Drama in the score

In the 1927-28 season, 264 productions opened on Broadway in 75 theaters.

That’s right -- 264. And of those more than 75 were musicals.

Hard to believe today, when seven original musicals, the lifeblood of Broadway, would be considered a bumper crop. But at one time the Broadway musical was at the very center of the cultural life of this country, its stars, like Mae West, nationally famous, its songs on everyone’s lips. And that, after the 1950s -- when more than a third of the country’s population tuned in to watch Mary Martin in the televised broadcast of “Peter Pan” -- the Broadway musical began the swift decline to its current status as America’s cultural stepchild.

That’s what you come away with after watching six hours of “Broadway: The American Musical,” the new PBS series from WNET/New York that provides a compelling and highly entertaining primer on the art form through interviews with stage luminaries, rare film clips and stills and other archival material. It begins in 1893 with two pioneers of the American musical, Florenz Ziegfeld and Irving Berlin, who set the gold standard with hit-laden shows, from “This Is the Army” to “Annie Get Your Gun.” It ends with the Broadway opening of “Wicked” last year.

“Musicals are completely marginalized, scoffed at, a sort of contemptible field that gets no respect. And they shouldn’t have any for the most part,” Adam Guettel, the musical composer (“Floyd Collins”), told writer Barry Singer for his Broadway book, “Ever After,” offering an observation that would have seemed incredible to his grandfather, Richard Rodgers. “I don’t think musicals have gotten an unfairly old-fashioned reputation. They are old-fashioned.”

And yet “more people attend Broadway than go to see all the New York sports teams combined. It is still the economic engine that drives New York City,” says Michael Kantor, who directed and co-wrote the PBS series. “Hugh Jackman and Antonio Banderas could make more money making films, and yet here they are on Broadway.”

Cameron Mackintosh’s four top shows (“Phantom of the Opera,” “Les Miserables,” “Cats” and “Miss Saigon”) have out-grossed the top four films of all time -- and they’re still running, Kantor adds. “And what was ‘Chicago’ before it became a huge movie hit, selling millions of tickets and winning six Oscars, including best picture?”

So is Broadway hopelessly passe? Or to what extent, if any, does it still have a role to play in the pop cultural life of the country that spawned it? And what are its chances of ever regaining its mainstream luster?

MAINSTREAM PSYCHE

The reasons for Broadway’s declining fortunes are well documented: the rise in alternative and competing forms of entertainment, starting with talking motion pictures and extending to music videos and cable channels; the usurpation of its airwave dominance by rock ‘n’ roll; the perception that the subject matter offers little mainstream interest; and the spiraling costs of a ticket.

Most experts point to $100 orchestra seats as the likeliest culprit for Broadway’s elitist label. But Laurence Maslon, who served as senior consultant on the documentary and co-wrote, with Kantor, the lavish companion book, maintains that the price has always been about 10 times that of a movie ticket. And, he adds, while the Broadway musical may no longer be the cynosure of pop culture, its impact in many ways is as strong as ever.

“The Broadway imprimatur is still important,” he says. “If it’s special, it comes to Broadway sooner or later -- and that has an impact around the world. You have to look at the way that shows live on now. The shows stay in the public mythology longer.”

Indeed, the shelf life for Broadway product appears to have extended compared to past decades. Hit shows run much longer, and touring productions now visit large metropolitan areas, not once as in the past but five and six times, often drawing sellout business. Las Vegas, a mecca of mainstream entertainment, is hosting a successful production of “Mamma Mia” and is planning to welcome at least two more shows: “Avenue Q,” this year’s Tony winner for best musical, and a $35-million “Phantom of the Opera.”

“What’s interesting is that Broadway now flourishes, when it flourishes, away from New York,” says veteran director Harold Prince (“Sweeney Todd,” “Phantom of the Opera”). “If by mainstream, you mean middle America, then middle America is very accepting of Broadway. And that’s because the quality of road companies has been enhanced dramatically from the shabby productions that used to go out. They are every bit as elaborate and in some cases, even better. And people will always respond to quality.”

