TV and often she’ll choose a show, which, to my pleasant surprise, is a musical. Sophia the First, Elena of Avalor, and the much-dreaded My Little Pony usually contain a song and I’m impressed that the animation industry’s making the effort. It’s a reminder that there’s more of a market for show tune-like material than just the legitimate theatre. Now, the aesthetic and requirements differ significantly. But I’m now remembering a cassette tape I was given by a Hollywood friend many years ago. It was a songwriter’s sampler, and it contained both a fun adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and truly funny numbers that had been done on Animaniacs. Inspiring and amusing; I tend to enjoy songs that make me laugh out loud in any medium.

It ain’t easy. And now I’m not talking about comedy songs, but raising a child. Little quandaries and controversies constantly pop up, and I’m lucky enough to utilize these as a kind of building material for my new musical. An example, sitting on a pad on my desk:

I want to be a fun parent
With no fears about trampolines
One parent
She respects till she’s in her teens

I don’t think I’d know trampolines are hazardous if my wife hadn’t told me.

But now I’m worried how this will play for an audience that may or may not be aware of that peril. So, in all likelihood, these lines won’t stick around for the final draft.

And what does that even mean, “final draft,” anyway? So many of the big-time Broadway writers seem to be spending a lot of time coming up with new drafts of old works. Rags is an example. Its lyricist Stephen Schwartz is frequently occupied by tinkering with works one might have considered “finished.” And thinking about my daughter gets me thinking about a lyric he wrote when he was a new father.

All of a sudden your stew tastes different
And you hear the sheep bleat in a different key
And you see with new eyes

As it happens, this is one of the many phrases Schwartz rethought later, and changed. When I first heard it, I thought the concept of sheep changing keys was a little much. But, since becoming a father, I’ve come to believe all those lines are apt. And what could be more revivifying, for a writer, than seeing with new eyes?

A good friend, six years ago, came up what a particularly wonderful baby gift. He had a onesie made with the last three lines of one of my lyrics on it. Today it sits on my dresser and, as if by magic, the whole song speaks to the process I just described. You’re a young person, cynically believing clichés are puerile, and, eventually, stuff happens to you that makes forced phrases seem like profundities. Stuff like my daughter.

I look at you
And songs come true
The promised magic of romance
At last appears
Songs always say
Love will come your way
I thought I didn’t stand a chance
Such foolish fears!
Dumb songs
Always try to sell you
Dreams in 32 bars
Some songs
Have the nerve to tell you
Passion can propel you
Halfway to the stars
But now I feel
Those songs are real
I see magnificence I never knew
With one look at you
Songs come true

That look to me

About six years ago I started this blog and I suppose the blogaversary compels me to reflect about blogging. And one thing I think is that the whole thing is way too big. 347 posts about musicals – sheesh! If you’re someone with an interest in how musicals are created, my unique take on things, etc. – you might come here and go “347 posts! When am I going to have time for this?” It’s as if someone expecting to be tossed a thin magazine had the O.E.D. hurled at them instead.

I’m not sure what to do about that. Posting less often has a certain appeal. At this point in my life as a writer of musicals and as a parent, this blog has been relegated to the back-burner. It’s getting harder to find the time to do it. But even if I posted every other week, before long it’ll be 350 posts and that’s still daunting to a new reader.

Galumphing hand and hand with this thought is the notion that I may be close to saying all I have to say about musical theatre writing. I find myself referring people to posts from five or six years ago; there’s that sense of “What’s left to say?” And I don’t want to repeat myself, but find I do: Musicals need to tell stories effectively, ideally engaging the audience’s minds in a way that makes them wonder what happened next. Craft is particularly important in lyric writing, and I take false rhymes as an indication that the creators don’t understand craft. Music is hardest to write about, because I know readers have different levels of understanding; repeating the overly familiar tropes of sixty years of pop-rock is a lazy way of composing. All elements need to be in concert with the narrative drive, which is why language and harmonies that clearly don’t belong in the time and setting of the show is so jarring.

Providing examples is always a problem. Quite often, I dislike musicals that other people love. So, if I devote a post to the many ways Evita is an awful and boring show, somebody’s going to react “No, it isn’t! I thought it was great!” and then discount all the examples I’ve given. I was just trying to illustrate a point. There’s this strange delusion I’ve encountered again and again: no matter how terrible the show, there’s somebody out there maintaining it’s wonderful. Ken Mandelbaum’s famous book about flops is called Not Since Carrie because, in a way, Ken is saying Carrie is the worst of them all. Just this week I met somebody who told me it’s a great musical. If we can’t agree on what’s awful, how can we discuss a cautionary model of ineptitude?

And then there’s the thorny thicket of using my own shows as examples. Few of you have seen any of them. And whatever video or audio I have always strikes me as a woefully inadequate representation. In writing about my own shows, I don’t want to pin laurels on myself like some guy I just saw in a debate. But the hope is that my experience getting 18 shows on the boards may yield some helpful tidbits. And I just reread that sentence and thought: Where else can you find a blog by a guy who’s written as many shows?

So, here am I writing this instead of writing more of the musical that’s consumed me since 2014. I like to hope that there’s something good about me setting down thoughts about my struggles with it while they’re happening. But it’s a little like opting to live in a fishbowl. It’s harder to do a thing when you know you’re being observed doing the thing. Sometimes I fear I’ve set out so many “don’t do this” prohibitions here that I’m hindered from writing. Fearing making a mistake is not a good place to be. So, my blogging about what not to do is an unpleasant bedfellow with my spewing out more and more of this musical.

