This song was written for Sting’s only Broadway musical, The Last Ship, and was actually included on the Sting concept album of the same title. It was intended to be proposal from the ‘older man’, Arthur, to the show’s heroine Meg. And while The Last Ship was essentially one long series of misguided decisions, had they actually kept this song, it would have been the most disastrous of all. This is a ‘proposal’ that wallows in its own miserable lack of love or any kind of conceivable appeal. It’s a heartbreaking song, which I think was the intention, and is actually quite effective when heard out of context, but no-one would ever hear this proposal and say ‘yes’, no matter how desperate they were. In the finished show, Sting replaced it with one of the score’s highlights, the much more positive and persuasive “What Say You, Meg?”. While “Practical Arrangement” is the polar opposite of love song, “What Say You, Meg?” is a genuine love song…just down-to-earth, comfortable, share-our-life-together love rather than wild, passionate romance. Some other shows…The Baker’s Wife, for instance…would argue that that is real love, rather than the Romeo-and-Juliet romanticism of the show’s central couple. In any case, “What Say You, Meg?” is not only a ravishing song, but a vastly more appropriate choice for this moment in the story…and indeed, one of the few dramatic moments in The Last Ship to be completely satisfying.
Archives for January 2017
Seussical: The Musical
This show, as all of you are probably aware, bombed in its Broadway engagement, but to the surprise of everyone, this turned out to be our era’s Candide or Merrily We Roll Along…the flop musical that got continuously reworked in other venues and eventually emerged as a genuine success and a part of the standard musical-theater repertoire. This actually makes a certain amount of sense, as the basic idea is a good one. Indeed, combining multiple Dr. Seuss stories into a single narrative is probably the only feasible way to adapt his work into anything longer than 30 minutes and still come out with something remotely faithful to his spirit (as the recent crop of ‘Sellout Seuss’ movies seems to prove). But unlike those works, which were essentially soulless cash-grabs, this show, however flawed its early incarnations may have been, was a well-intentioned and sincere attempt to pay tribute to one of the greatest children’s authors of all time.
And the basic story at the center of the show…basically the two Horton stories combined, with the smallest Who (here called Jojo) fleshed out into a co-star and Gertrude McFuzz (of the One Feather Tail) added as Horton’s love interest…was a strong one from the beginning. Unfortunately, the Broadway version tried to shove in a cameo by every famous Seuss character, burying their central plotline in an avalanche of go-nowhere subplots. Flaherty and Ahrens wrote the book themselves, which might explain why it took several tries to get it right, since neither had much experience as a librettist. This was compounded by another problem: the visuals. After all, we already know how these characters are supposed to look, and that look is utterly impossible to reproduce on stage, so the show, especially in the Broadway production, looked awkward and wrong.
But the show does have one monumental strength, and this is why Flaherty and Ahrens were right to refuse to give up on it: the music is absolutely wonderful. Endlessly tuneful, charged through with a joyous energy, and with a sound perfectly suited to portray a children’s fantasyland, the score totally justifies the attempts at revision; it’s simply too good to waste. Highlights include the thrilling opener, “Oh the Thinks You Can Think”; two beautiful ballads for Horton and Jojo, “Alone in the Universe” and “Solla Sollew”; two strong love songs for Gertrude, “Notice Me, Horton” and “All for You”; and the jauntily cynical “How Lucky You Are”. No-one…not even Seuss himself in his TV specials…has managed to capture the spirit of the books so successfully in song.
Ahrens’ dialogue and lyrics can come off as trying too hard at times (“If you’re hungry, there’s schlop in the fridge-a-merator”), but they’re true to the spirit of the source material. And despite the authors’ visible inexperience in how to structure a libretto, the decision to keep most of the dialogue in the rhymed-couplet format that Seuss himself used was a wise one; as the authors observed, if your characters have a naturalistic conversation for too long at a time it doesn’t really feel like Seuss anymore.
