The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built (11 page)

The source material, Roger Corman’s grade-Z horror film
Little Shop of Horrors
, is a mad rewrite of the Faust legend, in which Seymour sells his soul to the devil (in this case a giant man-eating Venus flytrap from outer space) to achieve his escape from the living hell of skid row. The original was a low-budget bit of cheesy nonsense, but that’s part of what made it so ripe for musical adaptation: it had a unique bargain-basement tone, its own voice, and a cast-iron set of bones: Faust. Ashman and Menken used the fact that the film dated from the early ’60s to inform the score, which became a series of early rock-and-roll pastiches. The show opened off Broadway in 1982 and set the world on fire in a small way.

Seymour’s beloved, Audrey, also has a sensational I Want, and in some senses it’s also a lift—in this case from Eliza Doolittle, who seems a remote musical theater cousin. Audrey, as poor, chilly, and hungry as Eliza, is under the thumb of a sadistic dentist whom she’s dating, while Seymour loves her from afar—or at least from across the flower shop. Ashman and Menken update “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” by changing almost everything about it—the tone, the locale, the era—but leaving the desire the same. It’s the early ’60s in America, so Audrey expresses her pathetic I Want in a cockeyed paean to the lower-middle-class American dream in a song called “Somewhere That’s Green.” Eliza craves a room somewhere far away from the cold night air. So does Audrey—in Levittown:

A matchbox of our own

A fence of real chain link,

A grill out on the patio

Disposal in the sink

A washer and a dryer and an ironing machine

In a tract house that we share

Somewhere that’s green.

She’s swallowed what she’s read in magazines and seen on TV. She’s Eliza in ’60s cartoon drag, and like Eliza, she’s turned to an unlikely hero—Seymour. There’s not much chance he’ll ever provide any of this. And then the plant intervenes, and off we go.

Other than Stephen Sondheim, Ashman was probably the greatest potential link between the Golden Age and the New Age, but where Sondheim’s career took him to an expansion of the serious musical plays of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Ashman’s impulses emulated the lighter, musical comedy men who provided merriment and disposable entertainment in the R&H era. He was a pop culture type. If Sondheim seems to be a descendant of
Carousel
, Ashman comes from the line of
Kiss Me, Kate
and
The Pajama Game
. After the off-Broadway triumph of
Little Shop
and a failed attempt to convert the film
Smile
into a musical (composed by Marvin Hamlisch), Ashman and Menken decamped for Hollywood and Disney Studios. Once there, they performed the great service of resurrecting the animated features unit, by writing the film that brought greatness back to G-rated Disney cartoons—
The Little Mermaid
.

Disney had not turned out a distinguished full-length animated feature in decades, and hadn’t done a fairy tale in thirty years. Ashman and Menken applied the principles of the classic musical theater piece—complete with a typical I Want called “Part of Your World,” the requisite comic production number (“Under the Sea”), a romantic ballad (“Kiss the Girl”), and the rest. The film was a classic ’50s Broadway show reconceived in ’80s animation. They next turned to
Beauty and the Beast
, which also followed a classic model, and was also a smash. But in the midst of transmuting Broadway’s Golden Age to Disney animation, Howard Ashman died—one of the thousands of artists lost to the AIDS epidemic. He was forty.

Disney completed the film he was working on at the time of his death, the charming
Aladdin.
And Alan Menken remained the studio’s most successful composer, writing several fine scores with other collaborators. But the Ashman-Menken touch really existed for only two and a half movies. With the exception of
The Lion King
, about which more later, and
Frozen
, currently on its way to Broadway, the studio hasn’t reached those artistic heights in animation again.