And I use the word “spew” because it’s half of my favorite description of the writing process. The first step is spewing, because all kinds of music is pouring out of you and, ideally, you don’t hamper yourself by saying “Oh, this is terrible” or “I shouldn’t do it this way.” The later step is editing: taking a cold, hard, critical eye toward your creation, and then fixing it, and throwing out the bad stuff. When I regard the storyboard with two dozen songs before me, I try not to think that’s way too many songs and the piece will be way too long. It’s just spew, now.

Here’s something I said to a young friend yesterday: “I see the care you take, the energy you put in to getting everything right. Well, it’s paid off. So now’s the time to relax, take a deep breath, look at what you’ve accomplished and pat yourself on the back. Spend a moment of two acknowledging that you’ve done great work, restoring yourself before you go on to the next.”

It’s a common paradox: I wish I could take my own advice. I wish I could celebrate the six years of blogging, appreciate that there are some really helpful essays in there. (God knows how you’d find them, though. The tagging business befuddles me.) I usually remember to throw in a few jokes. Click on a picture and you’ll probably hear a song. And they said blogging was going out of fashion six years ago. And here I (still) am.

A molecular biologist

I swear, this won’t be another one of those articles telling you how wonderful Hamilton is. So, so many of those have been written: It’s fair to say no new musical has created this much critical acclaim and excitement in four decades. I weighed in on the show way back in early April. So, this Christmas morning, I want to talk about something entirely different.

It’s the best present I received all year, and it’s something my sister sent and … why prolong the suspense? It’s Hamilton, the Genius Annotation!

Wait a minute – wasn’t there just a promise that this wouldn’t be about Hamilton?

Nope, I’m not going to talk about the show, now. But you might not know that some unusually intelligent fans of the show have put up an annotated libretto:

http://genius.com/albums/Lin-manuel-miranda/Hamilton-original-broadway-cast-recording

That means you can read all of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s lyrics, and, every few words, certain phrases are clickable. Clicking leads to a discussion of various aspects of the writing. Most obviously, since Hamilton is based on true events occurring around the American Revolution, there is commentary from historians. And you know how historians are, they’re apt to argue, amongst themselves, over minuscule details. There’s a limited amount of certainty as to everything that happened in the 18^th century, so, in nerdy manner (and I don’t use “nerdy” as a pejorative), details get batted back and forth.

Readers of this blog, I hope, embrace the nerdiness involved in picking apart the fine points of musical theatre writing. We are all nerds: we love this stuff. And that’s the gift from Genius.com: a complete musical being picked apart by fellow nerds. Sometimes, the notes have to do with rhyming, word-choice, orchestration choices, and a wide range of issues of craft. It’s my impression that this resource has been formed through the wiki process. That is, all visitors are invited to comment, and, nerdily, comments are commented on, assessed for their validity.

The greatest treat of all is when information about the writing of Hamilton comes from Hamilton’s writer himself, Lin-Manuel Miranda. Anyone can speculate about what he was thinking of, what inspired him, what he’s referring to. And that’s fun. But to get the real answer: more fun.

For instance, there’s a note that Miranda’s use of the word, “fraught” may have been inspired by Stephen Sondheim’s song, Impossible, which also uses it. I find this highly doubtful. But, I’m always willing to admit that large parts of my vocabulary were borne of encountering words in show tunes. Here’s an example:

I used to be a hoyden
Boys were my hate,
I was a lady hermit
I couldn’t be annoyed in
Making a date
“Silly,” I would term it
You seemed so daring my heart grew frail,
Now I like wearing my coat of male.
– Lorenz Hart

That was my favorite song for many years (I Feel At Home With You).

The web resource on Hamilton seems a huge gift to me for another reason. I may know a few things about American history, but all I know is that I know nothing about the recent cultural phenomenon of rap and hip-hop. Now, I’ve long admired rap, from afar, because it’s the only popular example I can think of where ears are fully tuned into lyrics, enjoying the wit and cleverness of what’s being said. I’m not denying that there are plenty of popular songs with interesting lyrics, but the rap fan is someone who’s so fascinated by words and what they can do, appreciation of the music is truly secondary. I get impatient with the reverse – when music is interesting but lyrics are deadly dull.

Lin-Manuel Miranda occupies a unique place among writers: He’s a musical theatre creator with an admirably broad appreciation of musicals from the past century. He’s also a huge aficionado of rap. His mostly-rapped musical, Hamilton, makes a huge number of allusions to important rap and hip hop artists. And, me, I’m the damn fool who doesn’t know anything about this history. If only there was a place I could go to get a sense of what rap-master LMM is alluding to.

And that’s the gift of the site once known as Rap Genius. When a character in Hamilton uses the phrase “carefully taught” I have no trouble getting the reference to South Pacific. But when a song implicitly riffs on Ten Crack Commandments by The Notorious B.I.G., well, that’s bound to sail over my head.

So, for me, reading the annotation is a fascinating discovery. The popular music antecedents were previously unknown to me. The true history of Alexander Hamilton is interesting because there’s some disagreement. Also, since Miranda’s writing a show to entertain, and not an academic dissertation, there are some divergences from actual events. These changes illustrate how the musical writer’s job involves compression, dramatizing, but not necessarily fidelity to the truth (whatever that is). And, whenever the comments concern the craft of musical-writing and references to other musicals, it’s nice to find that there’s a whole community out of there, thinking about the sorts of things that obsess me.

