The Secret Life of the American Musical

by Jack Viertel

  Carousel needs tie rods not because it’s a picaresque but because, like Gypsy, it covers a lot of chronological ground. In Gypsy the tie rods take two forms: the evolving but basically unchanging vaudeville act that we see being perpetually freshened up by Madame Rose but always reliably trading on corn and patriotism, and the musical leitmotifs that keep returning: “Let Me Entertain You” and the phrase “I had a dream!” No matter how often the show travels, it always carries the same baggage, literally and emotionally. The tie rods not only keep the show in shape, they keep the audience on the journey.

  In any case, in Carousel, Jigger Craigin approaches Billy with his scheme, and Billy demurs. He hasn’t sunk so low that he needs to pull a knife on someone. He sends Jigger packing—for the moment. Then Julie approaches and delivers a piece of news he wasn’t expecting: she’s pregnant. The ground shifts.

  Billy is about to take on a level of responsibility willy-nilly that he has never thought about before. The eternally rebellious boy is going to be asked to be a man and behave like one. Implicit in this is the idea that raising a child is best done in one stable place—never Billy’s milieu. Now what?

  Rodgers and Hammerstein created from this circumstance one of the great showpieces of music theater, the “Soliloquy,” an almost eight-minute rumination on impending fatherhood. It is perhaps the greatest example of Hammerstein’s dictum that a song should be a miniature play, with its own movement, conflict, and resolution. Once Billy understands what’s happened, it takes him four minutes of imagining the great things he and his unborn son may do together and separately—four minutes of fatherly braggadocio—before it occurs to him that he may not have a son at all. He may have a daughter.

  He’s awestruck by responsibility, an emotion with which he’s largely unfamiliar. “What would I do with her?” he wonders. “What could I do for her? A bum—with no money.”

  Now the music shifts, and so does the nature of his thought process. By today’s standards, Billy’s musings on his “little girl, pink and white,” may seem politically unacceptable, but for an untutored carousel barker of the late nineteenth century, they’re apt enough. And then, after he’s painted the rosiest possible picture of her, darker thoughts begin to intrude. Finally, after seven minutes, he confronts responsibility. It’s not about the child at all—it’s about the man.

  As Rodgers’s music stirs up a sense of resolve, Billy sings:

  I got to get ready before she comes!

  I gotta be certain that she

  Won’t be dragged up in slums

  With a lot o’ bums—

  Like me!

  She’s gotta be sheltered and fed, and dressed

  In the best that money can buy!

  I never knew how to get money,

  But I’ll try—

  By God! I’ll try!

  I’ll go out and make it

  Or steal it or take it

  Or die!

  The lyric is prophetic, but we’re hardly sure of what will happen, and on this moment, and after giving us his best high G, Raitt directed that the curtain should fall.

  In the original show, however, that’s not the end of the act. In a quick scene, Billy agrees to serve as Jigger’s accomplice, and Jigger convinces him that their best plan would be for the two of them to go on the clambake with the villagers and then quietly “disappear” in time to go commit the robbery, returning immediately afterward. It will give them cover and an alibi. Billy runs into the kitchen for the knife they’ll use to threaten Mr. Bascombe, and then the two of them rush to blend in with the other villagers as they head to the boats that will take them out for their annual revel. The curtain falls on a gentle reprise as this placid small-town population heads out for a well-earned evening of food and drink, and maybe some innocent necking and stargazing.

  The audience, of course, knows what no one in the town, including Julie, does—that before the night is out something terrible and irreversible is bound to happen. And in that suspension, we are made to wait. If we care about the people in the story, the wait is heartbreaking, no matter how much we may need refreshment or a bathroom or, in the days of the original production, a smoke. It’s unbearable because what can be more painful than bearing witness to innocence that is about to be destroyed by grim experience? It’s like watching footage of President Kennedy’s open limo turning into Dealey Plaza moments before the shots ring out. Although Carousel makes no claim to being witness to history, the emotional pull of watching the moments before a disaster—personal or global—is always the same. And, remarkable as it seems, it’s actually more powerful than the “Soliloquy,” and it’s the proper ending for the act.