*   *   *

A direct line can be drawn between
Little Shop
in 1982 and
Hairspray
, which opened almost exactly twenty years later, in 2002. They share a tone and a point of view, they’re both based on camp cult movies, and they both have a lot more on their minds than their loopy styles would suggest. They also use their opening numbers in almost identical ways, and like a number of classic shows, they use their I Want (which is incorporated into the opening number) to do something diabolically subversive. Unlike the simpler if no less passionate desires that inform shows like
A Chorus Line
and
Gypsy
, the desire that drives these shows seems sufficient at the time but leads to a surprise. There is a deeper, greater desire hidden behind the first one, which allows the show’s real subject to expand exponentially at the halfway mark without interrupting the antic spirit that grabs the audience in the first place. If you consider the initial desire as a hill to be climbed, the experience of these shows is like discovering that there’s a hill behind the hill—and a more interesting hike in store than you might have imagined.

Tracy Turnblad, the heroine of
Hairspray
, has a simple desire, but one that’s difficult for her to achieve: she wants to dance on the local Baltimore equivalent of
American Bandstand
, the ubiquitous TV show that featured “regular” teenagers dancing to the latest hit-parade rock-and-roll records in the late ’50s and early ’60s. Tracy has a problem, though: she’s fat. The term “regular,” in that day (and this), didn’t include the latitude of having a fat girl on TV, especially not on a dance show. So Tracy has to fight for what she wants, and even though it seems like a trivial desire in one sense, in another, it’s a fight for equality, for acceptance, for recognition that we may be created equal, but we may not look that way.

In
Hairspray
’s I Want moment, Tracy pleads for a chance to dance and makes it clear that her identity is defined—for her—by the fact that in those moments when she’s moving to the beat, she’s “a movie star.” Of course, no one will let her onto
The Corny Collins Show
,
Hairspray
’s version of
American Bandstand.
Yet, halfway through the show’s first act, she accomplishes her desire—she wins a place on the TV show. And
Hairspray
should be over right then. This is where the “hill behind the hill” starts to function. For in joining the cast of
The Corny Collins Show
, Tracy discovers that she’s not the only one with a history of oppression. Once a month, the show features “Negro Day,” when the black kids get to dance. But never with white kids, and only on that one day. Struck by the idea that this injustice has no appropriate place in American life, Tracy is transformed from a girl with a problem to a crusader for everyone’s problems, and her need to dance is replaced by her much greater need to integrate television—and the world.

There’s something thrilling about seeing a cloistered young person’s consciousness raised in a way that redefines her life and her mission, and, even within the somewhat goofy confines of a show like
Hairspray
or
Little Shop
, it’s moving—it turns a protagonist into a hero. It’s what
Camelot
was trying to do, in fact. Seymour makes his bargain with the plant and then has to figure out what to do when the bill comes due. Tracy has to risk losing her parents, her new boyfriend, and maybe even her liberty to fulfill the dream she didn’t even know she had when the curtain first went up.

The granddaddy of this structural form (in musicals) may be
My Fair Lady
itself. Shaw’s irresistible combatants, Eliza and Henry Higgins, make a bargain with, apparently, no strings attached: he will teach her proper English, she will do her best to learn it, and if she succeeds, Higgins will win a bet. That’s it. What neither can see is that this feat, if achieved, will inevitably transform them, and leave them on a ledge. Once Higgins has reinvented Eliza as a new person, what is he to do with her? Once she has entered his world on her own terms, how is she to return to the one she escaped? The original I Wants are suddenly forgotten and irrelevant. The problem is much bigger than anyone imagined. The second hill is spectacularly more interesting than the first, but the first was interesting enough to start us eagerly climbing.

*   *   *

The same thing happens in
The Producers
, in which the down-and-out Broadway producer Max Bialystock and his little mouse of an accountant, Leo Bloom, each sing a confident I Want song that defines the first hill: Max wants, needs, and must have a hit show—his reputation is in ruins. Leo wants simply to be a producer—of anything. His life as an unhappy cog in a CPA’s office is killing his soul. What neither of them knows is that their monumental scheme—to produce the biggest flop in Broadway history and run off with the unspent money—will bring them what they are truly seeking: a friendship, the companionship of another human being. It’s something neither has ever known. The original film of
The Producers
, like both
Little Shop
and
Hairspray
, was a cult favorite—a scattershot bit of craziness with a voice (Mel Brooks’s borscht belt caterwaul, in this case) but very little structure and a chaotic third act that rides off the rails. The musical, on the other hand, was a huge popular success, in part because, while the film’s voice was retained, its structure was retooled to chronicle Max and Leo’s dawning realization that they need and love each other.