So, Merry Christmas, fellow nerds! Pour yourself a cup of Hamilton Genius Annotation and nerd out!

 

 

Cryptic greeting

The usual encomiums from the usual suspects came out in full force yesterday for Stephen Sondheim’s 85th birthday. He was declared the greatest genius the world of musical theatre has ever known. I’ve waited a day, not wanting to rain on an old man’s parade, but I’ve got to call shenanigans.

Folks, if you believe Sondheim’s musical theatre’s greatest genius, you don’t know musical theatre, or, (and, possibly, and) you’ve the blindness of a frothing fan who’s so impressed by the best of your idol, you fail to see the flaws, the clay feet, the no-longer-speakable-epithet-for-Chinese in his armor.

I’m not maintaining the man hasn’t done some real good work. I’m very moved by two of his shows. You read that right: Two. Each has longueurs. I am maintaining, though, that such widespread idolatry can’t be a good thing.
You want geniuses? Richard Rodgers, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, George Abbott, Jerome Robbins and one who’s alive, Harold Prince. Each innovated – one might say most of them remade the form – and had a far greater role in shaping our beloved genre. All of them created works of enduring popularity – that is, shows that people loved then and love now. The first three were songwriters who crafted tunes the world adores.

Sondheim has a slew of Tony Awards and here I’ll say most of them were deserved. From 1970 to 1987, with impressive frequency, he created the best show or best score of the Broadway season. That’s a great accomplishment, but it’s instructive to look up what the competition was. Passion bested Beauty and the Beast, A Grand Night For Singing, and Cyrano. That’s a pretty lean season in my book.

People in the theatre love Sondheim. His work radiates intelligence, while some other songwriters seem dumb or dumber. One of the things I like about his writing – the fact that there’s usually a lot of subtext behind what’s being sung – naturally makes actors love him. It’s a treat to have something to play, beyond the surface, particularly after you’ve been stuck singing Wildhorn or Lloyd Webber songs in which characters say exactly what they mean.

There’s quite a bit to admire about him, but you know what? Fans, performers and collaborators have been trumpeting tributes for days, so it’s time for me, the day after, to cut to the chase.

Nobody knows in America, Puerto Rico’s in America.

Say that line out loud, like an actor would, to make sure the listener understands. What syllables do you stress? Where do you pause? I pause after “knows” and “America” and stress the “Ri” in “Rico” and the rather important “in.” And then the line’s comprehensible. Unfortunately, Sondheim wrote these words to Leonard Bernstein’s rapid-fire eighth notes. It zips by, with half the speed on the final three syllables of the first “America” and accents the final “Ri” …in “America.” The “s” in the rhyme works differently, first for verb agreement, then for contracting “is.” The line has something pithy to say, but no audience has ever gotten it. Or laughed.

Crazy business this, this life we live in

The middle part is set on successive quarter notes. One can’t easily hear the comma, which aids your ability to read it on the page. Perhaps you don’t agree with me that the short “i” sound is an ugly one, but the other day I found myself asking “Did Sigrid admit it’s still winter?” and blanched with the harshness of the utterance. Would a genius really write “this” two words in a row?

I know it’s a nitpick. (Ew! Again!) The trouble is, so many show-folk nowadays are so utterly convinced of Sondheim’s genius they fail to see the man’s output for what it is – occasionally accomplished, sometimes banal or uninvolving. I purposely picked the period, 1970 to 1987, his fertile years, because I think the work he’s turned out since then represents a huge drop in quality. If his reputation rested on the past 27 years, we’d be discussing one of the most boring shows I’ve ever seen on Broadway, Passion, and two off-Broadway flops, Assassins and Road Show. He’s wondered, out loud, about whether talent fizzles as we age. Well, let’s see what musicals John Kander’s composed since he turned 58:

Kiss of the Spider Woman
Steel Pier
Curtains
The Scottsboro Boys
The Landing
Kid Victory
The Visit

When I hear Dear One or Go Back Home – and I know this is a matter of personal taste – I feel Kander’s the greater genius of the two. Considering all the songs heard in Sondheim’s scores, I can’t think of a tune he wrote that’s nearly as moving.

And, really, don’t we all go to the theatre to be moved? Or do you go to the theatre to expand your vocabulary, so you can hear words like reticule and rampion for the first time? I actually read a quote from some star thanking Sondheim for introducing him to the word, reticule, as if it’s a good thing, in popular commercial theatre, to use terms your audience doesn’t know. Someone cited “her withers wither with her” as proof of his genius, and to me that’s a prime example of cleverness that works only when you read it, not in the theatre.

But these are minor details compared to my biggest trouble with the Sondheim oeuvre, the failure to move me in any way.

So, after watching the commitment-phobic guy observe five marriages, he makes a climactic change, to want somebody to sit in his chair. And I go, big deal, because the music’s telling me this is Dramatic and Important, and I simply don’t care. Or the lawyer with the virgin bride who consistently has bad timing trying to get more serious with his long-time mistress. I’d actually prefer to see clowns. Or the middle-aged quartet, two of whom are super rich, all regretting the life choices they’ve made long ago. I don’t sympathize. Or how about the revue depicting the nuts who’ve shot at presidents? Interesting, maybe, but not moving, in any way. And yet people consider this artist who shies away from ardor the Second Coming. Every year with the birthday accolades:

It’s what I call March Madness.

