Breaking into Song: Why You Shouldn't Hate Musicals

Adam Lenson

• Publisher: Salamander Street Ltd.
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781914228025
• eBook ISBN: 9781914228018
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Art General

"This book is a fascinating cri de coeur and made me question
everything I think about musicals"

Alan Cumming

A book for those who can't stand musicals, those who love them, and every theatregoer, academic, practitioner and student in between. Breaking Into Song explores theatre's most divisive genre, and asks the fundamental questions:

• What makes a musical?

• Why are they so polarising?

• And why have we allowed a form so full of possibility to become so repetitive and restrictive?

Through a series of essays, London-based director, dramaturg and musical theatre specialist Adam Lenson asks what audiences can do to stay open minded and what creatives can do to make new musicals better. Examining both sides of the divide, he explores how those who both love and hate musicals can expand the possibilities of this misunderstood medium.

Dive in and discover the political foundations of the form, the difficulties in pinning down exactly what it is, the connections between musicals, video games, opera and comic books, and why a musical is, actually, a lot like a poopy baby.

"A passionate and cogently argued call to arms and a very enjoyable read"
Lyn Gardner

 "This book is really brilliant. If you care about/enjoy/work in/struggle with/want to understand/have concerns for the state of musical theatre, it is essential reading. Hugely recommended"
Howard Goodall

"I would advise anyone who… hates musicals… to read this book"
Musical Theatre Review

"Bold, inclusive and willing to adapt, Adam Lenson's blueprint for musical theatre
above all looks at sustainability."
The Reviews Hub

Contents:

Breaking Into Song
The Wound
On Hating Musicals
Cash Machines
Musicals and Comic Books
Superpowers
Musicals are Political
Poopy Babies
When Words Are No Longer Enough
Collaboration
Time and Memory
Photocopying a Photocopy
I'm Not a Genre, Not Yet a Medium
Expertise
What's The Point?
Definitions
Audiences
Musicals and Video Games
Can Musicals Ever Be Cool?
The Triangle
Tiny Bowls
Musicals and Opera
Digging vs Telescopes
The Musical
Cardboard Cities
Musicals Cost Too Much
Autobiography
Opposites
Build it and They Will Come
What's in a Name?
Replicas
Stacks
Making Space

THE MUSICAL

There’s something that really gets to me. I am not a fan of the term, ‘The Musical’. I don’t like seeing shows that have that phrase as part of their title:

Pretty Woman: The Musical

Six: The Musical

Matilda: The Musical

Honeymoon in Vegas: The Musical

It seems to suggest that something once existed in another form and now exists IN MUSICAL FORM. It seems to suggest that, rather than it being intrinsically necessary in and of itself, it wasn’t a musical before, but now it is. It seems to imply to me that something has had musical theatre spread on top of it. It makes the medium of musical theatre feel like a gimmick, an expansion pack. A thing that something can be converted into. I also resent the fact that I have never seen something define itself as a play within its title.

Curious Incident: The Play

Warhorse: The Play

The Shawshank Redemption: The Play

I purposely picked examples for plays that were also mostly adaptations. Because a common answer is that musicals mostly have THE MUSICAL added to their titles when they are adaptations that were once something else. They were once books and films and now the audience need to know that THIS is a musical.
But why is it that we do that for musicals and not for plays? Yes, it is perhaps more likely for an adaptation to have ‘The Musical’

it its title, but it isn’t a certainty. So why must we signpost that something is definitely the musical? I believe it is because we want to rigidly define that it is for a ‘musical theatre audience’. We want it known that this has singing and dancing, tunes and is entertaining and fizzy and fun. But I believe that this need to signpost is damaging musical theatre, is undermining what musicals can be and forcing them into a cul de sac where they all feel and look the same. Here are some original American musicals that exist just as titles:

Cabaret

Fun Home

Caroline, or Change

Company

Follies

Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812

They aren’t:

Cabaret: The Musical

Fun Home: The Musical

Caroline, or Change: The Musical

Company: The Musical

Follies: The Musical

Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812: The Musical.

To me, seeing The Musical in the title of a show is a great indicator that the show is commercially motivated and not artistically motivated. It is commonly said that content should dictate form. The content, the story, the characters should dictate what sort of piece (or musical) needs to be written. This suggests that work grows organically outwards from a central seed. Then it grows in an integrated way with music, text, narrative all part of the same intrinsic need to survive and grow. But THE MUSICAL suggests something already grew and then was painted a different colour. The colour of musicals. It seems to suggest the form coming before the content. We are going to make a musical out of this. We are going to take this and mix it with musical theatre.

