Musical Theatre Script and Song Analysis Through the Ages

James Olm

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781350199361
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

How many times have you experienced a musical that was fabulous or just didn't work at all, but you had no idea how to communicate why? How do you differentiate between a flaw in the performance portrayal of a character to a structural flaw in the musical itself? How do you analyse musical theatre songs that are so subjective in its very nature? Is there even a common link of analysis between musicals from the Golden Age and musicals from the present day? Musical Theatre Script and Song Analysis Through the Ages answers these questions and gives students of musical theatre the tools they need to understand and articulate how musicals work. At the heart of any musical lie its music and lyrics, yet it is this area that is least understood. This book offers a brand new terminology of analysis that gets to the core of what holds a musical together: the libretto, music, and lyrics. Through identifying methods of lyric and musical analysis and applying these to ten different musicals throughout history, students are able to ask questions such as: why does this song sound this way?; what is this lyric doing to identify character purpose?; and how is a character communicating this feeling to an audience? From classroom analysis through to practical application, this text guides readers through a structured approach to understanding, disseminating and more importantly, articulating how a musical works. A perfect tool for students of musical theatre, its practical benefits of understanding the form, and realizing that it can be applied to any age musical, will benefit any theatre person in helping articulate all of those abstract feelings that are inherent in this art form. It offers a roadmap to the musical's innermost DNA.

1

Some Basic Terminology

The musical machine

We live in a car world. There are luxury and economy cars, fast and slow cars, sexy and practical cars, and gadget-filled and stripped-down cars. In essence, there is a car for every need and desire. However, we all buy cars for one main reason, and one reason only – to have the vehicle transport us from one place to another. Cars can get us to our destination in many different ways and fashions. It all depends on the kind and quality of the car. Generally speaking, the poorer the car runs, the less enjoyable the ride. The nicer the car runs, the more enjoyable the trip. A car with a broken radio, a shaky rearview mirror, or a stuck window will still get you to your destination safely, but it will be a bit annoying. A car with a flat tyre, a slipping clutch, or an engine with an oil leak, will also get us to our destination, but the trip will sputter or slow down at best. This would be a more unpleasant journey. A car with the transmission falling out, an engine block cracking, or a radiator breaking will totally stall the car out. This will be a detestable trip, and one that all of us would like to try to avoid.

The musical is like a car – plain and simple.

Like a car, the musical is a machine, and it transports us from our reality to an entirely different world. In this world, the musical takes us on a journey through the character’s experiences, to a final, set destination – the conclusion or resolution of the story. Like a car, the musical has an incredible amount of parts: actors, technicians, songs, directors, dialogue, choreographers, lyrics, musicians, story, and dance, just to name a few. When all of these parts fit together perfectly and are correctly calibrated, the musical production will take you on an utterly pleasant and wonderful journey to that final, prescribed destination. However, many times a musical might have “a shaky rearview mirror” or “a stuck window.” That musical’s trip overall could still be quite pleasant, but it would include a few minor irritations while watching it. Add a flat tyre, or a slow oil leak, and the musical becomes less tolerable, more difficult to sit through and watch. With a broken transmission, the musical journey will not be worth taking, and your date will be furious with you for spending so much money on a piece of junk.

The key to a good musical trip (and a great social life) is to have all of the elements of the musical, both structural and through production, clearly aligned well in a unified fashion. The vision and the focus must be consistent with the structure of the musical. The question becomes how we grasp and articulate those important musical elements and then translate them into a language that is accessible to all people involved in the production. Does this sound like a daunting task? Well, ok, it is. However, it is not impossible.

The dramatic question

The dramatic question in a musical is one overall question that we as an audience want answered by the end of the show. It is what keeps the musical machine running. It is the gasoline and the accelerator. It is the question that keeps the audience glued to their seats. It is this lingering question that keeps us all turning to the next page of the book in order to find out what happens at the end. It can be as simple as “Will the boy and girl get together and live happily ever after?” or as complex and philosophical as “Will feminism take root and survive in a patriarchal society?” It is a question that answers the plot of the show, but it also tends to go beyond. Other terms that people use that are similar to the dramatic question are super-objective, motivational force, primary objective, ultimate goal, and dramatic impetus.

I prefer the term dramatic question to these other terms because a dramatic question demands response. It demands an answer. It demands action. It demands resolution. A term like super-objective or dramatic impetus sounds theoretical and lays flat. It doesn’t demand anything. The dramatic question forces you to continue down the road to a conclusion.

Every story has to have a character or characters to root for. If this does not exist, audiences will begin to ask, “Why am I watching this?” That response is the kiss of death, and one that will cause most performing artists to dive into deep depression. Generally, the characters we root for will be found within the body of the dramatic question. Since they are the ones that we care for, we also want to know what will happen to them. Audiences tend to identify with those characters and live through them vicariously. This is a primary visceral response and desire of an audience. If we care about a character, then the dramatic question will ultimately reveal itself and demand resolution – thus, a happy audience, and no depressed artists.