In its later revisions, the show has been tapered down to a ninety-minute one-act, the plot distractions have been minimized, and the visual look, while still far from perfect, has advanced beyond its embarrassing early stages. The score did end up having to sacrifice a few good numbers to accommodate the shorter running time, but the best of the music, including all of the highlights mentioned above, remains in the show. The show has redeemed itself in children’s theaters around the country, and even played an off-Broadway engagement and received a second New York cast album, which is quite an achievement for a cult flop. It’s not Flaherty and Ahrens’ most substantial effort, but for their most famous flop, it ironically wound up being their most successful show after Ragtime and Once On This Island.
High School Musical 2
The second installment of the High School Musical franchise was a step up in overall craftsmanship…Disney actually knew what a big deal this film would be this time around, and they poured a lot more effort and budget into it. The plot is quite a bit stronger, dealing with issues of temptation and selling out…not in the deepest way possible, granted, but one can’t expect miracles.
The real star of the show, acting-wise, is Ashley Tisdale as Sharpay Evans. Her role is greatly expanded from the first installment, and she plays a much more manipulative and diabolical villain here, playing up her campy portrayal from the first movie into a hilariously terrifying blend of lapdog and rottweiler. Her portrayal here may seem to contradict her friendly about-face at the end of the first movie, but I think it indicates that Sharpay Evans, like Velma Von Tussle from Hairspray, is that particular brand of the ‘conniving bitch’ archetype who’s actually a perfectly nice person until and unless she wants something.
The rest of the cast are about the same as they were in the first movie, although the more dramatic script gives them more opportunities for acting. The main difference is that the dubbed voice of Troy from the first movie, irritating proto-Bieber falsetto Drew Seeley, is gone, and Zac Efron is doing his own singing. Efron was still kind of figuring out the whole acting thing at this point, but he turned out to be a surprisingly strong singer…not only should he have been doing his own vocals from day one, but unlike Seeley, he has some heft in his voice. It was this realization that presumably led the songwriters to create the most dramatic song in this score, “Bet On It”. Yes, it’s incredibly melodramatic and has an almost comedic effect, but I think a fair amount of that was intentional…after all, this is a franchise whose saving grace was never taking itself too seriously. And in any case, Efron’s powerful baritenor and ultra-forceful delivery sell the Hell out of it.
The rest of the score is less even than the first one…it even features the franchise’s first true Floppo number, the indescribable Hawaiian novelty “HUMUHUMUNUKUNUKUAPUA’A”…but its best moments are much more sophisticated and well-crafted than anything in the previous score. Many of the songs are admittedly clear retreads of song models from the first movie…the love duet heard as a ballad for the heroes and as an up-tune for the villains (“What I’ve Been Looking For”/”You Are the Music In Me”); the R&B-influenced production number based on a sport (“Getcha Head In the Game”/”I Don’t Dance”); the melancholy third-act breakup ballad (“When There Was Me and You”/”Gotta Go My Own Way”); the soaring eleven-o’clock ballad (“Breaking Free”/”Everyday”); and the dance party finale with a message about togetherness (“We’re All In This Together”/”All-4-One”). But with the exception of that last one, all of these examples show a marked improvement from their predecessors in the original, which somewhat justifies the practice. (This wouldn’t stop with the third installment, either…”Bet On It” and the avaricious villain Wanting Song “Fabulous” would get counterparts there in “Scream” and “I Want It All”).
This film is more polished, and (I suppose) marginally more ambitious than its predecessor, but it is ultimately the same kind of silly but harmless guilty pleasure that the first film was. That said, it’s interesting to note that this particular installment of HSM has almost exactly the same plot setup and structure as Jason Robert Brown’s 13, and despite marginally less interesting music, it is actually much more likable, consistent in tone, and generally satisfying than that show will ever be. So if you ever feel the need to see a production of 13, remember: this movie has about equally good music and tells almost the same story, in basically the same genre, but in a much more enjoyable fashion. And frankly, you can watch this film for a fraction of the ticket prices even at the regional theaters 13 has now been consigned to. So this movie does have a definite use—as a positive alternative to an overrated second-tier musical, and a reminder that the HSM movies actually did some things better than some of their more sophisticated imitators.