A more typical romance is introduced, as Max lusts for, but Leo falls in love with, the ridiculously overendowed Swedish bombshell they hire as a secretary. But the enduring relationship is between the two men, and the result is infinitely more satisfying than the film because it tells a human story all the way to the end. The first hill is about something concrete; the second is about something humane. And that trajectory makes sense. Even people who seem to care only about Broadway understand that human contact is more rewarding than a hit show. Or some of them do.

*   *   *

It’s no coincidence that one of the collaborators on the book of both
The Producers
and
Hairspray
was Thomas Meehan, who had written the book for
Annie
back in the ’70s and had an innate sense of musical theater storytelling. His view was that no matter how well disguised, musicals are usually far-flung rewrites of classic tales, one way or the other. After looking at an early draft of
Hairspray
to see if he’d be interested in joining the team, he said, “It’s Cinderella. She wants to go to the ball but no one will invite her. And her family tries to stop her. She gets there anyway, meets the prince, but runs away from him. In the end, he catches her, and the worlds of the common people and royalty are joined together. It’s worked before, God knows.”

Of course, he was completely right, and though he was not responsible for a lot of the jokes in
Hairspray
, or the thematic idea of equality for all, he distilled the structure and drew a map.

Annie
, it should be noted, is faultlessly built and also owes its structural impulses to a sturdy source,
Little Lord Fauntleroy
, from which it is lifted, at least in part. This isn’t to take anything away from Tom Meehan—it’s a most admirable theft, in fact, reconstituting a very Victorian tale into a uniquely American one. In an earlier era it would probably have been greeted with uncomplicated joy by critics and audiences alike. But it opened almost two years after
A Chorus Line
had redrawn the playing field, and insiders, especially, were reluctant to offer a full embrace, even while audiences were falling all over themselves.

“You may love
Annie
,” one theater wag commented, “but you’ll hate yourself in the morning.”

The smart set couldn’t stop it, however. Time has been good to the show, because structurally and emotionally it delivers. It’s not just the famous little redhead and her scruffy dog, Sandy, that have kept the show in constant circulation. It’s the power of myth and the skill of the telling.

Annie
also features one of the most perfect I Want songs ever written—little orphan Annie’s plea to her unknown parents, “Maybe.” Who, in almost any audience, can resist a little mop-headed girl in a filthy orphanage in the depths of the Depression fantasizing about a real home life (somewhere that’s green) with real parents?

Bet you he reads

Bet you she sews

Maybe she’s made me a closet of clothes

Maybe they’re strict

As straight as a line …

Don’t really care as long as they’re mine!

So maybe now this prayer’s

The last one of its kind …

Won’t you please come get your Baby …

Maybe

The song manages to capture not only her indomitable desire but also her ambivalence about whether she’s ever going to be able to achieve it. She’s strong and vulnerable at the same time (that’s what that last “maybe” is doing there). So, of course, we start rooting hard—on page three. “Tomorrow” may be
Annie
’s immortal standard, but “Maybe” is its secret weapon. Charles Strouse’s music and Martin Charnin’s lyric both make a virtue of unsophisticated simplicity, appropriate to a little girl with no real education. The song makes no great claims as a work of art—it’s only trying to be a foundation for the story. That it succeeds so completely is what elevates it to the realm of art, in spite of itself.

As the plot plays out, it takes the combined efforts of the richest man in the world and the president of the United States to help her solve her problem, but Annie remains determined, and she leads them, not the other way around. She’s a model of the active hero, or in this case heroinette. Surely it is among the greatest American myths that in our country, even the busiest and the most powerful will stop what they’re doing and help a poor orphan find her parents. In today’s world, it’s a lot more fairy tale than myth, alas, but it’s one we’re all too happy to be told, even now.