 

That little bundle of joy

It’s my daughter’s birthday today; she’s three. And I learn from her more every day than the collected wisdom I hope to relate in the nearly 300 posts in this blog. But, usually, it’s not about the writing of musicals. But sometimes it is.

One of the things she’s fond of saying occurs whenever I’m laughing at something I read or see on TV: “What’s silly about it?” She wants me to explain jokes, and there are times when she recognizes something is funny (though she really didn’t find it so), knows she’s supposed to laugh, and will rear back her head and deliver an energetic, vociferous and pretty-near-believable fake laugh. In one sense, this is a reminder not to write jokes that will go over my audience’s head. In another, it makes humor seem a little easier: time your punch-line right, have a great comedian deliver it with panache, and some people, far older than three, will laugh at it simply because it feels like they should. There are also times when I think Adelaide’s question should be applied to whole shows. Like that new Broadway musical by a trio of intriguing writers, The Last Ship. I don’t really want to see it unless someone can tell me what’s silly about it.

And yes, I know what I’m saying is a matter of taste. And I wouldn’t deny there have been effective musical tragedies. But most of those are operas. The stage musical, as folks know it, is typically better suited to celebrating moments of happiness than amplifying sadness and pain. I put that sentence in red because it seems so many young musical writers disagree. I’ve sat through shows about men saving Jews from the Nazis: does that “sing” to you? It did to the authors.

my daughter, my father

Back in the day, friends and I used to amuse each other by coming up with World’s Worst ideas for musicals: “The conjoined Hilton Twins!” we’d giggle. “Trial of Leo Frank!”  Never thought I’d live to see the day when these jokes materialized, (as Side Show and Parade) are praised by some, get revived and revised. Adaptations handled with varying degrees of proficiency but they remain wholly unappealing ideas for shows and one kept making me laugh without intending to.

In entertainments devised for kids, there’s a curious habit of writing gags that adults get, but children don’t. Even in the film she’s most obsessed with, Frozen, the lyricist Kristen Anderson-Lopez humorously signals to supposed grown-ups in a smarmy “wink-wink/nudge-nudge” way. At a key moment, the heroine has to tell her sister that their hometown, Arendelle, is stuck in perpetual winter. She summons her courage to reveal it in song thusly: “Arendelle’s in a deep…deep…snow.” If I’d laughed at that line (which I didn’t), Adelaide would have asked me “What’s silly about it?” and, in the film, there’s really nothing silly about it. But adults read this as an expression that usually ends with a dirty word, and so can be amused while the young ‘uns aren’t. And, and…really, Disney?

But a greater “really, Disney?” moment comes when a princess sings “Don’t know if I’m elated or gassy, but I’m somewhere in that zone.” To which I say “Ewww!” In the history of Disney princesses, there’s never been any evidence any has a digestive tract, let alone digestive distress. Sure, times have changed, but do they have to exchange in that direction? I may be far behind the times, and hopelessly patriarchal, but I preferred the days when princess weren’t gassy.

A young (adult) friend of mine also points to a line in the same song, “Why have a ballroom with no balls?” She thinks that’s another joke written just for parents, but I accept the line at face value because it’s a sincere expression of exactly what the character is feeling; I don’t hear it any other way. And there’s another joke of this ilk that I’m kind of charmed by. In a duet expressing mutual attraction, there’s “maybe it is the party talking or the chocolate fondue.” Adelaide understands that as a single entendre, that the character is intoxicated by the heady atmosphere of the coronation ball, its deserts, and a terribly attractive prince.

Which reminds me: There’s a father-daughter show tune that’s never far from my mind, Growing Pains from A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. The little girl is about a decade older than Adelaide, and they openly discuss bittersweet rites of passage: “Papa’s not president since maybe tonight.” Adelaide’s very clear on who the president is, and knows the names of a lot of the former presidents, frequently mentioning James Madison. If I take this as a sign she’s started down the road of becoming president herself (her mother would like that, but she wouldn’t be president unless she wanted to be), it must be the party talking, or the chocolate fondue.

Kate, how can I say this?

My father is alive and kicking, turned 86 the other day, and I’m continuing to honor his request not to write about him. Instead, I’m going to write about someone else’s father, a man I met exactly once, and he left this world just the other day. But the story of our encounter, decades ago, and how he inadvertently ruined what I considered a golden opportunity – just by being nice! – is a tale worth telling. And I don’t think his daughter, Kate (not her real name), is likely to read this.

There are times in the life of a musical theatre writer when you surmise that what you really need, more than anything, is a staged reading of a show you’ve been developing, and plan to continue developing. This is a perfectly natural feeling. You’ve written a draft, think it’s possibly good, possibly not, but, for far too long, it’s been words-on-a-page. You need to hear those words read by actors, and for them to sing the songs. You need, most particularly, a live audience to react to what you’ve written.

My musical, The Company of Women had been languishing in a developmental limbo. A director who’d been instrumental in setting out the course of what it was to be had moved to California. A librettist and I had irreconcilable differences about what we wanted the show to be – she wanted to send the characters to outer space, literally, while I liked them earth-bound – so we broke it off. A replacement director/librettist made important improvements, then moved to Florida. What is it about proximity to fresh oranges with these people? I soldiered on, alone, and reached that point where I was dying for a reading.