Lone Star Love
This show is basically a Western-themed version of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. The play, of course, was one of Shakespeare’s finest comedies, and has been musicalized several times before, most famously as one of Verdi’s all-time masterpieces, Falstaff. In addition, there are at least four other operatic versions—an Italian Opera Buffa version by Antonio Salieri, of all people, a half-forgotten Bel Canto version by half-forgotten Bel Canto composer Michael Balfe, a German Singspiel by Otto Nicolai that has remained a minor part of the operatic repertory to this day, and a setting by English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams called Sir John In Love. But given that all of these operas by notable Classical composers have always pretty much lived in Falstaff‘s shadow, where does that leave this unambitious off-Broadway musical comedy?
Well, it isn’t the worst off-Broadway comedy I’ve covered (compared to Gutenberg! The Musical! or Fifty Shades! The Musical Parody, it looks downright respectable), but it isn’t remotely on the level of the earlier versions and doesn’t pretend to be. The humor in the dialogue is extremely corny, featuring some groan-inducing puns and portraying Dr. Caius as a French caricature (granted, he was also essentially one in the play, but without Shakespeare’s writing, the result comes across as much less funny). And despite the occasional moderately clever allusion to the source material, the level of the dialogue is a pretty far cry from Shakespearean.
Also, the lyrics are generally quite weak, featuring lines like “Cold cold cash and red-hot sex”. This is particularly a letdown on Falstaff’s “A Man For the Age”, which needs to be uproarious and instead comes off as dull and underwhelming. But the story the show inherited from its source is still a gigantic asset, and, weak lyrics notwithstanding, the music itself is tuneful and flavorful. Apart from Falstaff’s two big comedy numbers and the lame comic bits for Dr. Caius and Slender, pretty much everything in the score is at least decent, and the sprightly “Quail Bagging”, the mournful a capella harmonizer “Hard Times”, and the love music for Fenton and Anne (“Prairie Moon”, “Cowboy’s Dream”, and especially the beautiful “Count On My Love”) are quite fine. Still, even at its best, this score does not approach the level of Verdi’s weakest operas, let alone Falstaff, so it feels more than a little redundant given that they both musicalize almost the exact same story.
What this show reminds me of most is a second-tier Fifties cult flop called First Impressions, an adaptation of Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice. Like this show, it was a pleasant little musical whose fatal flaw was that it didn’t live up to its legendary source material. Like First Impressions, this show isn’t terrible on its own, but it comes off as a massive disappointment given what it’s based on. And at least First Impressions didn’t have to compete with several existing musicalizations of the same material, including one of the greatest works of music theater ever written. Perhaps a better comparison would be Oh, Brother, another poorly-conceived musical from past decades that was based on a Shakespeare play (The Comedy of Errors) that had already been made into an infinitely greater musical (Rodgers and Hart’s The Boys from Syracuse). But given that Oh, Brother lasted a total of three performances, I’m not entirely sure why they thought it was a model worth imitating.
If Falstaff had been a legendary Broadway musical rather than an opera, the creators would probably have been smart enough not to attempt this in the first place (can you imagine third-rate talents like this trying to musicalize, say, Pygmalion?). But given the perceived cultural gap between the two works, I have to assume they were banking on their audience not being familiar with Falstaff and thus having no standards for comparison. But even without that factor, the original play itself does more than enough to make this show look bad by comparison to begin with. Apparently there was briefly some idea that this show was going to transfer to Broadway, but it passed. This isn’t the worst Shakespeare-based musical of all time by any means (that honor probably goes to the laughable Seventies Rock musical Rockabye Hamlet), but if it had actually made it to Broadway, it undoubtedly would have been eaten alive.