[September 12th
marked the 150th anniversary of the first performance of The Black Crook, generally considered the first stage musical
(although opinions
vary). So this week I’ll AmericanStudy both Crook and other exemplary stage musicals—and will ask you to share
your solos and choruses for a crowd-pleasing weekend post that’s sure to garner
a standing O!]
On what links and
what differentiates two important recent musicals.
Before this week’s
series, I hadn’t written a lot about American musicals and musical theater in
this space, but when I did I tended to focus on socially progressive and culturally
significant texts: Zitkala-Sa
and William Hanson’s Sun Dance Opera
(1913), for one example; DuBose Heyward and George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (1935), for another.
Each of those works is complex and in need of more extended analysis, but both,
it’s fair to say, broke from their genres’ conventions and traditions to
portray American identities and communities in groundbreaking and important
ways. And what that would mean, to make the complementary point overtly, is
that the conventions and traditions of American musical theater tend to be
socially conservative (perhaps more so than many of our cultural forms), to
feature on the stage identities and communities in ways that flatter our
mainstream ideals rather than challenge, complicate, or broaden those
narratives. Which is to say, what the Tom Shows did with Uncle Tom’s Cabin, turning a
divisive and clearly activist work into a safe and stereotyping mainstream
popular entertainment, could be read as a symptom of a much larger trend in
American musical theater.
Whether or not that’s
really been the case overall (and I welcome comments on other ways to read our
musical theater histories!), the last year has witnessed a couple very
prominent steps in the more progressive direction. Jay Kuo and Lorenzo Thione’s Japanese Internment
musical Allegiance, which debuted
in San Diego in 2012, opened on Broadway in October 2015, featuring George
Takei (on whose experiences
in an internment camp the musical is partly based) among its acclaimed
cast. And in August 2015, Lin-Manuel
Miranda’s Revolutionary War and Founding era musical Hamilton moved from its award-winning Off-Broadway run to
Broadway, where it has continued and extended its popular
and critical successes. Along with their shared attempts to bring American
history to the stage, these two musicals also utilize casting to advance their
progressive goals: Allegiance
features a richly diverse group of Asian American actors (including the three
leads from the San Diego debut) amidst its impressively
multi-ethnic cast; while Hamilton
has famously gone even further in the direction of diversity, casting all Hispanic
and African American actors as its European American characters (including
Miranda himself in the initial run of the title role) and reserving the role of
King George for its only white actor, Brian D’Arcy James. In who as well as
what’s on the stage, both these new musicals are unquestionably challenging and
changing the genre.
Yet in another
way, the two musicals offer two quite distinct illustrations of the nature and
politics of the musical as a cultural form. (To be clear, I haven’t had a
chance to see either live yet, but have heard many of their songs and am also
responding to numerous reviews of each. Again, I welcome further comments
below!) The songs and
musical numbers in Allegiance are
consistently upbeat, and seem (both to this listener and to
many reviewers) jarring alongside the much darker moments and settings
through which the musical moves its characters. The rap
and hip hop songs and numbers in Hamilton,
on the other hand, align (counter-intuitively
yet pitch-perfectly) with both the musical’s innovative casting and its
portrayals of the Revolutionary and Founding figures and histories. That is,
the music in Allegiance feels tied
more to the musical genre’s conservative conventions, and thus at odds with the
play’s progressive goals in ways that create a sense of dissonance; while Hamilton’s more radical musical choices
parallel its progressiveness and create a sense of artistic as well as
political coherence. I’m thankful that both these musicals are on the stage in
2016, but am especially thankful for the thoroughly innovative brilliance that
is Hamilton.
Crowd-sourced
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. So one last
time: what do you think? Other musicals you’d highlight and analyze?
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