The Secret Life of the American Musical

by Jack Viertel

  Hammerstein had been using this parallel track construction since his days as an operetta librettist in the ’20s, but in his work with Rodgers, he moved swiftly toward integrating the second couple with the first. In Carousel, the integration is mostly thematic, with Carrie Pipperidge’s dull, conventional, and prosperous marriage to Mr. Snow underlining the dangerous, passionate, but impoverished marital choice of her best friend Julie Jordan. Once again, the subplot gets a single song in Act 2. But in both South Pacific and The King and I, the subplot stories are directly related to the main plot, and the outcome of the principal characters’ lives is tied deeply to the outcome of the subplot. And the subplot sings more, because it matters more and because it is never unhitched from the basic story, so we never feel we’ve stopped moving.

  To tie the plot and the subplot together in a way that matters (which seemed more and more of a virtue as the form matured) requires proper planning in Act 1, which is another reason that second-act trouble is sometimes first-act trouble. If the whole mechanism is not set in motion properly to begin with, it’s going to come back and bite you before the evening is over. No show handled this challenge better than Guys and Dolls, in which the couples are of equal weight and completely dependent upon each other because the bet that gets the plot rolling is between the men in each couple. So when Sky Masterson goes down in the sewer to place a new, life-changing bet in the middle of Act 2, he’s arriving at the crap game run by Nathan Detroit. The event is about Sky’s story, but it’s taking place on Nathan’s turf. If Sky wins his bet (which he does), he stands a chance to win back Sarah. But if Nathan is caught by Miss Adelaide running the crap game (which he is), all hell will break loose between them. The scene makes room for a terrific comedy bit involving the show’s other subplot (about a dangerous gangster from Chicago named Big Jule who is ready to kill Nathan) and a terrific production dance number (“Luck Be a Lady”) that energizes the audience as it waits in suspense on Sky’s roll of the dice. So even within this one scene, the outcome of both plots swings one way and then another, the fate of both pairs of lovers always hanging in the balance. In a roughhouse show, it’s an elegant stroke.

  Sweeney Todd matches the elegance of Guys and Dolls in terms of sheer architectural beauty. Since Sweeney’s mission is to reclaim his daughter and punish the judge who stole her, while the subplot involves the daughter’s romance with the sailor who rescued Sweeney at sea, no one can make a move in either story without affecting both stories. There is something of Alfred Hitchcock in the plotting—the entire second act of Sweeney is about a knot tightening around the characters we care most about. As Sweeney loses his grip on reality, it seems more and more likely that his innocent daughter will suffer the consequences. In the first act, Sondheim provides a terrifying outcry called “Epiphany,” in which Sweeney, wielding his straight razor, threatens everyone within reach, including the audience, as his rage overflows. But Act 2 contains something even more frightening: a detached, docile solo (the third song in the show called “Johanna”) that shows us a Sweeney completely unhinged, living in a private world as he blandly slices throats and admits that his ability to focus on revenge is beginning to slip in and out of view as his mind falls apart. Not only is it a new flavor for the show, nothing remotely like it has ever been written for any show. It alerts us that the floor beneath our feet is beginning to tilt and we’ll soon be in dramatic free fall. It’s gruesome, but somehow placid.

  * * *

  It must be a coincidence that four of the most elegantly plotted musicals ever written—Guys and Dolls, Gypsy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Sweeney Todd—are pieces in which elegance has no place in the tone or flavor of the story itself. They are shows about working rough-and-tumble types (or in the case of Forum, low comedians), for whom refinement isn’t even a consideration. Yet they move with the grace of a ballet. For a musical that balances elegance in both architecture and tone, one has to turn to A Little Night Music. (It’s worth noting that four of these five can count puzzle master Sondheim among the creative team.)

