The Intelligent Conversationalist

by Imogen Lloyd Webber

  WISE WORDS

  The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.

  —Oscar Wilde

  * * *

  WHY IT MATTERS TODAY

  Theater has been an important part of human culture for more than 2,500 years, so it’s not going anywhere. You need to have a basic grasp of the concept of this multibillion-dollar industry that millions of people attend every year. Odds are that you are one of them and will find yourself holding a conversation about the genre.

  We will begin with the pinnacle. And it is Broadway, which is comprised of around forty professional theaters, which seat more than five hundred, in New York’s Theater District AND Lincoln Center. It gets around 13 million bums on seats per year.

  After America’s Civil War ended, theaters began to make their presence felt in New York, especially downtown. Lower Manhattan was the location for P. T. Barnum’s entertainment empire by the 1840s. Big Apple theater began its migration from downtown to midtown around 1850, looking for cheaper real estate prices. In midtown. Quite. Some things do change.

  It wasn’t until the 1920s roared that theaters began to really consolidate on Broadway as we know it today, when the Shubert brothers started pulling their strings. They were helped by the fact that this was the era of the Gershwin brothers, Irving Berlin, and Rodgers and Hart—you can own the venue but you need the product to put derrieres on seats.

  * * *

  KEY TERM: THE GREAT WHITE WAY

  Situated in one of the first New York districts to be electrified, Broadway shows installed electric signs outside the theaters. Since colored bulbs rapidly burned out, white lights were used for the marquees. It is thought the nickname originated in a 1902 edition of the New York Evening Telegram newspaper.

  * * *

  Broadway has had its ups and downs over the years. Talkies and the Great Depression did nothing for its box office receipts in the 1930s, although it did wonders for artists’ creativity. The example to throw about is the playwright Eugene O’Neill—some of his finest work, such as The Iceman Cometh, comes from this period.

  * * *

  KEY TERM: STANISLAVSKI

  • Constantin Stanislavski (1863–1938) was a Russian theater director and actor who basically came up with what we know as method acting. Performances should be all about keeping it real.

  • Stella Adler studied with Stanislavski, the only American actor to do so. Marlon Brando ended up in her class. She also taught Warren Beatty and Robert De Niro.

  • Lee Strasberg (who famously fell out with Adler over technique) tailored the Stanislavski concept for American actors. His students included Marilyn Monroe, Al Pacino, and Jack Nicholson.

  * * *

  There were still struggles for the industry by the 1940s, but the birth of the mega musical came into play. The Golden Age of the Broadway musical is usually considered to have begun with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s huge hit Oklahoma! in 1943 and to have ended with the cast stripping off in Hair in 1968 (although some argue it stopped with Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot in 1960). Rodgers and Hammerstein followed up Oklahoma! with Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951), and The Sound of Music (1959). Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady, adapted from Pygmalion, made its appearance on the Great White Way in 1956. Laurents, Sondheim, and Bernstein’s West Side Story made its debut in 1957, while Chicago penners Kander and Ebb had everyone coming to the Cabaret from 1966.

  All that being said, by 1969 only thirty-six playhouses remained, compared to the around seventy-five in the 1920s. Despite the bright lights of A Chorus Line in 1975 and Annie in 1977, Broadway was not the most salubrious of areas. Then in part courtesy of the British Invasion and later mayor Rudy Giuliani and Disney, the area became Disneyland. The upstarts’ names from across the pond? Well, to name a few: Cameron Mackintosh, Tim Rice … and Andrew Lloyd Webber (Dad!). Homework at this point: Although it personally pains me to say it, Michael Riedel’s Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway will be the best work you will ever read on this transformation.

  If one thinks about it, it’s not that surprising that these Brits appeared and conquered. My tiny island nation does have the pedigree. The British equivalent of Broadway, the West End, is hardly to be sniffed at. The first West End venue opened in Drury Lane in 1663. The theater burnt down in 1672, but the theater district went on to become the world’s largest, and it still garners about the same number of bums on seats a year as Broadway. In a country with a population of … Not that we’re counting or anything.

