No more enchanted evenings - appreciation of the American musical play

National Review, March 29, 1993 by Anthony Lejeune

"The musical-comedy lyric," mused Wodehouse, "is an interesting survival of the days, long since departed, when poets worked." He meant that the lyrics were expected to rhyme properly, contain the right number of syllables, and be comprehensible. It was true then. His own most famous lyric, the words for "Bill," had been written in 1916, but surfaced, and survives, in Show Boat. Show Boat fits oddly into the history of the musical. Jerome Kern worked on it all his life; its various incarnations featured both his first and his last songs. Even "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" was originally intended for Show Boat. When it opened in 1927, the seriousness of the plot and the integration of mood between book and songs were the harbinger of changes which would not be fully developed for another 16 years.

That the golden age began with the arrival of Oklahoma! on March 31, 1943, no one disputes. Oklahoma! not only broke away from the conventional structure but joined words and music in a deceptively simple combination, which was pure Americana. Rodgers and Hammerstein went on to dominate the musical theater as no other composer and lyricist had ever done. Lorenz Hart and Cole Porter before, and Stephen Sondheim afterward, dazzle us by their virtuosity. The reaction to them, as one commentator, a professor of music, observed, is "I could never do that," whereas to Rodgers and Hammerstein it's more likely to be "Anyone could do that" - in which belief we should be very much mistaken.

Carousel, South Pacific, The Sound of Music, and The King and I followed. But they were not lonely peaks. Mingled with them, from other hands, came Annie Get Your Gun, Kiss Me, Kate, Call Me Madam, Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady, and a dozen more.

Then the gold ran out. Not completely; there have been one or two later shows, and a few songs, that glinted. But, with seductive symbolism if not absolute chronological precision, Lerner and Loewe's Camelot marked the end of the brief shining moment.

At Hammerstein's deathbed request, Sondheim took his place as Richard Rodgers's partner for Do I Hear a Waltz? Their styles clashed. The British critic Sheridan Morley has written of it: "Buried somewhere in the many conceptual problems were the end of the old upbeat Broadway singalong and the beginning of a new, darker, infinitely more cynical and intriguing kind of show. This one is the crossover."

Walter Kerr, a much wiser critic, wrote of Sondheim's Company, after praising its many virtues: "Now ask me if I liked the show. I didn't like the show. I admired it, or admired vast portions of it, but that is another matter. Admiration stirs in the head: liking sends out signals somewhere lower in the anatomy, the pit of the stomach maybe, and gradually lets you know that you are happy to have been born, or to have been lucky enough to come tonight."

The musical stage today is dominated by quite a different genre, its most conspicuous proponents being Andrew Lloyd Webber and the impresario Cameron Mackintosh. The roots again were in England, but the soil by now was poisoned. This new genre belongs to the rock-and-pop era. The concept of melody has been shattered: lights and noise rule. Whereas Rodgers and Hammerstein took what appeared simple themes and elevated them, Lloyd Webber and his contemporaries have taken portentous themes and emptied them of meaning. It is surely quite remarkable to write a play about Jesus Christ with no religion and a play about Eva Peron with no politics.