The dramatic question drives the musical. Because of this, it is very important to spend a lot of time and energy focusing on and analysing what this question is. When you are figuring out the dramatic question, truly be careful to follow your gut feeling. As you read the script and listen to the music and lyrics of the show, be sure to take the time to assess what you are unconsciously feeling. Ask yourself why you are continuing to turn the pages. What do you want to find out? Whom are you rooting for? What do you want to happen for the character(s) at the end of the show? Focus in on those questions, and the dramatic question will naturally flow out of this.

There is no one exact, perfectly worded, and correct dramatic question. This is an important point. Decades of class discussions have shown me that in any musical, the students’ wording of the dramatic question will vary from year to year and that many times their dramatic question is better than mine! They all end up saying the same thing, but in a slightly different way. This is good! This is what makes new productions of an old show interesting – a slightly different perspective and slant on the interpretation of the product. However, it must stay true and in alignment with the intent of the show and its creators. You must be meticulous in your creating of the dramatic question, so that it is very specific in what you are trying to articulate in the show.

Here is a potential dramatic question for Meredith Willson’s The Music Man:

Will Marian find her true love in Harold Hill, and will the people of River City grow to find new excitement in their boring lives?

You’ll notice that I choose to not only include the romantic aspect of the show, but also include the entire community of River City in the question. The community is a huge part of the show, and we tend to love them and care for them. We want the town to be happy and to be pulled out of their humdrum existence.

For Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera:

Will the Phantom or Raoul win the heart of Christine?

Yes, there is an entire cast of players and workers within the opera house. However, in this musical, the main focus is Christine, The Phantom, and Raoul. We really are fairly uninvested in any of the other characters. Don’t get me wrong – all of the characters are important and integral to the success of the musical. However, they function to focus on the dilemma between the three main characters.

In this next example, I’m using the movie musical instead of the Broadway production because I believe this is the one movie that is actually better than the stage show – Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music. One could easily state the dramatic question to be:

Will Maria and Captain Von Trapp get together and live happily ever after?

This on its own makes sense and points to what we would like to see happen with the main characters. But, in this musical, that type of dramatic question seems shallow, considering the challenges that face the characters. Maria is not only falling in love with the Captain, but she is also questioning her life direction, especially spiritually. The dramatic question more appropriately could be:

Will Maria find and accept her true, God-given path in life?

Some musicals are structured in a unique way, and you need to go no further than the shows of Stephen Sondheim. One of my all-time favourite musicals is Sunday in the Park with George. This show actually has two dramatic questions – one for each act.

Act I: Will George choose Dot or art? / Act II: Will George find his own unique inspiration and voice in art?

Another uniquely structured musical is The Last Five Years. In this show, one character is living chronologically forward in time, while the other character is chronologically living backwards in time. Therefore, we already know the beginning and the end of the show early on. This makes for a different kind of dramatic question:

What causes a seemingly good relationship to break apart?

Finally, discussing the dramatic question brings up another interesting thought. Why have a dramatic question? My firm belief about theatre has always been that we as an audience and we as theatre professionals are involved with this art to make a difference in society. This difference can be as simple as to lighten the load of an audience member through entertainment and escapism. It can also be as monumental as leaving the theatre learning something new about ourselves and society, and thus changing our ways for the betterment of that calling. We have an instinctual desire to better ourselves, and theatre is a way to explore those possibilities by living through alternative experiences of the characters on stage. Therefore, I believe we attend theatre and perform theatre in the desire to change and improve our own personal situations. Having a dramatic question forces us to address a situation, care for the people involved in that situation, and then demand an answer or resolution for them at the end. Moreover, we demand the same thing from our own lives and ourselves.

Distance

If the dramatic question tells us who to follow, who to root for, and to what end result we would like to see happen in the show, then the distance of the show is the route and journey that the characters take in order to reach that desired resolution. It is the body and heart of the musical. The distance is “the road trip” itself. It is how we get to the end of the show – the action, the crossroads, the scenery along the way, the turns we take, the bumps we hit, and the surprises that we come across. The distance keeps us interested, and it maintains our desire to reach the final destination/conclusion. If there isn’t enough distance in the show, the musical will be over way too fast, or it will feel slow and cumbersome because there isn’t enough there to keep our interest. The audience will become impatient, frustrated, and eventually will want to leave the show before it is over.