Maslon further suggests that an indication of the strength of the musical in the American consciousness resides at the grass-roots level -- the productions done in high schools, colleges, summer camps and community theaters. Ted Chapin, president of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, says there has been no diminution in the shows they have been licensing over the decade. “The classics are stronger than ever,” he says.

Of course, the most visible extension of a musical’s sell date is through its nemeses, films and television. “Chicago,” the musical by Fred Ebb and John Kander, is a dramatic case in point. Its original 1975 run was moderately successful, but its 1996 revival has become a global phenomenon. Eight years later, “Chicago” is still running on Broadway at near capacity, helped no doubt by the success of the 2002 Oscar-winning film. That, in turn, has opened the floodgates to more adaptations as well as original movie musicals.

The poor reception for “De-Lovely,” the Cole Porter biopic, may not augur well for the art form, though a better barometer may come in December with the release of Joel Schumacher’s “Phantom of the Opera.” Film versions of “The Producers,” “Damn Yankees,” “Rent” and “Guys and Dolls” are all in the pipeline. What is incontestable, however, is that the recent successful television remakes of musicals -- “Gypsy,” “Annie,” “Cinderella” and “South Pacific” -- indicate a strong audience for the genre. The most highly rated of them, 1997’s “Cinderella,” drew 60 million viewers, just about what “Peter Pan” attracted in 1956. But then there were only three channels compared to the hundreds today.

Still, the musical is considered sufficiently old hat by much of the public for the film marketers of “Chicago” to have hedged their bets. “Did you notice that the first trailers for ‘Chicago’ had none of the music in it, just the drama?” says Ethan Mordden, author of a new critical appraisal of the Broadway musical, “The Happiest Corpse I’ve Ever Seen.” “Here’s the longest revival in Broadway history, and you don’t even know it’s a musical, just this interesting murder trial. Once they hooked you in, then maybe you enjoyed the songs. But that’s a far cry from the day when songs were the first thing celebrated in a movie musical’s trailer.”

Kantor argues that while Broadway may no longer be a generator of popular music, its influence is pervasive -- whether one hears the strains of, say, “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” on an elevator or covers by the Beatles or Rod Stewart of “ ‘Til There Was You” from “The Music Man.” “The fact that, all told, more people have heard ‘Memory’ from ‘Cats’ than probably any other song is staggering,” he says, adding that when he was interviewing Quincy Jones for a jazz documentary, the veteran composer told him that Broadway had produced many of the greatest composers in American popular music.

Some facts bear him out. Two of the most-recorded jazz songs in history are by Rodgers: “My Funny Valentine” (with Lorenz Hart) and “My Favorite Things” (with Oscar Hammerstein). “The Great American Songbook just keeps getting repackaged,” Kantor says. The original 1956 cast album of “My Fair Lady,” which rode the charts for 480 weeks upon its release, is still selling.

Prince says that when he, as producer, was out of town in Boston with 1954’s “The Pajama Game,” the show already had the No. 1 song in the country, “Hey, There.” “What happens to the art form when you can no longer rely on hit pop songs?” he asks. “We knew that we had to give people something that they couldn’t get on film or television. You can’t set out to write a hit song for a musical any more than you can set out to write a hit musical. Those factors are paralyzing. The audience decides what it wants to hear.”

Ironically, one of the few songs to have reached the pop charts in the last few decades came out of a Prince-Stephen Sondheim collaboration. “A Little Night Music” yielded Judy Collins’ hit rendition of “Send in the Clowns.” A last-minute addition, recalls Prince. “Just before the dress rehearsal, Steve came in with the song. We all liked it, but we were totally astonished when it became a hit.”

The creators of “Rent” were disappointed that Stevie Wonder’s cover of “Seasons of Love” wasn’t a hit, but “Rent” director Michael Greif quips that he is hard-pressed to attend any high school commencement or “left-leaning Jewish observances” without hearing the song. He notes the success of “Rent” was in no small measure because of its ability to compete with music videos by incorporating the feeling of a concert and video music performance. “We consciously tried to respond to the time and its popular forms of expression,” Greif said. “By the same token, we stuck to the tried-and-true, old-fashioned principles of fine music and appealing characters and subject matter.”