  * * *

  For many shows, the question of where to drop the curtain must have been difficult to answer. Is the anticipation harder to bear than the act itself? Is “What will happen?” better than “Look what just happened!”?

  West Side Story used a variation of a classical technique to answer the question, the finaletto. Finaletto is a fancy opera term that refers to a piece of music that ends a scene. Often, it suggests a small cluster of reprises or intertwining songs. It doesn’t end the whole show (that’s the finale ultimo). A proper finaletto may take many forms, but it often manages to convey a group of differing points of view from different characters, letting us know that there are clearly defined conflicts and differences of opinion at this point in the story. But it also, by reprising familiar melodic strains in a small bouquet, reminds us of how these people feel and what they’ve been through emotionally. Finaletti were de rigueur in the operettas and musicals of the ’20s and ’30s but were still often in use in the ’60s, though you find them less often today. And the shows that used them don’t have to be high-minded just because the word is Italian; the first act of How to Succeed concludes with a finaletto—it’s even labeled that way in the playbill. But the “Tonight Quintet” from West Side Story is probably the finest of them—except it doesn’t end the act, and it’s only partly a reprise.

  Tony, as you may remember, has agreed to try to stop the planned rumble between the two rival street gangs, the Jets and the Sharks. He’s also fallen in love with Maria, who has begged him to try to make peace between the gangs. Meanwhile, Anita, in love with the leader of the Sharks, is looking forward to a night of post-rumble sex with her presumably victorious lover, assuming the rumble actually takes place. A lot depends upon the rumble—if Tony can’t stop it from happening. And the enormity of his task is made manifest by the energy of the two gangs as they sing the “Tonight Quintet,” using a word (“tonight”) that has so far been used only in the first version of the song, where it is plaintive and filled with ardor. Now, suddenly, it is combative and dangerous. And set to music that we’ve not heard before. It is interrupted by Maria and Tony, singing the original “Tonight” melody and words, restoring the sense of romantic passion that drives the love part of this love/hate equation. And then we hear from Anita, who is singing about sex, using the angular, edgy music of the Jets and Sharks, with lyrics that are far more carnal and less celestial than those Maria and Tony are singing. If Maria’s love for Tony is celestial, Anita’s passion for Bernardo is definitely of the earth. These five points of view combine in five voices that lay out the territory of what might happen—the sexual and romantic passions are just as potent as the hatred of the two gangs for each other. Passion raises the stakes for hatred, and vice versa. The cost of not stopping the rumble goes up exponentially as the “Quintet” builds to its climax. And because it feels like a classic finaletto, it’s reasonable to expect that the curtain will fall on its final, percussive note, as we anticipate what this dangerous night will bring. But it doesn’t.

  Instead, all this propulsive energy is transferred to the site of the rumble itself, and dance takes over. In a short book scene, Tony actually brokers a compromise—a fair fight between the leaders of the two gangs—but it quickly deteriorates and, in one of Robbins’s most famous theater ballets, all h
ell breaks loose. It ends when Bernardo, Anita’s lover, stabs Riff, the leader of the Jets, and then, in what can only be described as a meta-gap, Tony kills Bernardo. Tony, who has vowed to find his way out of the world of gangs, blood sport, and racial animus, finds himself a murderer with a knife in his hand.

  The geometry of this outcome is set up by the “Tonight Quintet,” and now we know the outcome, at least for the moment. Anita will not have her night with Bernardo but will instead have her hatred of Tony and the Jets restoked. The gangs will remain at war. And Tony and Maria’s love will be more sorely tested than either could imagine—because Bernardo is Maria’s brother. The curtain falls not on anticipation but on all-but-certain tragedy.