Luckily, my compadres at The Third Step Theatre Company were assembling a festival of readings of new plays and musicals. At the perfect time, that golden opportunity came a-knocking. (Is that a mixed metaphor? I guess thinking about ladies in Florida and California has brought up thoughts of golden knockers.) I’d have the reading I’d need. And it was one of those where people stay afterwards for a moderated discussion of what they liked about the show, or were puzzled by, or felt didn’t land.

My reading would go on exactly once, but there was a substantial amount of preparation that was needed. The Company of Women is a score full of counterpoint. We had to get those interweaving melodies in perfect tune, and, naturally, the director wanted various acting beats worked out in advance. I’m not complaining about this – I live for this stuff – but want you to know what went into this.

Kate (not her real name) – remember her? – was in the cast and Kate’s father was in the audience. The theatre space was small and bright; I don’t recall the house lights being on dimmers. So, when it came time for the post-performance discussion, the moderator asked those in attendance for their honest reactions. First to speak was Kate’s father, grinning from ear to ear. “Well, I thought it was wonderful!” he fairly gushed.

“Is there any part of it you felt could benefit from any sort of revision?”

“No!” the broadly beaming gentlemen responded. “I thought it was wonderful!”

As I remember it, there was something positively infectious about his enthusiasm. The moderator tried to elicit other responses, but Kate’s father had set the tone. Nobody there seemed willing to utter anything even remotely negative: to do so would have rained on the most happy fella’s parade. And so we folded up the chairs and went home, having received not a shred of guidance as to what needed to be done next.

In marked contrast to the man I’d so entertained, I was depressed by what had transpired. This audience was saying that The Company of Women was unimpeachable, the most perfect musical since Fiddler on the Roof, and offered no ideas as to how it could be any better. Now what the hell was I supposed to do? All that work we put in seemed for naught.

The late dad-of-Kate wasn’t someone you could be mad at; he was charming and ingenuous. But, in my woebegone state, I couldn’t help focus on how he’d marred my moment. After a series of conversations with folks that were there, in which I never revealed my feelings, I discovered something: Kate had nothing on her resume. Now, it seemed to me I’d known Kate for quite some time, as I know a lot of people: young and constantly auditioning. It hadn’t occurred to me that she had struck out at every audition. This little reading of mine was her first time on stage in New York. And that uncritical response was a loving dad, struck inarticulate because he was beside himself with pride. Kate was performing, and that’s all he saw. He could find no flaw in The Company of Women because his perception was clouded by the pleasure of seeing his daughter perform.

Or maybe my perception is clouded by self-doubt, and The Company of Women is the greatest musical written in the past half-century. I went on, wallowing in the thought the whole enterprise had been a waste.

Until…

Someone with a large amount of experience developing musicals, who’d been there, but had to leave before the discussion, sent a letter. He made it clear he doesn’t usually type up notes and send them in a few days later, but The Company of Women had fascinated him, and stuck with him. At last, I got some views I could use, in glorious detail. The Third Step mucky mucks asked how I felt about the letter.  I said “To my way of thinking there’ve been great documents over the years: the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, and the five pages of notes on The Company of Women.”

Hannukah song

This here blog has now passed the ten-thousand “hit” mark. Five-figured visitations! If you’d told me, when I began in 2010, that this thing would be read 10,000 times before the end of 2012, I’d have thought: “That can’t be right. Don’t you mean a million?”  I was certain there’d be world domination by now.

Ideally, these jottings would inspire the creation of better musicals. And if you’ve found that musicals have gotten better over the past two years or so, I humbly accept your thanks.  But there’s little evidence shows are getting better, alas, and I’m beginning to feel responsible. Is the problem that too few writers are reading this, heeding my advice?

Recently, I’ve seen some signs that a number of would-be musical writers aren’t bothering to learn the craft. They figure it might be neat to come up with a show, launch in feet first (head last) with predictably puerile results.  We live in a world of dreamers.  The Broadway angel who hopes for return on her investment is one kind of dreamer.  The let’s-just-write-a-show-it-ought-to-be-easy type is another. An expression I like, “They don’t give these jobs to chimps.” applies to the show-writing crowd. It takes intelligence, talent, and a knowledge base.

But some days it seems like I’m stranded in the Planet of the Apes.  Now, I must admit I worry about negativity here: this blog shouldn’t be a harangue against bad craft, but a celebration of good craft. I hope you’ve read my recent survey of the dozen show writers I think you should know. Or, earlier, pieces I’m particularly proud of about award-winning contemporaries Jeff Blumenkrantz and Marcy Heisler. Today was a happy day as I got to play two Blumenkrantz songs I like. When I get a little low, I listen to the best of what’s being created today for musical theatre.

But I find it dispiriting to see neophytes defend their use of false rhymes, for instance. They’re like comically wrong-headed rebellious teens. “You’re stifling my creativity, Teach, saying I gots to spell good; artists gotta flow.”

(Seems like a good time for me to apologize for all the spelling mistakes those 20,000 eyes have seen.  It’s no excuse to say I often dash these things off very quickly.  Compared to a lot of other blogs I see, however, I’m pretty good.)