  Night Music is the most like a puzzle box of all. The middle-aged Fredrick Egerman is married to a child bride of eighteen but still yearns for Desiree Armfeldt, a former lover of his own age. His son Henrik toys ineptly with the Egerman housemaid but lusts after his eighteen-year-old stepmother. Desiree, meanwhile, is engaged in an affair with a wooden-headed dragoon, whose wife is a schoolmate—and becomes a confidante—of the child bride’s sister. In order for Fredrik to end up with Desiree, the dragoon must be dispatched back to his wife, the son must run off with his stepmother, and even the maid has to find a lover of her own. It’s dizzying and wonderfully satisfying, but it took some doing to weave all the strands together—and the second act certainly has its challenges. In an arresting theatrical gesture in the middle of the act, the director, Hal Prince, staged a dinner party in which all the participants are present and all the story strands interweave in a striking way that allows us to keep track. A singular temper tantrum thrown by young Henrik about the questionable morality of everyone at the table launches the show into its final set of resolutions. The scene is practically the only one in which people remain static, seated or standing by the table, some facing upstage, and it has the feel of a slightly surrealistic tableau. It’s a unique candy in the dish, and a memorable one that serves an efficient purpose in a striking way.

  The working out of the various romances from this point on takes a little longer than we might wish, but that’s the curse of plots and subplots. Still, the elegance of the plotting is matched by the elegance of the tone, the music and mood of the piece, which drapes the chaos of sexual insecurity and desire in the golden glow of perpetual sunset. It’s an admirable feat accomplished by Sondheim, Prince, and the librettist Hugh Wheeler, who also provided the clockwork mechanism of Sweeney Todd’s book. To be fair, both works were based on underlying material that set up the structures for Wheeler to work with. Night Music owes a considerable debt to Ingmar Bergman, whose film Smiles of a Summer Night is its source, and Sweeney Todd follows the English playwright Christopher Bond’s version of the old melodrama of the same name. But Wheeler, who was a veteran author of many mystery novels (written under a variety of pseudonyms), understood the joys of clockwork plotting—not to mention the thrill of violence and sex, in any tone. Like Larry Gelbart, who cowrote Forum’s book, he remains one of the unheralded heroes of the form. And like Hammerstein, he had greater success in adapting work than in inventing it out of whole cloth.

  Forum’s plot is so intricate and unlikely that I won’t even try to describe it. But it’s based on the simple premise of a Roman slave who passionately yearns for liberty, and his young owner who passionately yearns for the girl next door. They strike a bargain: if the slave can deliver the girl, the master will grant him his freedom. From that point on—good luck. There’s the boy’s aging but randy father, his harridan mother, the girl’s pompous military fiancé, a procurer, a second slave with a secret pornography collection (erotic pottery, no less) who has a tendency to panic, some cross-dressing, a nonexistent plague, a funeral pyre, a sweating horse—the list goes on. With the exception of its remarkable opening number, however, there’s not a lot to be learned from the show as a paradigm; it’s a unique invention that never started a trend.

  Among these elegant five, Gypsy is the one that is shy of a traditional subplot. Instead, it places both strands of its story in the hands of one character—Madame Rose. Her drive to turn her kids into stars is the plot. Her romance with the candy-salesman-turned-agent Herbie is the subplot. But they’re so neatly entwined that it’s hard to separate them, and every scene that involves Herbie also involves the main story, because he’s the love interest and the agent for the act. That gives the show a rush of energy and forward motion. But cannily, the librettist, Arthur Laurents, also creates variety by introducing individual miniplots and then quickly resolving them. In the first act, it’s the story concerning Loui
se’s crush on Tulsa, which crops up in the second-to-last scene in the act and is resolved one scene later when he runs off with Louise’s sister, June. We never see either of them again. In the second act, the strippers provide a major event with “You Gotta Get a Gimmick,” and Tessie and Louise even establish a bit of a relationship, but it hardly qualifies as a subplot. Yet there’s a fascinating miniplot that introduces itself subtly and resolves almost invisibly, adding texture to the show and serving as a useful aid to our understanding of the main characters. The protagonist of this little plot is a wig.

  In the first scene of Act 2 of Gypsy, Louise tries, and fails miserably, to imitate her sister’s vaudeville act, decked out like a bargain-basement version of Baby June (who was pretty much a bargain-basement performer to begin with) in a blond wig. In frustration, and for the first time, she explodes at her mother, tossing the wig onto the ground and declaring, “I am not June. I am not a blonde!”

