As scholarship in musical theatre has blossomed in the past decade, each subgenre of the musical fights to be taken seriously. In The Theater Will Rock: A History of the Rock Musical, from “Hair” to “Hedwig” by Elizabeth Wollman and The Megamusical by Jessica Sternfeld, the rock musical and the megamusical vie for respectability and for their places in musical-theatre history.
Elizabeth Wollman in The Theater Will Rock explores the effects that rock music has had on the musical form. The rock musical has never quite found a comfortable home in musical-theatre histories—much like the crazy cousin who shows up at the family reunion, but no one knows where to put him in the photo. Wollman's exploration places the rock musical center stage and includes its successes, failures, complications, and contributions to the contemporary musical. The book weaves chronologically organized chapters with interludes that allow for discussions of the complications between the worlds of rock music and theatre that have affected the rock musical's creation, production, and reception. These interludes contain key concepts that frame the historical narrative.
Wollman first introduces the concept of authenticity, the perceived ability to transcend the business of the music industry through artistic innovation and integrity. Although authenticity is highly valued in the rock world, the conventions deeply entrenched in musical theatre often actively conflict with its rock combination. When musical theatre and rock are combined in the rock musical, the perception of authenticity is continually contested between the two worlds. Wollman's interludes apply authenticity to issues of audience expectations, technology, aesthetics, marketing, and nostalgia. Authenticity is perceived by audiences, and thus much of the success or failure of the rock musical has rested on their experience. Rock concerts are designed to include the audience through physical responses to the performer, but the theatre has discouraged audience responses by darkening the house and ultimately distancing the audience from the stage. Wollman argues that moving rock music into the musical requires not only an artistic integration but also the bonding experience a spectator may expect from a rock-music performance.
Extending the concept of authenticity into her chronological narrative, Wollman suggests that the first rock musical, Hair, was more “evolutionary” than “revolutionary” (13). Several earlier musicals had incorporated rock music into their plots, but Hair made rock its primary musical style. Wollman interviewed original cast members and creators to lend insight into their creative process that brought experimental techniques from Off-Broadway to the Broadway musical. Musicals such as Your Own Thing, Salvation, and Stomp imitated these experimental techniques, but they were less successful and made audiences grow weary of the new form. According to Wollman, rock concept albums were increasingly made into musicals in the 1970s, the most productive decade for the rock musical. Through greater expense, many of these musicals utilized technological spectacle and aesthetic associations to create musical-theatre narratives based on existing albums. Wollman borrows John Bush Jones's term, “fragmented,” to describe these musicals that often had loosely structured plots but a host of prior associations (73). The staging often conflicted with existing listeners' narrative memories of popular albums such as Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita and contributed to less enthusiasm for their staged versions. Similarly, concert devices used in the Beatles-inspired Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on the Road: A Rock Spectacle and Beatlemania clashed with audiences' visual and aural memories of popular hits. Furthermore, despite the integration of studio technology through microphones and electronic instrumentation, live performers could not re-create what may have taken months to produce electronically in the studio environment.
Wollman suggests that the end of the 1970s marked the death of the rock musical because its label was an increasing financial risk; however, its technology and marketing techniques were relabeled and adopted into new forms, especially the megamusical. The megamusical capitalized on advancing studio technology to reproduce musicals worldwide with their Broadway ‘originality’ intact. Wollman positions the megamusical as both a product of and catalyst for the rising costs on Broadway in the 1980s, which resulted in a trickle-down effect to Off-Broadway. Little Shop of Horrors and Dreamgirls utilized nostalgia and spectacle to appeal to the 1960s youth who in the 1980s were able to pay the ever-increasing prices for shows. To create a desire for these products, the megamusical also borrowed from rock marketing techniques. Wollman attributes some of these techniques to Melvin Van Peebles's controversial Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death, a 1970s funk-inspired score that brought a black experience to Broadway and managed a healthy run despite its mixed reviews. However, flops such as Carrie served as reminders that rock musicals in megamusical clothing were financial risks.
Corporate entities such as Disney were lured to Broadway through the success of the megamusical. Those musical creators interested in new and rebellious shows, as the rock traditions of ‘authenticity’ encourage, moved further away from Broadway. Following the frame of the rebellious rocker image, Wollman focuses on the influence of particular rock musicians on rock-musical products of the 1990s including Tommy, The Capeman, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and Bright Lights Big City. Within this decade, Wollman also positions Rent as one of the most successful rock musicals that actively denied the ‘rock musical’ label.
More recently, Wollman argues, rock-influenced musicals continue to draw on rock's interactive nature to actively invoke familiarity. Based on 1970s music, The Donkey Show, Saturday Night Fever, and Mamma Mia! also use interactive elements to include the audience in the rock experience, while revivals of Jesus Christ Superstar and The Rocky Horror Show bring 1970s products back to the stage.
Wollman is to be commended for an enjoyable book that treats the rock musical as a serious and influential movement in musical-theatre history. At times her analysis seems lean, but she builds a conceptual framework throughout her interludes and skillfully employs it in the chronological chapters. As the body of musical-theatre scholarship grows, this useful book offers a bridge between the ideology of rock music and its influence upon the musical theatre.
