The Evolution Of Musicals
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
Have you noticed lately (by ‘lately’ I mean in the last 50 years) Broadway musicals have changed a tad? Back in August we went to the King’s Wharf Theatre to see Jersey Boys, a great show.
But damn it was not the light and fluffy bit of song and dance I am used to. It wasn’t a fun-loving romp like Oklahoma, Guys and Dolls, or Sound of Music where everything ends well. Jersey Boys was heavy stuff. They even said a bad word, well not a bad word, the same one 250 times, but no one got all bent out of shape and called the police. Like it or not you hear it everywhere and all the time, hopefully not at the dinner table, or from the grandchildren. It doesn’t seem all that long ago when people were up in arms because Rhett Butler said, damn’in Gone with the Wind.
Mark my words, some day someone will say ‘poop’ on TV and the world will end.
Maybe I am wrong; but almost all great musicals have bad things happen, like people dying, guys getting dumped, or worse. In Gigi Leslie Caron ends up marrying Louis Jourdan, a Frenchman old enough to be her father. Not only that, Louis had been running around with Zsa Zsa Gabor in the movie and she was not exactly the Virgin Mary. I hope Gigi had him pee in a bottle before she married him.
‘Poor Jud was dead and a candle lit his head’ in Oklahoma – well he really wasn’t dead but they killed him off before the end. That was a good thing for the actor playing Jud because he didn’t have to wait around for the finale.
He was lucky, when MAT put on Carousel I was the villain and ran away in the second act. The director made me stay until the end, stand in the back row for the last number, and sing. I was really disappointed as was the audience no doubt; I wanted to go down to the Legion. It was a long show and when I finally got there the bar was closed.
Les Miserables was one of the greatest musicals of all time but it is another one with a terrible ending; half the cast were wiped out at the barricades and every last one of them had to hang around back stage just to sing ‘Do You Hear The People Sing.’ Inspector Javert got off lucky, he killed himself before the finale and had two jugs of beer in him before the rest of the cast got down to the French Foreign Legion.
Come to think about it, all my favourite musicals have some sort of disaster happen in the story. Lieutenant Cable got killed in South Pacific. King Arthur’s missus got the hots for Sir Lancelot and took off with him in Camelot. Everybody in Anatevka got evicted in Fiddler on the Roof. Sadly, some poor souls had no choice but to move to the United States. Fortunately for America most of them were Democrats.
But the worst ending of all was in My Fair Lady when a good-looking chick like Audrey Hepburn ends up with ‘enry ‘iggins’, who we suspect had something going with Col. Pickering. (That’s just between you and me, don’t blab it around.)
I have been in a half-dozen musicals, not to sing because I can’t carry a tune. Another problem, I can’t remember words either and always sing whatever the guy next to me is singing. Years ago I ended up standing beside Ken Brown and he couldn’t remember them either. In Man of La Mancha when the rest of the cast was fighting the unbeatable foe in The Impossible Dream, Brownie and I were climbing every mountain and it wasn’t even from the same show.
I am too short to play a lead. Well, maybe Oliver. I am the right height, but you can’t have someone play a 12-year-old who has to shave between acts.
If I had to choose the one role I would have loved to play of all the musicals I have ever seen or been in, it would have to be Fagin in Oliver. Granted he was a seedy old reprobate and operated a gang of under-age criminals who harassed the good folks of London in the 1800s. And maybe the young lads eventually ended up in Old Bailey or were hung, but at least he kept them on the streets. Old Fagin taught them useful skills like pickpocketry and mugging. At the end, he and Artful Dodger end up walking together into the sunset and… oh, no! You don’t think it could be another Pickering-Higgins thing do you?
(Image Supplied)