  The wig is picked up by one of the girls Madame Rose has recruited to be in the new act, whose name is Agnes.

  “Gee,” she says. “I always wanted to be a blonde!”

  Louise offers her the wig, but Madame Rose won’t hear of it. Wigs are expensive.

  But the moment, which serves as Louise’s declaration of independence, also leads Louise and Herbie to concoct a scheme in which all the young girls will become blondes—a new way to sell the act as Louise and Her Hollywood Blondes. It’s the first idea for the act that doesn’t come from Rose. Still, Rose negotiates for billing and the act becomes Rose Louise and Her Hollywood Blondes. “All blondes except you—because you’re the star!” Rose says to Louise.

  So Louise, finally, gets to have her own identity, which turns out to be a dangerous thing for Madame Rose.

  A lot has happened as a result of this wig, with more to come. Louise has begun to establish her own personhood and assert herself against her mother. The vaudeville act has been rechristened. And for the very first time an idea hatched by someone other than Rose has been accepted. We don’t know it yet, but for Rose, the worm is beginning to turn; power is beginning to shift. For an inanimate object, the wig has been busy.

  The troupe arrives at the burlesque theater, where they’re going to have to compete with strippers and blue comedians, and Agnes has changed her name to Amanda—a name more suited to her new, glamorous exterior. She’s an actress now, and the wig is still exerting an influence. The troupe survives its stint in burlesque right up to the last day, by which point Louise, who seems suddenly to be in charge of the troupe and almost in charge of her mother, forces Rose to look in the mirror and recognize reality. The act is finished, vaudeville is dead, and there’s nothing to do but quit. This is the hardest pill Rose has ever swallowed, and it goes down hard. But Louise, suddenly empowered, won’t give Rose any wiggle room. She and Herbie gang up on Rose, and finally she capitulates. After years of resisting, she agrees to quit, marry Herbie, and settle down.

  On the last day, Herbie encounters “Amanda,” who admits that she’s going back to “Agnes.”

  “I have to go home and let my hair grow out,” she says.

  True, the wig has been retired, but it’s had a full life. Agnes/Amanda’s little adventure is a parallel of the whole story of Gypsy’s vaudeville troupe and of Madame Rose herself: grand, unrealistic (and unrealized) dreams, no talent, and a very rough landing. A less skilled librettist than Laurents might have left poor Agnes in Act 2, Scene 1, never to be seen again. But by keeping her encounter with the wig alive and giving it a neat little shape, he underlines the showbiz trajectory of Gypsy’s larger story.

  * * *

  This leaves only the official subplot of Gypsy to be packed up, and since the plot and subplot are so deeply tied together, it’s easy for Laurents to land a punch to the gut. When the lead stripper at the theater is arrested, Rose changes her mind about retirement and volunteers Louise as a replacement. She simply can’t accept show business defeat, even if she said she would, and will stop at nothing, and stoop to anything, to “walk away—a star” (there’s that word again). That’s the final straw for Herbie, who calls off the wedding. He understands, finally, that he’ll never have Rose to himself, that show business—no matter how low, no matter how tawdry—will always win. And when the scales fall from his eyes and he says goodbye for good, the last subplot is neatly packed and put away—and we’re ready for the main event.

  16. The Small House of Joseph Smith, the American Moses

  The Main Event

  In most classic second acts there are two big blasts of energy—two showpieces that are designed to give the audience its money’s worth. Generally, neither of them is the most important thing in the show, at least not in the sense of getting you to care about the characters and what happens to them. Instead, they’re designed to impress and to thrill, which is a big part of why you’re there in the first place. The first one comes early, or perhaps halfway through, and it’s not always a production number—sometimes it’s a charm piece like “You’re Timeless to Me” in Hairspray. It can be a specialty like “You Gotta Get a Gimmick” in Gypsy. And sometimes it’s the whole nine yards, like the spectacular “Waiters’ Gallop” and the title song from Hello, Dolly! or the “Spooky Mormon Hell Dream” from Book of Mormon.