If the rock musical is a crazy cousin, the megamusical is an ostentatious relative who seemingly cannot be ignored. Jessica Sternfeld, in The Megamusical, rightly argues that the megamusical has been dismissed by most scholars despite its prevalence in the musical-theatre world. Whereas Wollman places the megamusical as an outgrowth of the American rock-musical movement, Sternfeld's argument most strongly imports the megamusical from British sources, with Andrew Lloyd Webber at the helm. She defines the major traits of the megamusical as “big” stories, music, and spectacle. The “mega” qualities extend beyond the theatre to the publicity and marketing, financial success (and sometimes failure), and international reach (2). These qualities result in the ability to draw megacrowds despite poor or mixed reviews, thereby weakening the influence critics have on the show's success. Because the megamusical definition contains internal and external traits, Sternfeld examines the processes and products of the megamusical through narratives of their development, analyses of scores, and critical reception.
Sternfeld places Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice at the heart of the megamusical movement with Jesus Christ Superstar as their first foray into a new genre. As seen in Wollman's book, scholars often regard Superstar as a sophisticated version of the rock musical; but if viewed through the lens of their later products, and with a nationally tinged perspective, Sternfeld's position has weight. Much of the book rests on the argument that this pop-oriented yet operatically inspired team initiated the “mega” qualities that have grown into the megamusical. Several chapters are devoted to Lloyd Webber products, including Superstar, Evita, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Cats, Starlight Express, and Phantom of the Opera. Furthermore, Sternfeld extends Webber's influence into other megamusical products such as Les Misérables by highlighting his ownership of its London theatre and by comparing his composition, recording, and marketing techniques to those of other creators of megamusicals.
In the Lloyd Webber chapters, Sternfeld's musical analysis centers on his practices and growth as a composer. Lloyd Webber's pop-oriented music has masked what Sternfeld argues are operatic conventions of an underrespected composer. The sections of musical analysis are mainly descriptive but at times delve into thematic connections in the plots of the musicals or compare Lloyd Webber's techniques of simple melodies, overlapping musical scenes, and recurring motifs to those of operatic composers such as Puccini and Wagner. These analytic forays are perhaps the most compelling sections of the Lloyd Webber chapters and highlight techniques that many musicological and theatrical scholars often dismiss in his works.
Arguing that the external influence of the media plays an important role in the megamusical's success, Sternfeld follows Lloyd Webber's media attention through his personal and professional life, including his working relationships with lyricist Tim Rice, producer Cameron MacIntosh, and director Trevor Nunn. MacIntosh mastered the media machine to sell the megamusical internationally through simple imagery and the experience of the megamusical. MacIntosh's techniques propelled not only Lloyd Webber's products but also Les Misérables to international acclaim.
Although producers used the media to strengthen the megamusical's sales, the critical influence of those same media was weakened by the megamusical's defiance of their opinions. Sternfeld argues that the mixed and negative reviews of the great megamusicals had little effect on audience reception. To this end, Sternfeld describes reviews for most of the megamusicals and highlights prominent critics. The use of the reviews supports one aspect of her point; however, it also reinforces the importance of the critic in evaluating performances. Sternfeld's detail is useful as a compilation of information surrounding the megamusical, but it often slows down the narrative of the chapters. Perhaps inadvertently, the accumulated references to some of the same critics over the course of the chapters allow for an arc of critical personality to emerge, revealing both the gradual acceptance of and, at times, the waning interest in the megamusical.
Beyond the direct Lloyd Webber influence, Sternfeld highlights megamusical products of the 1980s and 1990s including Tim Rice's outgrowths in Blondel and Chess, as well as others such as Jekyll and Hyde, Ragtime, Titanic, and Rent with a characterization of Miss Saigon as the “quintessential” megamusical (293). Sternfeld suggests that Lloyd Webber's dominance may be eclipsed as Disney products such as the immensely successful Lion King continue to run.
Finally, Sternfeld discusses several third-generation megamusicals (e.g., The Producers and Wicked). The Producers fits less neatly in the megamusical category, but Sternfeld suggests that its focus on show business is a comment upon the megamusical. This argument is somewhat weak in that many of the sources Sternfeld mentions are not megamusicals but Golden Age musicals such as Fiddler on the Roof and Gypsy or premegamusical products such as Cabaret and A Chorus Line. The Producers might better be positioned alongside Wicked as a postmegamusical; Sternfeld suggests its megamusical qualities are tinged with irony and “self-mocking satire” (349).
Sternfeld's book achieves its goal to “gather in one place information about an unexamined genre” (7). While at times the accumulation of information seems just that, at other moments the integration of musical analysis in dialogue with critical reception successfully reveals valid conventions of the genre. Sternfeld's book certainly succeeds in arguing that the megamusical has made a lasting impression on the musical-theatre world.
Both of these books illustrate that the examination of subgenres of the musical is warranted and fruitful but has some limitations. For example, Wollman's characterization of Hair as “evolutionary” (13) might be applied to the genre classifications of both the rock and megamusicals. The terms “rock musical” and “megamusical” are useful in historically placing these subgenres, but both outgrow any one definition rather quickly. The evolutionary trajectory of the rock musical into the megamusical is somewhat disparate in these two arguments; however, these books introduce dialogue between and classification of these subgenres as serious scholarship. Furthermore, they open nationalistic, authentic, capitalistic, and aesthetic opportunities for further investigation of the relationships between these members of the musical-theatre family.