Many would argue that the continued viability of the Broadway musical depends on those principles. But exactly how much potential public appeal should be factored in when creating new shows is a matter of debate. Prince, for one, decries the “mediocre period we’re in,” accusing the corporate mentality on Broadway of putting the cart before the horse by touting “brands over real substance.”

“It’s a poisonous concept, letting the audience dictate what they want to see,” says the director. “The audience doesn’t know what it wants to see. In fact, they resist you.”

“West Side Story,” the 1957 musical Prince co-produced, had 200 walkouts a night, he says. “Ultimately, you do take them where you want them to go,” he says, “but you do that by giving them quality, not by marketing, not by following what everybody else does. If you don’t pay attention to that, you risk becoming a museum.”

Avoiding that fate resides largely with the next generation of composers and director-choreographers who must command the uneasy balance between art and commerce, particularly as the pressures of the latter increase because of soaring costs, which make the average price tag of a musical between $10 million and $12 million.

Not surprisingly, Thomas Schumacher, who heads Disney’s theatrical division, does not see the corporation as a boogeyman in maintaining that balance. In fact, he says, it can help nurture new talent and new audiences.

“We get sniffed at for what we do,” says the producer, who with Cameron Mackintosh is shepherding “Mary Poppins” to a London opening. “But more than 8 million people have seen ‘Lion King,’ and there is always that 11-year-old girl who saw it eight years ago who’s been inspired by what [director] Julie [Taymor] did and wants to try it herself.”

STAR-DRIVEN COMEBACK?

In 1998, composer Jason Robert Brown challenged audiences with “Parade,” his adventurous musical about the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory owner, in 1905 Atlanta. The show, directed by Prince, was met by mixed reviews, some critics frustrated by what they described as its bleak subject matter and unwillingness to meet the public halfway.

“Sometimes you get people to see what you find so compelling -- ‘Phantom’ was a happy experience that way -- and sometimes you can’t,” Prince says. “But I’m quite convinced that one of these days, I will sit down at a theater, like the Roundabout, and everybody will reassess their original appraisal of that show.”

Kantor sees the salvation of the Broadway musical in the expansion of its star power and its range of creative talent. “I really think people will be writing musicals for Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez in the way that they once did for Gertrude Lawrence and Ethel Merman,” he says. “And I think the time is ripe, as [producer] Rocco Landesman says, for another great country musical.”

Chapin of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization concurs.

“I was listening to Garth Brooks’ ‘Low Down in High Places’ and thinking that he could write a terrific musical,” Chapin says. “I would hope that today’s composers would write shows that were a little less bleak and depressing. Once upon a time, there wasn’t a difference between writing for art and writing for an audience. They wrote stuff that they wanted to write but they were attracted to stories that had universal appeal: good, clever, tuneful, funny. Stephen Sondheim and ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.’

“I was recently asked if Rodgers and Hammerstein ever wrote for an audience,” and says he replied, “Not at all with ‘Oklahoma!’ and ‘Carousel.’ But after the flop of ‘Allegro,’ you bet they did. They wanted a hit, so they got two stars, a co-librettist and came up with ‘South Pacific.’ ”

That happy outcome for Rodgers and Hammerstein is an anomaly in the history of the Broadway musical, Maslon says. It rarely conforms to such a formulaic strategy. In fact, he says, there’s little point in speculating what the future holds. Certainly no one would have predicted that “Avenue Q,” a show about puppets from a neophyte team (Jeff Whitty, Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez ), would be the story of last season, beating the far more conventional “Wicked” for the best musical Tony.

“Whatever we predict about Broadway,” Maslon says, “we’ve learned it’s far more elastic than any prognosticator would say. As we say in the epilogue of the book, the Broadway musical is always in a state of perpetual anticipation.”

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‘Broadway: The American Musical’

When: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday

Time: 9 p.m.

Where: KCET