Ironic Musicals

The new Cliché Watch debate is up at The New Colony.  My co-debater is John Pinckard, a producer of musicals and theater in general in both Chicago and nationally.  Should be fun.  Do add your own two cents, anyone can comment!

A word more on musicals

And art in general, from the great David Mamet.

Beauty as a Choice

I've written about my preference for extradiegetic singing in musicals--songs that exist outside the 'reality' of the piece but express something  heightened or special.  These do seem to be the essential trait of musical theater as an independent genre.  As long as characters are singing ostensibly 'known' songs within the context of the narrative--even if these are new songs composed for the play--there is nothing in the musical that we wouldn't expect from theater in general.  But when we accept the added conceit of songs expressing unspoken (unspeakable) emotions or conditions, we enter the realm of The Musical.  

Grey Gardens offers an interesting example of this.  When Ms. Resnik plays Little Edie in the second act she employs two modes of singing.  When Edie is singing diegetically (to Jerry in "The House We Live In", or to the Maysles Brothers/Audience in "The Revolutionary Costume for Today"), she sings employing her thick New England accent.  She brilliantly sacrifices the 'beauty' in the song for the sake of her character.  But, when she sings extradiegetically in "Another Winter in a Summer Town" she sings it beautifully (in fact, really beautifully), and we can presume her voice is now unencumbered by her neuroses or her region and she sings from the soul.  

This is an amazingly effective choice and the kind of choice that shows the potential and the power (if, still, the sentimentality) of musical theater, and the rewards granted by taking the additional leap its genre demands of the audience.  To make beauty and ugliness an aesthetic choice is an uncommon position in this more conventional world, but it pays off for the performance and for the form.

It is convenient, perhaps, that we are to understand her soul's voice as beautiful.  Taking this line of argument to its extreme it would be interesting to hear what Polpot's voice (for instance) would sound like in an extradiegetic context (or how this would be applied to Sondheim's Assassins).   The real case may be that Ms. Resnik is simply singing 'neutrally' (luckily, this means beautifully) when her character is exempt from narrative demands.  Either way, I do think it is important in Musicals to differentiate these separate modes of singing as a means to examine their significance to the character, the narrative, and (of course) the audience.

Unpacking Sighs, cont'd.

Since I posted "Funeral Blues" yesterday I can't stop thinking about another of my favorite Auden poems, "O Tell Me the Truth About Love." Also, probably the most common example of what I was talking about, in fact, is the Broadway Musical.  Isn't that what's great about musicals after all? Everything stops and someone expresses something so strong she just has to belt it out. I think Brook's point still holds, for a serious actor the decision lies in choosing if you suspend your acting work for those three minutes to indulge in what is at its core a sort of silly reiteration of a generic requirement, or if you rather understand your character as a person who really sings to express himself.  For a director the matter hinges upon understanding what the difference is from the house.  I'm not sure yet.  In the meantime here's the poem and a clip from one of my favorite sighs unpacked in a song, from My Fair Lady.

Tell Me the Truth About Love, by W. H. Auden

Some say that love's little boy,
And some say it's a bird,
Some say it makes the world go round,
And some say that's absurd,
And when I asked the man next-door,
Who looked as if he knew,
His wife got very cross indeed,
And said it wouldn't do.

Does it look like a pair of pyjamas,
Or the ham in the temperance hotel?
Does its odour remind one of llamas,
Or has it a comforting smell?
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,
Or soft as eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.

Our history books refer to it
In cryptic little notes,
It's quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic boats;
I've found the subject mentioned in
Accounts of suicides,
And even seen it scribbled on
The backs of railway-guides.

Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,
Or boom like a military band?
Could one give a first rate imitation
On a saw or Steinway Grand?
Is its singing at parties a riot?
Does it only like classical stuff?
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?
O tell me the truth about love.

I looked inside the summer-house;
It wasn't ever there:
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,
And Brighton's bracing air.
I don't know what the blackbird sang,
Or what thye tulip said;
But it wasn't in the chicken-run,
Or underneath the bed.

Can it pull extraordinary faces?
Is it usually sick on a swing?
Does it spend all its times at the races,
Or fiddling with pieces of string?
Has it views of its own about money?
Does it think patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.

When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I'm picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous ror rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love?

Here's the song (jump to about 2:03):