  In London and New York, beyond the “commercial” theater of the West End and Broadway, you have subsidized (UK) or not-for-profit (US) theater. Now, here’s what you need to know about this: The subsidized sector can obviously take more risks—they are not beholden to angels, investors, in quite the same way. So in the not-for-profit sector, you will see more avant-garde productions with actors you’ve never heard of. In London it’s places like the National Theatre, and in New York, the Roundabout Theatre, the Public Theater, and the Manhattan Theatre Club (and I’ve spelled all those correctly, *knocking head on desk*). You should never be too disdainful of obscure or, on the other end of the spectrum, jukebox musical productions. The existence of each helps the other flourish.

  Of course, Broadway and the West End do not contain every significant theatrical venue. The Royal Opera House in London and the Metropolitan Opera House in New York being two that come to mind. And so we reach the argument that is of great importance to only a few, but that we should have on our radars. ’Twas ever thus.

  The term musical took hold in the early twentieth century. The precise differences between operas and musicals do keep getting blurred. There’s the case of West Side Story, which has been performed in both genres. Basically, in musical theater, words are the driving force; in opera, music is. Thus musicals tend to be performed in the language of their audience.

  It is perfectly forgivable if you are on shaky ground in regards to your operatic knowledge. America’s Metropolitan Opera puts the average age of its audience as over sixty. But if someone has paid for your very expensive ticket, read Cheat Sheet 29 so you’re up on your significant composers and note the types of singing voices in existence on the next page.

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  NOTEWORTHY NUGGETS: OPERATIC SINGING VOICES—HIGH TO LOW

  Soprano: Since the late eighteenth century tends to be the female lead. Classical period brought in the high notes/range (before then it was about vocal virtuosity).

  Mezzo-soprano.

  Contralto: Lowest girl.

  Countertenor: Highest boy.

  Tenor: High male voice. From classical era on, normally male lead.

  Baritone: Normal male voice. Term took hold in mid-nineteenth century.

  Bass-baritone: High-lying bass or low-lying classical baritone.

  Bass: Low voice. Supporting type. Often the comedic turn.

  * * *

  TALKING POINTS

  • If you’re with theater buffs, say, “A dramatic literature is necessarily conditioned by the audience for which it is intended,” and you won’t have to utter another word as those in the vicinity debate the point.

  • Colonial America first got a theater presence of note in 1752, when a company of actors established a theater in Williamsburg, Virginia. That’s right, Virginia.

  • The notable Shakespearian Broadway actor Edwin Booth’s brother, John Wilkes Booth, assassinated Abraham Lincoln. Edwin’s Hamlet in 1865 was a particular success at the Winter Garden Theatre just a few months before his brother made the family infamous.

  • Improvisation has been a consistent feature of theater, first emerging with commedia dell’arte, which began in northern Italy in the fifteenth century before spreading throughout Europe. By the turn of the seventeenth century some theatrical troupes that practiced it, such as the Comici Confidènti, attained international celebrity. A master of improvisation today is Mike L
eigh, a British playwright who for more forty years has been creating plays that encompass it, including 1977’s Abigail’s Party.

  • In Shakespeare’s time, acting companies played in rep, rarely doing the same show every night. Long runners were alien.

   The first recorded long-running production was The Beggar’s Opera, which ran for sixty-two successive performances in 1728.

   The world’s longest-running production is The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie, which opened in London’s West End on November 25, 1952. If you see a stellar show, declare that you “think it’s going to Mousetrap it.”

  • The Majestic Theatre on Broadway is considered by many to be the home of the musical. Originally built in 1927, it has played host to Carousel, South Pacific (starring musical theater legend Mary Martin), Camelot (starring Julie Andrews and Richard Burton), Mack and Mabel (a Jerry Herman piece—the infamous American composer also behind Hello, Dolly! and La Cage aux Folles), and Phantom of the Opera, which has turned into a bit of a Mousetrap—Phantom is currently the longest-running musical on Broadway, having opened in 1988.