  But if the first one is there to remind you of how much fun you are still having in Act 2, the second might be called the “main event”—in some sense you’ve been waiting all night for it. It’s a promise fulfilled, even if the promise has never been fully articulated in advance. Although sometimes it has. Many classic shows make sure their plots are building up to a big gathering of some sort—the union rally in The Pajama Game, the Ice Cream Sociable in The Music Man, the “Miss Teenage Hairspray” contest at the Eventorium in Hairspray. It’s getting late now, and there are really only three beats left in the act: the main event, the all-important result of it (also known as the next-to-last scene), and the finale. So this is often the biggest blowout in the show.

  Sometimes it’s called an “11 o’clock number,” a term that theater people love to toss around, although it tends to mean whatever they want it to mean. Legitimately, an 11 o’clock number, if there is one, is a final star turn—“Rose’s Turn” from Gypsy is the most vivid example. That one comes very late in the show, while others, like “Lot’s Wife,” from Caroline, or Change, come somewhat earlier, before the plot has really been sorted. And, of course, the curtain no longer goes up at 8:30 as it did for decades, so the term itself seems to be operating in an unfamiliar time zone. Still, “10:20 number” just doesn’t have that theatrical ring one wants from a term of art.

  If you’ve got a star with great charisma and great pipes, you’re going to want one of these numbers. But, particularly today, that’s often not the case, and the 11 o’clock number’s appearances have been scattered in recent years, as has its placement. Some kind of main event, however, is still very much with us.

  During the development of The Producers, everyone knew that the biggest production number in the show would be “Springtime for Hitler,” Susan Stroman’s reimagining of the stunningly vulgar and shocking comedy number in Mel Brooks’s original movie. It’s the big set piece in the film, it’s the culmination of Brooks’s basic tenet that laughing at something (Nazism, in this case) is the best way to destroy it, and since it’s a musical comedy production number in the film to begin with, inevitably it was going to be the main event.

  But it comes too early in the act.

  True, it’s not right at the beginning, but it’s no more than halfway through, in terms of the number of plot turns it takes to finish the story. Yet it couldn’t be moved entirely, and so it was pushed as late as possible and became the first big event in the act; something else had to be the second. It was inconceivable that the show would get all the way from “Springtime for Hitler” to the final curtain without at least one more major showstopper. And it couldn’t be a production number because nothing could ever be expected to
top “Springtime” in that department. What to do?

  The answer turned out to be that ancient thing that had been keeping audiences happy since the days of Ziegfeld—“A Few Minutes with…,” in this case, Nathan Lane.

  At an early reading of the show to interest potential producers and theater owners (read: “backers’ audition”), Nathan Lane played Max, but a nonstar actor played Leo. It was clear that the book for the musical was a very substantial improvement on the original film in a number of respects, not the least of which was that it elevated the sexpot secretary, Ulla, from a burlesque-style one-scene joke into an actual character with whom both Max and Leo have a flirtation. Max’s interest is entirely carnal and passing, whereas Leo actually tries a little tenderness, and Ulla falls.

  The quality of the show was obvious at that reading, though the skeptics believed it was too much of an in-joke to interest anyone but theater people. They missed the universality of the story that had been wrought out of what had once been a modest-grossing but well-remembered cult movie.

  Two other things came out of that reading: Max and Leo had to be played by equally important stars, a team worthy of jousting with each other for top honors. And the second act needed its second big event.

  Matthew Broderick took on the role of Leo, solving problem number one. And Lane himself, experienced and consummate professional that he is, suggested how to solve problem number two. The audience was coming to see him play Max Bialystock, after all, and it was only appropriate that he get a few minutes alone with them. Call it ego if you must, but Lane was completely correct. Something had to be customized that would fulfill expectations and allow the star to be a star. Max and Leo are partners, but it is Max who is driving the story. Leo is small and lovable. Max is terrifyingly larger than life.