August 12, 2010

The dog two doors down barks, and barks, and barks, without stopping, without taking a breath. This is not a usual thing, so one goes over and checks on the old souls who own the dog, to see if it’s one of those Lassie situations, and you’ll find somebody face down in the grass. But no. The dog barks, and barks, facing a particular direction, so you face that way too, to see if something’s coming.

Caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror. I’d been working in the garden, and I am a slab of skeeter bites and sweaty mud, not a clean place on me.

My Netflix rotation has piled on my TV a stack of films about Broadway– histories of the Musical, great performers, that sort of thing. Now, what one realizes, mixing the videos with what one has seen oneself on the New York stage, is that most of these shows are really quite awful. The “beloved’ ones are no exception, and indeed may be worse because nobody dares note their awfulness aloud. One cut featured Celeste Holm reprising “I Can’t Say No.” Now, it is possible she was having a bad night, but even that considered, one got the point after verse one, and the rest was a kind of agony. One cut featured a very old Ethel Merman singing “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” and if you didn’t know you were supposed to think of it as a Broadway classic, you’d think it was the worst thing you’d ever heard in the world, somebody’s deaf grandma singing horribly, and loud enough for herself to hear. Most of the songs are boring because drawn out to make sure that every halfwit in the audience has gotten the point. They do not build, they underline. Some, like West Side Story, or Guys and Dolls are not awful, but the virtues of the rest consist chiefly in stellar moments, in half-remembered performances, or, most of all, in a sort of nostalgia people can get for things they never actually experienced. Classics of the Broadway musical stage are for the most part willed into existence by the longing of the audience to be present at an event, to partake in something wonderful. That what they are seeing is NOT wonderful is swept away by the desire that it should be. I remember sitting through the execrable Billy Eliot, and realizing that the mad ovation around me was rising from people who had seen a completely different show, one replete with the beauties it should have had, one which touched the soul as much as the check book. They had created a hit where there really was none. Part of this is the cunning to charge so much that you HAVE to have a good time. Most big musicals are sold on the basis of their identity as an event– “a must see”– “see what everyone is talking about” rather than on any intrinsic value. I’m not actually complaining about this. It is part of the magic of theater to make tinfoil look like gold leaf, but what I’m considering now is the ways in which REAL theater, GOOD theater can switch this rose-colored spotlight on itself. What do we have to do to electrify people about the EVENT of coming to a new play, or a challenging drama, or a comedy that does not rely on hitting people in the groin? Maybe we have to come up with a version of those backstage movie musicals of the 30's and 40's, with Fred Astaire and Judy Garland, where the production of a fluffy musical is made to seem the highest calling of talent. I think this can be done. I have always thought that the most challenging theater is as much for the masses as Annie, if anyone had spent the time helping the masses to know what to look for, if anyone had glorified the process in the same way that hoofers and showgirls have been glorified. Step Right Up Folks, You Are About to Experience Something New and Hard and Wonderful! You Are About to Go on a Journey! You Are About to Convulse Your Soul! Yowza Yowza.