  • Musicals were undoubtedly improved by sound technology, so don’t be too sad you didn’t see Ethel Merman, the first lady of musical theater for decades, do Cole Porter’s Anything Goes in 1934. Radio mics didn’t happen really until the 1970s. The original Superstar staging was all done around microphones with leads.

  • Stephen Sondheim, that somewhat significant (he’s won more Tonys than any other composer) American musical force of the late twentieth century (his shows include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, and Into the Woods) and the British equivalent(!), Andrew Lloyd Webber, were both born on the same day—March 22 (1930 and 1948 respectively). Take that, astrology doubters. Or something. But it is odd.

  • Dad cowrote the musical Evita with lyricist Tim Rice and there are two fascinating—no, really—backstories that aren’t very well known about it.

   Tim had the bright idea to do a show about Eva Peron. Dad, when he was a boy, had seen Judy Garland turn up wrecked and late to perform at the London Palladium. Her rendition of “Over the Rainbow,” her signature anthem, was abysmal. It later became Dad’s way of getting to grips with Tim’s brainwave. Dad gave Eva an anthem that subsequently turns against her, which you know as “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina.”

   According to Dad, Mrs. Thatcher, before she was prime minister and while she was still leader of Britain’s opposition, used to turn up and stand at the back of Evita for the end of the first act and the beginning of the second. So the future Iron Lady stayed for the big, conquering numbers—“A New Argentina,” “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” (the balcony scene with the arms), and “Rainbow High.” And then left before things went pear shaped for Eva. All deeply ironic considering the subsequent Falklands crisis (when Thatcher’s Britain went to war with Argentina over some small islands near Argentina).

  • The Chicago revival, which opened in 1996, in 2014 became the longest-running American musical on Broadway and the second longest-running overall, beating Cats. The original production opened in 1975 and closed in 1977. Why has it been so successful? Tunes that people know, sexy dancers in black lace, occasional stunt casting, and a hit movie—what more can you want from a tuner?

  • Particularly in musical theater, there is a fine line between success and failure and no such thing as a sure thing. Cite legendary flop Anyone Can Whistle. It paired Arthur Laurents with Stephen Sondheim in his first outing as both composer and lyricist and starred Angela Lansbury and Lee Remick. It played twelve previews and just nine performances at the Majestic Theatre in 1964.

  • Space has prevented me from talking ballet in any great detail. However, please be aware of the groundbreaking cultural figure that is Misty Copeland. In 2015 she finally became the first African-American principal ballerina in the seventy-five-year history of American Ballet Theatre. A queen of social media, like the Williams sisters in tennis, she has pushed the boundaries in an arena once perceived as limited for African-Americans.

  RED FLAGS

  • Running late for a Broadway show? You’ve probably got seven minutes from the advertised time until curtain up. Anything past that and you’re annoying to actors and audience alike. And turn off your phone, FFS. Otherwise Patti LuPone may walk off with it.

  • If you’ve just witnessed a dreadful show on Broadway you can say, “They’re doing it for the tour,” but not within earshot of anyone involved with the production.

  • At an opening night? Do not repeat legendary theater owner Jimmy Nederlander’s words of wisdom: “There’s no limit to the number of people who won’t buy tickets for a show they don’t want to see.” Instead say something along the lines of David Ives’s brilliant line: “Ultimately one has to pity these poor souls who know every secret about writing, directing, designing, producing, and acting but are stuck in those miserable day jobs writing reviews. Will somebody help them, please?”

  • Tennessee Williams wrote the mid-twentieth-century American classics The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He did not write Death of a Salesman. That was Arthur Miller. Or Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which was actually penned by Edward Albee later, in 1962.

