{"id":815,"date":"2014-03-21T18:16:11","date_gmt":"2014-03-21T18:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=815"},"modified":"2014-04-03T23:21:38","modified_gmt":"2014-04-03T22:21:38","slug":"candy-coloured-world-of-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2014\/03\/candy-coloured-world-of-stupid.html","title":{"rendered":"Candy-coloured world of stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Prod_01\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Musicals should have jokes and tap dancing. There, I\u2019ve said it. I\u2019ve long thought it, sitting in the dark while leather-lunged belters lay about with coshes made of bombast and earnestness. Jokes and tap dancing, people. Jokes and tap dancing.<\/p>\n

Most musicals I see are for review, rather than on my own dollar. Partly that\u2019s because that dollar doesn\u2019t take you very far at West End prices (I will finally see The Book of Mormon<\/em> this summer. Even with a special offer and thrifty seat selection, we\u2019ll be watching the action from, approximately, Ghent. Forget opera glasses, we\u2019ll need the Hubble Space Telescope and an ear trumpet).<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s partly because \u2013 well, I have a problem. Musicals are supposed to be transporting, joyous and life-enhancing \u2013 rollercoaster rides through mirth and emotion. But aren\u2019t they often a bit, you know… stupid?<\/p>\n

Now, silly is great, we love silly. The tongue-twister gabble in My Fair Lady<\/em> or gunge-splattered daftness of Bugsy Malone<\/em> \u2013 love \u2019em. Mooks fugueing <\/a>through the racing pages in Guys and Dolls<\/em>, shoreleave shenanigans<\/a> in On the Town<\/em> and the Sunday-best dating tips from Hello, Dolly!<\/em> all raise goosebumps of sheer pleasure.<\/p>\n

Stupid is different. Stupid is people stopping the show to self-actualise. Stupid is people yowling their therapy stories in a mid-Atlantic throb. Stupid is taking a messy, complex story and lighting it by the dimmest common denominator bulb of idiocy. For example: it has been two years but I have still not forgiven \u2013 will never forgive \u2013 the criminally idiotic Finding Neverland<\/em>. Based on a vanilla movie dubiously treating JM Barrie\u2019s life around the creation of Peter Pan<\/em>, it\u2019s not that it plays fast and loose with the truth \u2013 but that it took extraordinary truth <\/a>and reduced it to utterly unremarkable fiction. Why insult one of Britain\u2019s magnificently weird writers with exhortations about finding yourself, a mendacious portrait of two marriages and the constant reminder that day dreams needn\u2019t stay dreams? When Captain Hook \u2013 Hook!<\/em> \u2013 adopts the role of life coach, all is lost. I read periodic reports of this musical\u2019s resurrection<\/a> with the same alarm Van Helsing would regard news items about soil disturbance in Transylvania.<\/p>\n

\"London<\/a>

London Road at the National Theatre Photo: Mark Douet<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Musicals can distil human nature without insulting it. The jokes can be black as pitch, the tap dancing can be sardonic as you like (looking at you, Mr Sondheim. With a martini and doe-eyed adoration). If the dancing is in a show by Kander and Ebb, it will like as not portend the rise of Fascism (Cabaret),<\/em> a corrupted judicial system (Chicago)<\/em> or the brutal sump of segregation (The Scottsboro Boys<\/em>). As for the jokes, they can be rueful and ambiguous \u2013 as in London Road<\/em><\/a>, the inspired \u2018verbatim\u2019 musical by Alecky Blythe and Adam Cork which builds funny, poignant and troubling chorales from interviews with neighbours of an Ipswich serial killer.<\/p>\n

Most musicals I love are about adults bumbling through adult dilemmas \u2013 how to build a career, satisfy desire, sustain a marriage, treat a pig (thank you, State Fair).<\/em> I didn\u2019t see either of the prematurely-ended shows by former megamusical icons Andrew Lloyd Webber (Stephen Ward)<\/em> and Tim Rice (From Here to Eternity<\/em>) \u2013 but perhaps they failed in part because infantile is an easier sell at the moment? Wicked<\/em>, Legally Blonde<\/em>, The Light Princess<\/em> and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory <\/em>(pictured above by Johan Persson<\/em>)\u00a0\u2013 like many ballet companies seeking to extend the repertoire, producers seem in thrall to the family market. Escapism is great \u2013 but there are other escapes than into the candy-coloured world of stupid.<\/p>\n

Even a grinch knows that musicals can hit you where you live \u2013 and where I live, experience suggests, is a secret yearning to believe in undiluted happiness. I watch sad with the \u2018what-did-you-expect?\u2019 shrug of an Old Testament prophet, but there\u2019s nothing that disarms a born pessimist than people armoured in radiant good cheer proclaiming that everything will be alright.\u00a0During a rather fraught\u00a0period a few years ago, I saw A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum<\/em> \u2013 and simply being told that it was fine to postpone tragedy until tomorrow and to permit comedy tonight released grateful tears. At that moment, it was something I desperately wanted to believe.<\/p>\n

Another thing about the musicals I love: they come from my parents\u2019, even my grandparents\u2019 generation. Nostalgia winds its tendrils around me. I don\u2019t feel this about Pinter or Miller, but with its sass and sentimentent \u2013 and its often disconcerting un<\/em>sentiment \u2013 the American musical is the great Jewish art form. Sorry, novelists<\/a>, but there it is: an art that stages the frets of mid-century America in an idiom of sweet and salt. As someone cracks in the Tin Pan Alley comedy June Moon<\/em> by Lardner and Kaufman: \u2018If song-writers always wrote about their home state, what a big Jewish population Tennessee must have.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"Me<\/a>

Me and My Girl (Sheffield Crucible) Photo (c) Robert Day\/Daily Telegraph<\/p><\/div>\n

The musical I\u2019ve loved most in recent years was built on spats, buttons and the helium puff of delight. Lupino Lane\u2019s Me and My Girl<\/em> is a piece of 1930s froth which plays British class conflicts for silly-ass giggles. In a blissful production at the Crucible in Sheffield (makers of the very best in musical entertainment), it was an utterly happy show, unclouded by thought, reason or much recognisable human behaviour. But it was full of songs my grandmother loved, and of things working out for the best, and that combination meant I sobbed myself stupid from beginning to end. When the cast observed that the sun, contrary to expectation, had its hat on, I cried so much the woman next to me looked over with concern, but it was fine. Entirely the right kind of stupid.<\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Musicals should have jokes and tap dancing. There, I\u2019ve said it. I\u2019ve long thought it, sitting in the dark while leather-lunged belters lay about with coshes made of bombast and earnestness. Jokes and tap dancing, people. Jokes and tap dancing. Most musicals I see are for review, rather than on my own dollar. Partly that\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[48,46,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-815","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-musicals","9":"tag-sondheim","10":"tag-theatre","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}