There are good reasons the great musicals are written the way they are. Songs with hooks, utilizing a good title, and a bridge, tend to be more effective that those that don’t, for example. One oft-reiterated theme of this blog is that it’s a good idea to examine the genre’s paradigms, not to devise constricting rules, but just to glean a sense of How They Did It.

Before people become auto mechanics, they spend a span of time under a lifted hood, just staring at the engine. They’re fascinated. A curious mind wonders how things work, and one might even find the internal combustion engine a thing if beauty. Often, on this blog, I’m pointing out what I’ve observed about the inner workings of a musical. Sometimes, I reveal How I Did It, or speculate How They Did It. I hope you find this stuff fascinating. And even beautiful.

But I keep encountering those who refuse to look at these things.  They’d rather run on instincts than reason.  Theirs are little engines that can’t.  If you’ve refused to connect spark plugs, finding it too constricting to do so, well, you’re not going anywhere.  I wish I could reach those people before they waste their time, and the time of any audience they reach.  I guess that, while I’m honestly grateful for the 10,000 hits, tonight I’m focusing on those who write shows but don’t read this blog.  And that’s just like me: I can’t see the forest for the forest fire nearby.

The ten-thousand mark should elate me.  It’s proof I’m reaching somebody.  But it’s not in my nature to shout yippee. It’s more in my nature to torture a metaphor, like those spark plugs that set off a forest fire in the previous paragraph.  I also use too much alliteration here.  But I do like the odd exhortation.  And so I ask you:

• If you know someone who loves musicals who isn’t reading this blog, tell them about it.
• And, what would make us all the happiest: Write a really good musical.

Will you do that for me?  It can’t be that hard.

If only I could clone you

We can get all wonky, dissecting the intricacies of craft most folks never see. But what would that get us? The reality is that one can be a perfect craftsman and still write a less-than-successful musical. Shows work when the audience is intrigued, involved (emotionally) and interested (in what’s going to happen next). “Mere” craft is not going to get you there, although errors in craft can be so distracting, it’s hard to achieve any of the good stuff.

It’s tempting to focus on craft here. (The 1776 line “Sing me no sad elegy,” defended by the songwriter’s son, prompted this muse.) It’s easier to discuss craft than it is to describe the set of happy happenstances that make a show a hit. I’ve spoken about this before using a phrase I hope doesn’t sound mystical, “the Knack.”

Writers often ask themselves, “Is this a good idea for a musical?” My inclination is to ask “Is this a good idea for a song?” If there’s no workable premise, if characters aren’t going to change somehow by song’s end, if the song’s been written before, chances are I don’t want to write it.

George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion was a property that floated around for a number of years. Various writing teams thought it over, asked  “Is this a good idea for a show?” and found it lacking.  It’s not a love story; it’s more like a long theoretical argument between a handful of people on the subject of class. And class tends to be a subject the British are more frequently aware of than us “classless” Yanks. How could you fit a chorus into a Wimpole Street townhouse?

With the advantage of hindsight, knowing how Lerner and Loewe answered those questions to create the longest running show of all time (a record that’s since been eclipsed), it’s hard to imagine how vexing the musicalization of Pygmalion once seemed. So, without getting all wonky, let’s simply admit Lerner and Loewe had the Knack. In Brigadoon, they managed to mix American cynicism with the flightiest of fantasies to create a great setting for love songs and comedy. I’ve raved before about how chameleon composer Fritz Loewe invented authentic-sounding folk songs for Paint Your Wagon. MGM had them adapt Gigi, winning nine Oscars. Then Camelot tossed classic romance with Enlightenment principles. The pressure of getting the last one on took a toll on Loewe’s heart, and he retired for health reasons. Lerner sans Loewe was never remotely as successful in the theatre.  The combination of these collaborators = the Knack.

Over roughly the same years, my favorite songwriter Frank Loesser also had four Broadway hits with a brief detour to write a Hollywood classic (score-wise).  What a genius he had for coming up with original and theatrical ideas for songs. Take Make a Miracle. A Victorian couple discusses the future. He’s proposing marriage but she keeps changing the subject to the upcoming great inventions of the nascent twentieth century: “horseless carriages that fly,” “breakfast cereals that explode. (I’m reminded of the title of a comedy show friends did a few years ago: We Were Supposed To Have Flying Cars By Now.) Or the opening number of Guys and Dolls, in which three touts give horse racing tips in counterpoint. Who but Loesser would have thought of such a thing?  And I feel like I’ve talked about the brilliance of The Most Happy Fella and How To Succeed way too many times.
But you get the idea: you’re going to need the Knack, and need to know what ideas for songs and shows are likely to fly. How do you get the Knack?  Well, start by becoming familiar with the work of knack-possessors like Loesser, Lerner & Loewe, Comden & Green, and especially Bock & Harnick. They wrote the shows that made the whole world smile. And the smiling never stopped: In Summer Stock companies today their shows are performed with impressive ubiquity. And obviously, seeing them is more illuminating than reading them, playing through their scores, listening to cast albums or suffering through disappointingly unfaithful film adaptations.

Which brings me back to 1776, a show with an admirably faithful cinematic rendering.  It’s a marvelous musical, mostly due to its excellent book.  The score is full of false accents, such as the one on the final syllable of “America” in the opening number and “elegy” in “He Plays the Violin.”  A case can be made that songwriter Sherman Edwards intentionally uses an old-fashioned (I’d say operetta-like) style to give us a feel for colonial PhiladelphiAAAAAAAA (sorry – another false accent there).  But to my ears, it just sounds like sloppy craft.  It can be reasonably assumed that the Founding Fathers spoke somewhat differently than we do today, but accents that off are just … off-putting.