  • I don’t think Shakespeare’s comedies are funny, but I do rate his tragedies. This is not something one should utter while at the opening night of a Shakespeare comedy on Broadway. It can get you into trouble. Just saying. Your author has never done such a thing, slightly tipsy, obviously.

  • Show Boat premiered in 1927 at the Ziegfeld Theatre. Yes, that early. Don’t confuse it with later shows, which it is easy to do, as it was written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. The very same Hammerstein who went on to collaborate with Richard Rodgers on The Sound of Music and the like.

  • Andrew Lloyd Webber didn’t compose Les Misérables or Miss Saigon. You’d be surprised.

  • You are within your rights to complain about another dreadful jukebox musical, but be warned. Someone in the vicinity may counter with the examples Jersey Boys and Mamma Mia! Jersey Boys won four 2006 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, while Mamma Mia!, which was based on Swedish pop sensation ABBA’s songs, is a global phenomenon that has made its producer Judy Craymer (who used to work for Tim Rice, who wrote the musical Chess with ABBA members Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus) a very rich woman indeed.

  • A show is ON Broadway and IN the West End. If an entertainment journalist makes that mistake more than once, you should never read them again, for they are ignorant and not to be trusted.

  * * *

  WISE WORDS

  All the world’s a stage,

  And all the men and women merely players;

  They have their exits and their entrances,

  And one man in his time plays many parts.

  —William Shakespeare, As You Like It

  * * *

  SOCIAL SURVIVAL STRATEGY

  Argument: “A dramatic literature is necessarily conditioned by the audience for which it is intended.”

  As a rule of thumb, always consider whom the writer was writing (or indeed, the artist was drawing) for, for it is key to understanding the work. If you don’t know the answer to this and you’re with someone who considers themselves a know-it-all, ask—it’s acceptable not to have the answer at your fingertips, but the question should always be posed.

  Crisp Fact: “Supposedly, of the 17,000 words Shakespeare used, he invented about 1,700 of them.”

  Use this either to impress someone with your knowledge or to commiserate with them if they are complaining they don’t understand the Bard, since probably nobody ever fully has.

  Pivot: “Where are the best places to go in New York pre- and post-theater? It’s hard to find a gem of an eatery amongst all the irritable Elmos in Times Square.”

  Anyone who has ever been to New York has been accosted by
a grumpy Elmo and wondered if there was anywhere decent to dine in the Theater District. The person you’re with will agree with you and may even reveal a secret night spot that will change your life.

  CHEAT SHEET 31—AWARDS SEASON CONVERSATION

  Awards season, in the traditional sense, refers to the film awards season, which runs November through February every year, culminating with the Oscars. But this book is a collection of Cheat Sheets. We covered British history in a few pages, so it’s child’s play for us to also include here the Tonys (theater), Emmys (TV), Grammys (music), and most important, fashion. What? you say. Sartorial selection is the one theme that runs through all of them, people.

  Now, you might scoff and ask why you need to know about such fluff. Because it’s fun. And if you want to be a boring person who understands only the inner workings of the Electoral College, fine, skip this bit. But for those of us who want to be well rounded, it’s amusing to look at people who couldn’t get remotely rounded over the festive season—instead starving themselves for months to fit into their awful outfits. To laugh at their inability to do anything unscripted, such as make an acceptance speech or be interviewed on E! And if you’re into the concept of being an entertaining individual, you probably know someone who’s holding an Oscar viewing party containing attractive people whom you want to sleep with. But to get them into bed, you need to look like you know something about culture.

  I’m not going overboard here. We’re concentrating most of our energies on the Oscars, as quite frankly, who holds a soiree to watch the Golden Globes? Other film awards we mention during the season are merely to see you through Academy Awards tweeting or viewing. We mention the Tonys for any same-sex dalliances you might be cooking up, along with the Grammys and Emmys so you can survive any water-cooler chat the following morning.