  * * *

  West Side Story was Stephen Sondheim’s first Broadway show as a lyricist; the opposite approach—using some of the same ideas—served him in one of his capstone achievements as a composer-lyricist fifteen years later. West Side Story was a gritty tragedy, while A Little Night Music was a frothy comic operetta, admittedly with some dark shadows lurking, as they tend to in Sondheim’s work. Nonetheless, the show is an intricately constructed, sophisticated, largely comic work, created after the landmark achievement (but financial disappointment) of Follies.

  “I didn’t enjoy doing Night Music,” the director-producer Hal Prince wrote years later. “It was mostly about having a hit.”

  In hindsight, Night Music is significantly more than just a hit, and one of its sweetest pleasures—especially if you admire puzzles and structural dazzle—is the number that brings down the first-act curtain, “A Weekend in the Country.”

  This time it’s all about anticipation. An Act 2 lyric has the ensemble singing, “Perpetual anticipation is good for the soul but it’s bad for the heart.” While I can’t say with any certainty what that means, the anticipation referred to is certainly sexual; the anticipation in “A Weekend in the Country” is sexual and theatrical. Like the “Tonight Quintet,” it’s about the unforeseeable outcome of diverse characters on a collision course. And, as with the “Quintet,” there are five points of view. But the number itself couldn’t be more different. No hint of a reprise-driven finaletto here—it’s a whole new number with a whole new tempo. Where the “Tonight Quintet” treats rage, ardor, and danger, “A Weekend in the Country” is a frolic musically, and lyrically breathless. The danger it describes is of the heart, and there’s some panic in it, but no one is likely to get killed. Remember, it’s a comedy.

  It begins when Desiree Armfeldt asks permission of her cantankerous wealthy mother to invite some people down to the mother’s country house for the weekend. It’s not an innocent move. Desiree invites her former lover, Fredrik Egerman, and his young, virgin bride, Anne, with the clear intention of creating an intriguing contrast between Anne’s annoying innocence and her own appealing experience. This sets in motion, among other things, the downbeat of the number. The virgin bride, suspecting the earlier affair, is horrified, while her husband is flattered and intrigued. Anne seeks the counsel of her friend Charlotte, who advises her to be bold—youth will win out. Charlotte then gleefully reveals the plot to her husband, a caddish military man and Desiree’s current lover. He, of course, insists on crashing the party. Finally, Egerman’s son, studying for the priesthood, also joins in, talking himself into going along “to observe” the spectacle of human folly, though it’s clear to everyone but him that he’s in love with his stepmother, the virgin bride.

  So there’s a lot to look forward to, and Sondheim has a field day, piling expectation on anxiety on expectation as Egerman Sr., Egerman Jr., Charlotte and her husband, Anne, and even Petra, the housemaid, all make preparations to meet their romantic fates, weaving their points of view together at breakneck speed—though it’s never hard to understand the lyrics. In six minutes, Sondheim creates an entire agitato playlet, revving up the audience for what might or might not be the door-slamming, secret-passageway, meet-me-in-the-library outcome of such a weekend. In the end, the ensemble joins in, carrying bag and baggage to the cars as the number comes to a surprisingly civilized if very tutti conclusion; the curtain falls on a virtual orgy of expectation and suspense.

  This is plenty to get you through intermission and back to your seat. As another Sondheim hero marvels in another circumstance, “so many possibilities!”

  * * *

  In a significantly less elegant but more raucous fashion, The Producers takes the same tack. The show concerns the efforts of Max Bialystock and his newfound partner, Leo Bloom, to produce the biggest Broadway flop in history, raise much more money than they need, and keep whatever’s left after the show opens and quickly closes. After all, with a flop, investors assume all the money is lost. The entire first act (once they come up with this scheme) involves assembling the elements of the show and raising the aforesaid money from unsuspecting lonely, rich, randy widows from “Little Old Lady Land,” as Max calls it. He means the Upper East and West Sides of Manhattan. The closing number celebrates this accomplishment, with nary a word of concern about the obvious likelihood that the results will go horribly wrong, which seems inevitable to the rest of us.

