Well first I have to say I don’t hate ALL musicals. Some of my disdain is done for comic effect and to wind some people up. There have been some musicals I’ve enjoyed (Chicago, Grease, Cabaret) and even a few I’ve loved (Hedwig and Moulin Rouge).
But there are a few reasons why I generally don’t enjoy musicals. First of all, I find that musicals that involve characters breaking into song in the middle of a scene completely throws me out of that scene. Good theater, like good movies, can be completely involving. You can forget you are sitting in a cramped little seat in a darkened theater, watching actors perform. When someone breaks into song I always thinking, “oh look now they are singing. Why are they singing? Who does that?” and boom I’m back in the theater. Some musicals sidestep this by structuring the music is into the play, usually as a performance. Chicago and Cabaret are examples. This at least seems more “logical” to me. This all may be that I go to see a lot of concerts. Here the main focus is the performance. There is no shift from story to performance because there is no story.
The second and more important reason is that I simply don’t enjoy a great deal of the music written for musical theater. There seems to be a certain kind of phrasing and mannerisms that are employed in much of the music I’ve heard that I just don’t like. This is possibly due to the fact that much of it shares the same influences –for example, I hear an awful lot of Sondheim influences around in things.
I also don’t find musical theater very compatible, musical with rock music at least in the things I’ve heard like Rent. To me it always sounds like someone’s idea of rock music rather than the real thing.
Ultimately though none of this is anything more than a preference- like someone saying they don’t like impressionist painters or soap operas. And while I certainly haven’t heard every musical out there, I’ve heard and seen enough of them to form an opinion. And who knows, maybe next year Aaron Sorkin and I don’t know, Sonic Youth will team up and write a kick ass musical that I’ll love. Weirder things have happened!
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timeasmymeasure
Long-ass answer
Date: 2006-04-03 06:44 pm (UTC)But there are a few reasons why I generally don’t enjoy musicals. First of all, I find that musicals that involve characters breaking into song in the middle of a scene completely throws me out of that scene. Good theater, like good movies, can be completely involving. You can forget you are sitting in a cramped little seat in a darkened theater, watching actors perform. When someone breaks into song I always thinking, “oh look now they are singing. Why are they singing? Who does that?” and boom I’m back in the theater. Some musicals sidestep this by structuring the music is into the play, usually as a performance. Chicago and Cabaret are examples. This at least seems more “logical” to me. This all may be that I go to see a lot of concerts. Here the main focus is the performance. There is no shift from story to performance because there is no story.
The second and more important reason is that I simply don’t enjoy a great deal of the music written for musical theater. There seems to be a certain kind of phrasing and mannerisms that are employed in much of the music I’ve heard that I just don’t like. This is possibly due to the fact that much of it shares the same influences –for example, I hear an awful lot of Sondheim influences around in things.
I also don’t find musical theater very compatible, musical with rock music at least in the things I’ve heard like Rent. To me it always sounds like someone’s idea of rock music rather than the real thing.
Ultimately though none of this is anything more than a preference- like someone saying they don’t like impressionist painters or soap operas. And while I certainly haven’t heard every musical out there, I’ve heard and seen enough of them to form an opinion. And who knows, maybe next year Aaron Sorkin and I don’t know, Sonic Youth will team up and write a kick ass musical that I’ll love. Weirder things have happened!