But that last point’s just for the wonks.

Naming names

I’m getting self-conscious about my incessant name-dropping. Will try to curtail.

So, up in Westchester, there’s a community where a certain Secretary of State and her husband, a former President, have a home. The local high school was attended by three of my closest friends, and also someone who became Miss America, then lost her crown, then became far more famous as a performer (including Broadway musicals) than any pageant-winner I’ve ever heard of.  Every year, the students wrote a revue, satirizing school life.  And their methodology including writing and rehearsing many more sketches than they wanted to end up with.  So, they’d do a rough run-through, take a look at the whole thing, and cut out anything deemed to be a turkey; hence the event’s name, Turkey Day.

My friend Adam (I use his name because he’s kind of the progenitor of this story) took the idea of Turkey Day and applied it to the Columbia Varsity Show, which he, nearly single-handedly, resurrected out of many years of dormancy.  Also at Columbia around that time were me and a fellow from Hawaii (or so it is claimed; I never saw his birth certificate) who went on to become President – not the one who lives in Westchester.  (Must not drop names!  Must not drop names!)  Since then, every year, the creation of the Varsity Show involves a huge Turkey Day in which a very large number of alums looks at what they’ve got, and then has a long and incredibly detailed discussion of how it might be better.  Since there’s nothing I like better than helping make a musical better, I look forward to this rite of spring, and have attended more of them than anyone ever. 

The collective wisdom of the crowd is wondrous to behold.  The critique goes on for hours, and people say truly smart things.  I usually tell them that nobody attends the Varsity Show for the plot, so, as far as I’m concerned, the less plot, the better.  The writers occasionally run adrift concentrating too much on story.  The audience is looking for something a revue can give them – potshots at different aspects of campus life.  I also preach in favor of a short show, knowing that the Varsity Show I wrote the score to (along with some guy who just won a prestigious prize for humorists and a woman who’s written for Friends and The West Wing) failed to fill both sides of the ninety minute cassette tape I recorded it on.  (Yes, I’m that old.)  It’s been reported (by a journalist who sometimes writes for The New York Times) that whenever the question comes up of whether the show’s too offensive, I always tell them what those people can do if they can’t take a joke.

The Varsity Show (its 118th year’s edition opens tonight) benefits from having an audience with a common and specific knowledge base.  It’s by the students, for the students, and it helps the humor when a similar perspective is shared by folks on both sides of the footlights.  One thing I remember about writing shows in college was that I could count on a very smart audience.  Nowhere else could I have gotten away with:

Don’t take secret glee in

The fact they’re plebeian

Or act like Marie An-

Toinette

“Plebian” is a five-dollar word, usually utilized by patricians.

This year I piped up about structure in comedy songs.  First, AS WITH ALL SONGS, you need a workable title.  Then, it helps as if you think of this title as being akin to the thesis sentence in an expository paragraph.  The other sentences support the thesis, give little examples of why the title is true.  Sticking to a strict template (as you probably should, in a comedy song), a good number is three supports, possibly ending with the thesis.  The hardest part?  Making sure each of those three lines is a funny one.

So, in case I haven’t made this clear enough, I’ve a couple of stanzas examples from my own work.  This is from the duet I wrote for my mother and my bride’s mother to sing at our wedding.  (The entire lyric is HERE.)

BEA

Say, can you teach me how to be the perfect meddler?

How to insinuate I’ve noted every flaw?

How do I firmly stand my ground?

How do I throw my weight around?

What is the way to be the greatest mother-in-law? 

CAROL

If you articulate complaints and criticism

And never let an unkind word get stuck in your craw

Whether you’re taking down a hem

Or simply making fun of them

You’ll be the mother of all mothers-in-law

(click to hear Maybe)

It’s a very ancient saying, (but a true and honest thought) that if you become a teacher, by your pupils, you’ll be taught.  In attendance were two younger composers, and they’d impressed me when they were in the hot seat during their Turkey Days.  One made the compositional suggestion that one can keep a song interesting by varying accompaniment figures.  This was much on my mind a few days later when I was coaching an actress prior to a production of the other composer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical.  (God, now it sounds like I’m going out of my way to avoid dropping names.)

The lovely song, Maybe, begins with a quick arpeggio on sixteenth notes, that then calms down into slower notes.  And I’ve only described one bar.  I hear that, and get the sense that the character’s mind keeps racing, and yet she manages to calm it down, in the end of the measure.  In the second A section, which is a bit longer, strings sneak in, adding warmth and refinement.  For much of the show, Diana has been associated with frenetic and acerbic rock music (she may be the oldest major character in a musical ever to be depicted with rock, an innovation that makes sense since she’s someone who’s lived her entire life in the rock era).  Now that she’s successfully gaining control over her mind, there’s an echo of the ordered respectability one hears in string quartets.  Then there’s a third A section (unusual, that) where the rhythm kicks in, a sort of combination of driving pop played against bowed refinement, as if she’s comfortably residing in a harmonious place.  On the line “a girl with a mother who just couldn’t cope” the rhythm drops out, and the violins ascend.  Listening to this, one is in doubt whether Diana can continue to hold it together.  The daughter finally chirps up, in the bridge, and the music has a steady rock feel.  This character, Natalie, is peeved but articulate.  Leading into a section where the women overlap, the accompaniment figures get very quick, although the pace of the song has only been upped subtly.  Diana’s next solo section is sparely backed, with half-notes, sometimes pushed.  The communication is too important to have much hit the ear besides her voice.  When quarter note chords are played, the tempo trails off, which gives a certain halt to words she finds difficult to get across.  Natalie’s answer is rhythmically similar, with chords on one, two and three but not four.  And then, for the final rapprochement, chords hit just on one and two, and the harmonies do not resolve.  Next To Normal smartly steers clear of pat endings.

