experiential Flashcards
What is a concept musical?
A musical that focuses more on projecting a
central metaphor or notion rather than storytelling
* In the 1970s, critics started to use the word
“concept” to describe a plotless or “plot-lite”
musical
* A concept musicals often offers multiple angles
and perspectives on a subject. The effect can be
kaleidoscopic, as though the show favours circling
around a subject rather than telling a story
Frames
Concept musicals often draw on forms of musical
theatre to frame the show:
– Love Life, Chicago, and Assassins use vaudeville
– Cabaret uses nightclub acts
– Follies uses revue
– A Chorus Line uses musicals
Characteristics of concept
musicals
- The frame, metaphor, or theme is more
important than plot or character - The musical follows a non-linear structure
- The director becomes the principal collaborator
- The musical is a vehicle for socio-political
commentary - The book of the musical is short
- Use of metadramatic techniques
Metadramatic devices
Metadramatic devices are techniques that remind
the audience that what they are watching is not
real. These devices undermine realism
* Examples: use of a narrator, asides, onstage
observers, diegetic performance, minimal scenery,
etc.
* Have any of our shows used metadramatic
devices? What effect do they generate?
Bertolt Brecht
A German playwright and theatre practitioner who used metadramatic devices to comment and critique
Verfremdungseffekt = making strange or distancing effect
Brecht (right) with composer Kurt Weill and his wife, performer Lotte Lenya
Kurt Weill (1900-1950)
Composer, born in Germany,
where he collaborated with Brecht
* Weill fled to France and then
immigrated to the US in 1935
* Known for several innovative
musical theatre works, including
The Threepenny Opera, Lady in
the Dark, and Love Life
Alan Jay Lerner (1918-1986)
Lyricist and
bookwriter
LOVE LIEF
- Later collaborated
with Frederick Loewe
on such hits as My
Fair Lady and Gigi - What have we
learned about Lerner?
Cheryl Crawford (1902-1986)
Producer and director of love life
- Known for producing One Touch
of Venus by Kurt Weill and
Ogden Nash and starring Mary
Martin, a revival of Porgy and
Bess by the Gershwin brothers,
Brigadoon by Lerner and Loewe - What do we know about
Crawford?
Elia Kazan (1909-2003)
Director for love life
* Known for A Streetcar Named
Desire by Tennessee Williams
and A Death of a Salesman by
Arthur Miller
The credits for Love Life
Composer: Kurt Weill
Lyricist: Alan Jay Lerner
Bookwriter: Lerner
Source: Original
Producer: Cheryl Crawford
Director: Elia Kazan
Choreographer: Michael Kidd
Set designer: Boris Aronson
New York run: 7 October 1948-14 May 1949
Performances: 252
Actors: Nanette Fabray (won Tony) and Ray Middleton
Working title: “A Dish for the Gods”
Billing and frame LL
Love Life was billed as “a vaudeville.” It was not a
true vaudeville but a book show with interpolated
vaudeville acts that comment on the book scenes
* Some promotional materials (like the Boston
poster) call it “a new musical
What is vaudeville?
Recall that vaudeville is a numbers show; it has no
plot. It is a type of American entertainment that
flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
It generally featured 10-15 variety acts with an
array of performers: acrobats, trained animals,
children, magicians, singers, dancers, athletes,
etc.
To prepare audiences for Love Life’s
novel format, Crawford included a
prefatory note in the playbill
Love Life is a vaudeville. It is presented
in two parts, each consisting of a series of
acts. The sketches, which start in 1791
and come up to the present day are
presented in the physical style of the
various periods. The vaudeville acts which
come between each sketch are presented
before a vaudeville drop and are styled
and costumed in a set vaudeville pattern.
Characters LL
sam and Susan Cooper and their children,
Elizabeth and Johnny
* An ensemble of chorus members that double as
vaudeville performers
* See musical layout
– “Here I’ll Stay” (Sam and Susan in 1791)
– “I Remember It Well” (Sam and Susan in 1821)
– “Economics” (vaudeville act sung by a quartet)
– “This Is The Life” (Sam in the 1940s, first video)
Metaphor LL
Love Life traces the lives of a couple from 1791 to
the present (1940s). Their marriage sours and the
gradual disintegration of their relationship is
shown as a consequence of industrial and
economic growth and pursuit of the so-called
American Dream
Here I’ll Stay
Romantic duet for Sam and Susan in Part I
* What is the song form? What does it tell us about
the relationship between these two characters?
This Is the Life”
An “I am/want” song for Sam in Part II in which
he embraces his new life as a divorced man. But
he realizes that his newfound freedom comes at a
price
* The extended, multi-sectional (6:45) musical
number calls for a highly-trained voice with a wide
range and commanding, dramatic presence
Critical reception LL
The most mature musical play the American stage has yet
produced…a dream of a show about the American dream.”
“This is no conventional musical,” but audiences can have
“just as much fun at Love Life as at Annie Get Your Gun…
Cheryl Crawford, always an innovator despite a canny
knowledge of where her feet are, has given us a show which
is iconoclastic in every direction.
It is cute, complex and joyless—a general gripe
masquerading as entertainment…Most of the show’s
pleasures come from Mr. Weill’s music box…Love Life gets
lost in some strange, cerebral labyrinth.”
“It would be wicked to discourage novelty in the theater,
but Love Life tries too hard for comfort to be different. It
suggests that theatrical conventions like unities of time,
place, and subject were developed over the years for pretty
good reasons.”
Distinguished voices on Love Life
Most people didn’t see [Love Life], so they don’t think of [it] as
having the kind of effect that Oklahoma! had. But I think [it] did.”
— Stephen Sondheim
“I think Love Life’s script is far and away the best thing Alan Jay
Lerner ever wrote for the stage. It is totally original, and it has a
remarkable vision of how to use musical theater as dramaturgy to
make a philosophic point.” — Miles Krueger
“A marvelous piece and a major influence. I was amazed it wasn’t
a bigger success.” — Fred Ebb
Love Life and Allegro were the first concept musicals. They
were the first of their kind. Subconsciously, when I first saw
them, I noted that they were shows driven by concepts. They
didn’t work, though I was too young at the time to realize that.
(Weill’s score is swell, by the way.) Were the shows upstaged by
their concepts? In both cases you were so aware of the concept
and the craft.” — Harold Prince
“It is simultaneously one of the least well-known and most
influential of his works, a paradox that can be explained by the
fact that it had a big effect inside the profession but was not
well remembered by the public.” — Eric Salzman
Why did Lerner stop Love Life from being
performed?
After 7 divorces, Lerner’s own life had become the
object of the piece
– “I can never allow that show to be revived…I’ve turned
into everything I satirized in that show.”
– “All I can say is that I had no flair for marriage. Also I
had no flair for bachelorhood.”
* Lerner recycled a lyric from Love Life without
permission of Weill’s widow, Lotte Leny
Faulty memory songs
i remember it well
i Remember That,” Saturday Night
(1954)
sonheim
faulty memory
The credits for Cabaret
Composer: John Kander
Lyricist: Fred Ebb
Bookwriter: Joe Masteroff
Sources: John Van Druten’s play I Am a Camera and Christopher
Isherwood’s novel Berlin Stories
Producer-director:Harold Prince
Choreographer: Ron Field
Set designer: Boris Aronson
New York run: 20 Nov. 1966-6 Sept. 1969
Billing: Musical comedy
John Kander and Fred Ebb
American songwriting team,
who wrote more than one dozen
musicals over almost 50 years,
including Flora, the Red
Menace; Cabaret; Chicago
* Kander (top) got his start as a
substitute rehearsal pianist for
West Side Story