From a structural standpoint, the best musicals and dramas have greater distances between where the characters are presently, and where those characters need to be at the end of the show. The distance of the show is increased in a variety of ways, usually by using obstacles. The obstacles can be physical or mental in nature. They can be through other characters. They can be structured through time, weather, and terrain. They can be mental/emotional obstacles where characters inadvertently fall in love, or they have emotional baggage from a horrific past. Obstacles are anything that poses a challenge or hurdle for the character and makes it more difficult for the character to reach his/her goal or end result.

In My Fair Lady, the dramatic question is “Will Eliza become a lady and have a lasting emotional relationship with Higgins?”

The entire show is based on obstacles. Eliza is a poor flower girl – she has no money. She has no social influence, no manners, or etiquette. Most importantly, she speaks with a cockney accent and therefore cannot speak in “perfect English.” Eliza also has a time constraint on her – she is expected to learn the ways of language and etiquette in six weeks’ time, while being brutally mentored by the hard-hitting, immorally driven, rude, and no-nonsense authoritarian Higgins. That in itself is a prescription for failure and still we are rooting for her, hoping for the happy outcome.

Yet those obstacles aren’t enough to juggle. Alfie Doolittle enters the scene to profit from his daughter, Eliza, and Higgins must deal with that. Eliza and Higgins start developing some strange sense of emotional connection that Higgins ignores, just as Freddy falls head over heels in love with Eliza. Karpathy, the expert linguist from Hungary, shows up at the ball at the same time Eliza is trying to pass off as being a “Lady.” All of these obstacles add tension and distance to the answering of the dramatic question.

In Kinky Boots, the dramatic question is “Will Charlie and the factory workers of Price and Son overcome their fears of sexuality differences in order to embrace a new direction in shoe production that will save their factory?”

Charlie is facing the dilemma of whether or not he should close the factory, putting all the factory workers’ jobs at risk. He is dealing with the obstacle of financial trouble – how he will meet his bills and payroll. He has time obstacles – a deadline for the closing of the factory and a deadline getting the boots ready for the Italian showcase. He has the obstacles of the workers themselves reacting to the inevitable closing. Charlie’s solution is to produce drag queen boots, and to bring in Lola as designer. This isn’t a Kum Bah Yah moment for the workers, needless to say.

Thus begins the emotional obstacles. Workers are dealing with their own emotional baggage on sexual prejudice. Lola is not getting support from the factory workers and, eventually, even Charlie. Both Lola and Charlie are dealing with the baggage of their fathers’ upbringing. All of these emotional obstacles are difficult to address and rectify, and push the final, end result further and further away from resolution.

A musical that has more obstacles and longer distances within it will be a musical that is more interesting and exciting to the audience, and will help propel the musical to the desired resolution.

The absolute Cardinal Rule of Energies

It’s in the music and the lyrics. It’s in the music and the lyrics. IT’S IN THE MUSIC AND THE LYRICS!

Remember this simple and very important rule, and all of the world will be good. Musicals are musicals because of the music and lyrics. Period. Yes, it is the synthesis of singing, acting, and dancing into one performance medium, but what makes the musical a musical is due to the music and lyrics. It is that musical sharing, a kind of kinetic energy connection, between the actors and the audience that differentiates the musical from any other performance art form, including dramatic theatre. This sharing of kinetic energy is the heartbeat of the musical, and the part of the musical that audiences will fully remember, more than anything else. As long as it involves music, it becomes incredibly memorable – from ballads, to reprises, to dance numbers, to glorious underscoring at the end of a show. It is the music and lyrics, which give the show its depth, warmth, emotional drive, and heartbeat.

An example that I love to use to further this point is The King and I. How many of you remember Tuptim? Lady Thiang? Pretty easy to remember, right? Now, how about Kralahome? Huh? Who is he? Many people don’t remember this wonderful and important character, even though he is involved with many scenes throughout the show. The point of this is Tuptim and Lady Thiang both have songs that they sing while Kralahome does not. Because of this basic difference, Tuptim and Lady Thiang are more memorable. The music and the lyrics put a focus on these characters because they need to be brought into light. That is why the lead characters traditionally have more songs and dances. It is Anna and the King’s story that we must follow and focus on – not Kralahome’s. If Kralahome has a bunch of songs, the focus is then redirected to him versus the others, and that creates confusion to the audience. Who are we to follow? Is Kralahome a part of the dramatic question?

This is not to say that the libretto isn’t important. On the contrary, a weak libretto kills a musical. The libretto must blend into and out of the music and lyrics with seamless motion. It must be incredibly consistent in its character development with the music and lyrics. Many times, it is the depth and breadth of the characters, as well as the “story line.” The libretto is the other arm and leg of the musical and should be treated as such. When creating a new musical, sometimes it is the libretto that should dictate the next song, not the other way around. Sometimes songs just don’t fit in right to the momentum of the show, and it’s the librettist’s job to point that out. Other times, a specific song is the designing mome...