I wish I could say those writers picked up their know-how at a Turkey Day, but I’d have to mention their names, so I can’t.

Love is like a sitcom

I recently had reason to recollect a small triumph from my youth. It was the first time I got paid for writing anything, and it was a substantial amount of money for me at the time. I sold a story to a television producer. Subsequently, he failed in his attempts to sell it to the networks, and that was that.

Some of the best musicals of the 1960s were written by folks who used to pen scripts for the small screen: Peter Stone (1776), Neil Simon (Little Me, Sweet Charity, Promises Promises) and Michael Stewart (Bye Bye Birdie, Carnival, Hello Dolly) brought skill sets borne of their Golden Age of Television experience.  And it’s not just librettists: Stephen Sondheim wrote for a sitcom before getting produced on Broadway.  So, it’s a fair supposition that there’s at least a little to be learned from stuff on the tube.

I see that two women I’d created revues with in two different and unconnected decades are now working together on a new sitcom.  Skills honed in musical comedy land, now applied to the small screen.  To do the reverse, make sure you’re examining good television.  Now I’m not going to spend time here placing different series into “good” and “bad” categories.  What matters are the elements that make up a good episode.  Be analytical about it as any academic: why do you enjoy the television shows you find particularly well-written?

One of the things you’ll notice about filmed television (as opposed to multiple-camera sitcoms, a dying breed), is that scenes are over quickly.  So, each hour contains a multitude of ends-of-scenes.  The conclusion of a scene is called a button, also used as a verb.  The writer must ask herself: How am I going to button each scene?  One common way is with a joke.  Go out on a big laugh, and the viewer won’t mind being taken away from the action that’s just been presented.  If it’s funny enough. Another out is the shocking revelation.  If this gives the viewer fodder for contemplation, you can go to a commercial break and viewers will still be thinking about it by the time they’re finished pressing Fast Forward.  Of course, commercials, or, on long-form series, ends of episodes can use a good cliff-hanger.  I’ve been saying for years that musicals need to get the audience wondering what will happen next.  A good long-form serial will keep you wondering all week, and that next episode becomes appointment television.  You can end scenes with dramatic moments which don’t require further exploration.  One very long-running television show gave a character a cancer scare, and, in the final scene, she got the good news she didn’t have cancer.  A cause for celebration, but the writer knew we didn’t really need to see that celebration.

In musicals, we’ve a distinct advantage: We can always end our scenes with applause-earning numbers. But a scene that ends without a button looks damn awkward, in either medium. And consider this: energy-wise, it’s rather difficult to end a big song and then resume the same scene with dialogue.  The audience feels the huge drop in intensity when you go from sung (and, perhaps, danced) material to spoken words.  Don’t ignore the drop.  I once had a bunch of workers happily goofing off in an impromptu production number, which of course was greeted with an ovation, and then the boss walks in, asks “What’s going on?” and the awkwardness of the comparative silence became a joke in and of itself.

One network television series that, it’s generally acknowledged, was particularly well-written was The West Wing. Quite literally, when my wife is home sick, she takes out season-set DVDs and revisits episodes she’s seen many times. They’re worth looking at just to see how scenes end.  When you’ve viewed a lot of effective endings, you’re more likely to come up with effective ways of ending scenes in your musical.  And, if you’re smart, you won’t have as many scenes in your show as you’d find in a typical West Wing episode.  Too many buttons makes for an unwieldy suit.

Years ago, I attended a new musical comedy with a television comedy writer. Critical of the effectiveness of some of the jokes, he speculated they wouldn’t have made it out of rewrite night on his show. This was a big Aha! moment for me. Every sitcom, before it goes before the cameras goes in front of a large table of funny sorts: punch-up specialists, jokifiers, the layers-on of levity.  Why shouldn’t musicals, my brain stormed, go through the same process?  As it turns out, musicals do go through the same process, and I vowed that one day I’d have a script of mine improved by beneficent clowns around a table. Many years later, around a fancy dinner table at my director’s apartment, the dream came true.  Some of the funniest people I know read the script out loud, and, wherever appropriate, batted better and better gags back and forth.  My script grew far funnier that night.

And now I suppose I have to quote one of the rewrite gang’s added jokes. This exchange didn’t survive into subsequent drafts, only because the character they’re talking about changed so that she wasn’t a klutzy dancer.

DONALD

All morning she’s been kicking holes in the scenery trying to learn my dances. So I brought her over here.

DANNY

Terrific. Tell her to start kicking over there. We could use a window

All those Olivier Awards recently going to Matilda reminds me I once wrote a song by that name.  It was part of a television pilot around ten years ago, in which characters kept breaking out into song.  The networks scoffed: a musical comedy TV series? That’ll be the day.