The article published on the website of the newspaper “The
Thelegraph” on March, 21, 2013 is headlined “Book of Mormon: The new golden ageof the musical”. The article reports at length that as ‘The Book of Mormon’
reaches the West End and ‘Matilda’ hits Broadway, Matthew Sweet celebrates an
unexpected renaissance .
It’s an open secret that the RSC’s musical version of Roald
Dahl’s black little work Matilda
is thriving in Covent Garden and gathering its skirts to do the same in New
York. Once – an acclaimed Broadway hit adapted from a tiny Irish film that you
probably never saw – makes the opposite journey next week. The Menier Chocolate
Factory’s heartbreakingly brilliant revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily
We Roll Along transfers next month from its modest home under a south
London railway bridge to a grand venue in the West End. Tom Hooper’s film of
Les Misérables, which has won more awards than Cosette has swept floors,
remains resolutely on cinema screens, and the stage production is returning to
Broadway next year.
It was revealed that there’s a clue to be found in Works and
Days, a didactic poem written by Hesiod of Ascra in about 700 BC, a good few
years before Barbara Dickson joined the cast of Blood Brothers. Hesiod asserted
that the Greek world in which he lived was an Age of Iron: wretched, chaotic,
debased. Long before this, however, there had been an Age of Gold, in which
mortals lived like gods and everything was as upbeat as a first-act curtain
number
The article carries a lot of comment on the fact that unlike
the history of art, film or poetry, the history of musical theatre is
essentially Hesiodic. Its Golden Age began on March 31 1943, when the curtain
rose on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! to reveal not the customary line of
chorines, but an old woman hunkering over a butter-churn as an unaccompanied
voice sang Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’. From this moment, the old Broadway
adage “no girls, no gags, no chance” was abandoned. Musicals were no longer
adjustable frames upon which to hang a bunch of songs, they were the
20th-century answer to Wagner’s idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk – total works of
art offering audiences coherent dramatic narrative, strong characterisation and
music integrated with the action: a combination exemplified, in quick
succession, by Kiss Me Kate (1948), South Pacific (1949), Guys and Dolls
(1950), The King and I (1951) and West Side Story (1957).
Analyzing this situation it is necessary to emphasize that the
Book of Mormon is acutely aware that the obituary of the musical has already
been written. Its grinning paean to sexual and emotional repression – called
Turn it Off – is an acknowledgement that its kind of theatre is often dismissed
as glib and shallow. Its Ugandan village scenes exist to demonstrate the
absurdity of using show tunes to make meaningful comment on African poverty,
child soldiering or the Aids epidemic. Its sense of the musical as a
worked-out, decadent, decomposing art is, perversely, the source of its
monstrous vitality. On this evidence, I hope the musical stays dead. May it
dance on its own grave forever.
As for me, I think that musical are very interesting and
bright performances. We should visit them to relax and put aside all our
problems. However, if you looks for knowledge and “food for thinking”, watch serious
drama.
FAIR!
ОтветитьУдалитьMost oof the article is left unchanged, which is plagiarism.
You are to paraphrase rather than borrow without quoting!