  In “A Weekend in the Country,” the characters are filled with anxiety as well as anticipation as they set off for what they know will be an unpredictable and complicated fate. In The Producers, the participants are completely innocent of any possibility of mishap—they’re delusionally enthusiastic about the terrible idea they’ve had and feel impervious to failure. In other words, they work in the theater.

  The Producers hearkens back to the era of How to Succeed, so perhaps it makes sense that the finale is also a classic finaletto (though it’s not called that in the playbill), comprising elements of songs that have peppered the first act. This makes sense from a dramaturgical point of view as well as being in period. Since the first act consists of Max and Leo assembling a script, a director, a design team, a spectacularly busty Swedish assistant, and myriad elderly backers, and since each new element has had its own musical number, we should be reminded of how the whole motley team was put together by hearing each one’s music again. And that’s just what happens. The cracks in the plaster are clear to the audience when we observe just how terrible every element of the show actually is going to be, but, of course, that’s exactly what Max and Leo are hoping for. That it may go wrong in a different way—a way none of them can foresee—occurs to nobody but, perhaps, us. So we don’t need a crisis, because the anticipation of one is deliciously ripe in the air and plenty to sustain us.

  * * *

  If Gypsy, West Side Story, A Little Night Music, and even The Producers are classically structured shows (well, The Producers sort of), Jonathan Larson’s Rent, while based on a classic opera, was anything but. Larson worked for many years on what was to become his only significant contribution to the canon (he died at thirty-five just before it began previews) and had a difficult time taming the beast. Though it began as a collaboration with a playwright named Billy Aronson, Larson soon took over the project himself, writing book, music, and lyrics, and often getting tangled in the complexities of a story that was as much about a time and a place—the world of hipster artists on the Lower East Side at the height of the AIDS crisis—as it was about one specific character’s dilemma. Reluctant to give up any of the many tributary story lines that he had created and/or adapted from Puccini’s La Bohème, Larson needed help yet resisted offers to reshape the show into a conventional musical. It was, after all, about downtown bohemians living in ambitious, sometimes uncontrolled chaos. If form follows function, why not have a chaotic, uncontrolled evening of ambitious rock-operatic drama? Larson’s reasoning made sense, but the show, in its earliest incarnations, was long and confusing, despite the obvious merits of his vision and his score. Its framing conflict, about the attempts of a community of artists, would-be artists, activists, and would-be activists to resist the takeover of their building by an ambitious former friend who has gentrification on his mind, meandered. But i
t served as a device for an examination of the lives of determined outsiders, most living with HIV, on borrowed time.

  The off-Broadway New York Theatre Workshop developed the piece and eventually presented the premiere, which had been trimmed and rethought—if not always elegantly—to the point where it was wildly exciting to audiences and critics, both despite and because of its flirtations with indirection and even incoherence. Structurally, the show seemed to almost exactly mirror the state of mind of its various oddly connected, sometimes even disconnected characters. And since its story stubbornly resisted a simple description, Larson cleverly created a first-act curtain that encapsulated the underlying emotion of virtually every character in it: defiance in the face of certain defeat.

  “La Vie Bohème” paid tribute to La Bohème, but more directly to the spirit that sustains outsider communities, dreamers, slackers, and those who would rather be lost in a dangerous world than found in a conventional one. The number invites the entire ensemble to plead the case, beginning with a statement that what they love and aspire to is already gone:

  Bohemia? Bohemia’s

  A fallacy in your head

  This is Calcutta

  Bohemia is dead

  What follows is a kind of list song, which owes a nod to both Sondheim’s “A Little Priest” from Sweeney Todd and, strangely enough, James Rado and Gerome Ragni’s “Ain’t Got No” and “I Got Life” from Hair. Its gleeful death mask and its rhyme orgy are Sweeney’s and its catalog of revolutionary values is straight from that other downtown musical.

  To loving tension, no pension, to more than one dimension

  To starving for attention, hating convention,

  hating pretension