Once again it seems to suggest that musical theatre is a thing you mix and spread onto drama and narrative. It seems to suggest it is something that isn’t essential or central to the construction of a piece. We are then led into a world where musicals are drama with decoration. Where the music is an expansion but not an essential part.

My preference is that if you need to describe that a piece is a musical, that you do so underneath the title using A and not The. Let me show you the difference:

Waitress: A New Musical

or

Waitress: The Musical

One feels trusting, one feels distancing. One option seems to believe in the form while the other undermines it. It signposts it beyond any usual type of signpost.

We don’t see:

His Dark Materials: The Novel

Lord of the Rings: The Film

So why do we see time and again things like:

Heathers: The Musical

But as ever, this sort of rigid extension between naming and show simply limits the possibilities of the form and the medium. To me it says, musicals sound like that, look like that, and feel like that. And if you want to see ours, then here is a signpost right in the title.

I have also noticed a difference in the way Americans label their shows compared to the way we do in the UK. Americans are far more likely to use A with a subheading than in the UK where we are far more likely to use THE in the title. This correlates with a sense I have that Americans care about and believe in the form of musical theatre more than we do in the UK. It is part of the American cultural heritage and is woven into their cultural DNA. It is a form that they created, evolved and crafted and they are justly proud.

Here are some examples:

Titanic: A New Musical, in the US became Titanic: The Musical in the UK.

Amelie: A New Musical in the US became Amelie: The Musical in the UK.

An American in Paris: A New Musical, in the US became An American In Paris: The Musical in the UK.

I notice that not only does America tend to use THE less than in the UK but also that more artistic shows tend to use THE less than A. For example:

Honeymoon in Vegas: The Musical

and

Bridges of Madison County: A Musical

are both written by Jason Robert Brown.

Waitress

A New Musical

Dear Evan Hansen

A New Musical

The Band’s Visit

A New Musical

But:

Beetlejuice: The Musical

Pretty Woman: The Musical

Ghost: The Musical

Through a study of show titles in the last decade I found that America uses A a lot more than THE. Whereas in the UK we use THE a lot more than A. And this seems to correlate with a cultural shrug about musical theatre in the UK compared to the US. A sense that the form is only commercial entertainment rather than art form.

There are obviously anomalies and counterexamples all over the place. I’m not claiming the perfection of the theory but whether something is called The Musical or A Musical does have different connotations.

As said, I notice The Musical much more in the UK and I also notice a tremendous amount of snobbery and intellectual bias against the form in the UK. We deny British artists the ability to write artistic, important, life changing works but we celebrate important American artists who are doing just that.

There is a series of graffiti by Banksy where he sprays the words ‘the musical’ in a curly font on top of other graffiti. This is exactly my point. People think of The Musical as a sweet spread you can paste over something to change it entirely. An air freshener or perfume that can be added to any idea to retroactively convert it into a musical. Banksy’s examples highlight the strangeness of The Musical. The way that ‘The Musical’ becomes something we add after the fact rather than intrinsically discover within and through an idea.

Banksy’s graffiti includes:

Occupy: The Musical

Playground Mob: The Musical

Dirty Underwear: The Musical

They all take something we think of a certain way and subvert them. Thus, as ever, we have such a strong idea of what a musical is. It is tap dancing and entertainment and upbeat tunes and jazz hands and we immediately understand the absurdity of these combinations. Musical theatre is a form that dictates content, it is that strong, it is that immovable. The Musical is rigid. It says musicals will never change or evolve. It says that they can never grow.

If you think I’m making something out of nothing, then what about this. London Road and The Scottsboro Boys are very dark stories. The first is about a serial killer in the UK who murdered a series of sex workers in the early 2000s. The Scottsboro Boys is about nine African American boys who were falsely accused of raping a white woman on a train and then sentenced to death before being kept in prison their whole lives.

Both are f...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Breaking into Song
• The Wound
• On Hating Musicals
• Cash Machines
• Musicals and Comic Books
• Superpowers
• Musicals Are Political
• Poopy Babies
• When Words Are No Longer Enough
• Collaboration
• Time and Memory
• Photocopying A Photocopy
• I’M Not A Genre, Not Yet A Medium
• Expertise
• What’s the Point?
• Definitions
• Audiences
• Musicals and Video Games
• Can Musicals Ever Be Cool?
• The Triangle
• Tiny Bowls
• Musicals and Opera
• Digging vs Telescopes
• The Musical
• Cardboard Cities
• Musicals Cost Too Much
• Autobiography
• Opposites
• Build it and They Will Come
• What’s in a Name?
• Replicas
• Stacks
• Making Space