It’s not quite time to mourn the musical

ON the eve of the announcement of the 2006 Tony Award nominations that would laud a musical season bright with commercial prospects, an alternative celebration was going on at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The Sundance Institute was hosting an evening of song by composers and lyricists from its Colorado-based theater development program.

The songs, sung by such Broadway performers as Audra McDonald, Kelli O’Hara, Malcolm Gets and Adriane Lenox, were excerpted largely from shows about, well, “serious” subjects -- the murder of Gianni Versace, the meeting of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh, the excesses of the Emperor Nero, and adaptations of “The House of Mirth” and the work of Franz Kafka.

One couldn’t help thinking, over the alternately harmonic and dissonant chords, “Do any of these shows have a snowball’s chance in hell of reaching Broadway -- and succeeding -- in this climate?”

Indeed, while Broadway is celebrating the most bullish season in history -- both in attendance and box-office grosses -- the gulf between the artistic and the commercial seems wider than ever, the former solely as the province of the not-for-profit theaters, the latter as so much fodder for Broadway.

Whatever their merits, three of the nominees for the best musical Tony -- “The Drowsy Chaperone,” “The Wedding Singer” and “Jersey Boys” -- are in line with the light fare that has been dominant since the 2001 season when “Mamma Mia!” and “The Producers” ushered in a new era of musical comedy and jukebox musicals. Even the fourth nominee, “The Color Purple,” based on the gritty Alice Walker novel and tamer Steven Spielberg film, chose to emphasize the brighter hues of the story -- and was rewarded with 11 nominations and grosses of nearly $1 million a week, with the aid of lead presenter Oprah Winfrey.

Indeed, looking at the landscape of jukebox musicals (“Jersey Boys”), cartoons (“Tarzan”), self-referential pastiche (“Drowsy Chaperone”), and those based on thinly plotted movies (“Wedding Singer”), one has to wonder if Broadway has forsaken a musical tradition that has in the past yielded such classics as “Carousel,” “My Fair Lady,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Cabaret” and “Sweeney Todd” -- story-driven shows with complicated characters. “My oh my, we are a long, long way from ‘Guys and Dolls,’ ” says John Heilpern, theater critic of the New York Observer. “As much as I admired ‘Jersey Boys’ and ‘The Drowsy Chaperone,’ I’m beginning to wonder if there is any room for genuine sentiment and, dare I say it, romance in the Broadway musical.”

Yet as bleak as some critics may paint the musical’s future -- and they’ve been doing so for decades -- there appears to be little hand-wringing these days among Broadway’s cognoscenti. For one, several pockets are being lined by the boffo box office; two, as Heilpern pointed out, there is real admiration for the skill and savvy poured into the two leading contenders for the best musical Tony: “Jersey Boys,” which is up for eight awards, and “Drowsy Chaperone” (with 13 nods), a frothy confection in which a sad-sack theater queen shares his passion for a silly ‘20s musical that magically comes to life in his drab New York apartment. Finally there is a cautious optimism that a rising tide will lift all boats, including bold efforts to push against the boundaries of the form.

“Things are cyclical, and once the well goes dry, I really think that producers are going to turn to what these composers are doing and take a chance,” says Ted Sperling, director of the Sundance Theatre Songbook and a Tony-winning orchestrator and conductor (“The Light in the Piazza”). “Broadway isn’t a goal. They just want to do work they’re passionate about.”

He concedes the expectations of the audiences, particularly tourists who now make up a majority of Broadway ticket-buyers, could well be affected by the steady diet of fluff. “But I do think that if the story is told well, then it will overcome people’s fears that it will be depressing and they will enjoy it.”

Sperling is also encouraged by the respective fates of two shows that were partly developed at Sundance: “The Light in the Piazza” and “Grey Gardens.” The former, a darkly romantic tale of a brain-damaged young woman and her mother on a trip to Italy, defied mixed reviews -- including a slam from the New York Times -- to win six Tonys; the latter, which also received mixed notices, will open on Broadway this fall.

Some pundits say “Piazza,” which opened in April 2005 at Lincoln Center and is still running, never would have succeeded had it opened directly on Broadway rather than been sheltered at not-for-profit theaters. Lincoln Center artistic director Andre Bishop disagrees. “I think it might have, had commercial producers been willing to hang on as we did,” he says. “We were really going out on a limb. But it really connected and now it will be going on a 44-city tour, playing some really big houses.”

“Piazza” composer Adam Guettel is tied directly to the traditional musical form that combined entertainment with weighty themes. His grandfather was Richard Rodgers, who, first with Larry Hart (“Pal Joey”) and then with Oscar Hammerstein (“Oklahoma!”), paved the way for Stephen Sondheim, who would push the Broadway musical into even more challenging terrain with “Company,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Assassins” and “Passion.” Sondheim, in turn, raised the bar for a subsequent generation of composers, including Guettel, Jason Robert Brown and Michael John LaChiusa, as well as many of those showcasing works in Sundance-like labs and workshops across the country.

“The problem is that many of these composers are trying to emulate Sondheim without his wit and real melodic gift,” says New York Post theater columnist Michael Riedel. “They’re boring, ersatz Sondheims, with only one success to point to [‘Piazza’] in several decades. I think Sondheim has led the American musical into an arty cul-de-sac.”

LaChiusa, whose darkly ambitious “Wild Party” and “Marie Christine” flopped on Broadway, created a tempest last August when he wrote an essay in Opera News, declaring that the American musical was “dead,” replaced by “faux-musicals” that abandon “all sense of invention and craft” and “risk, derring-do or innovation ... “ to pander to audiences. Worse, he named names: “Hairspray,” “The Producers.” This season, he says, provided little encouragement to make him change his mind.

Asked if he felt he was still writing for a popular art form, he replies, “Well, it’s always been popular but whether or not it’s an art form is something we’ll probably be arguing about till we die. I think telling a story in song is and will always be vital. But I think we do have an obligation to hold up and advance the craft.”

For his part, the prolific composer had two off-Broadway productions this season, “Bernarda Alba,” based on the Garcia Lorca tragedy, and “See What I Wanna See,” a meditation on the classic Japanese tale Rashomon. Neither was received well by the critics, but LaChiusa remains undeterred. “To me, the audience is first and foremost, as is the necessity to entertain,” he says. “But my definition of entertainment can be ‘Hedda Gabler’ or something dark like ‘Bernarda Alba.’ It’s not men running around in dresses.”

Marc Shaiman, composer with Scott Wittman of “Hairspray,” dismissed LaChiusa’s carping as sour grapes from someone who had yet to taste Broadway success. But he does agree on one point: “I’m wildly entertained by weeping. There’s nothing more thrilling than a face full of tears as you watch people in a wrenching dramatic musical like ‘West Side Story,’ ” he says.

“But Sondheim is a once-in-a-generation genius whose power and godliness simply can’t be faked or fudged. Even Sondheim first learned to entertain and make an audience laugh with shows like ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.’ Then he graduated to more serious subject matter,” Shaiman says. “These kids who are just starting out want to jump on that train without a lot of maturity and experience.”

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To bridge a gulf

PERHAPS the gulf between art and commerce could well be bridged if “serious” composers would lighten up and those who have enjoyed mainstream success would tackle more challenging subject matter. Or if young composers saw the virtues of emulating tunesmiths like Maury Yeston, John Kander and Jerry Herman. Indeed, Scott Frankel and Michael Korie, the writing team behind “Grey Gardens,” appear to have tapped into that more commercial vein for their melodic score. Their material is another matter. Written by Douglas Wright (“I Am My Own Wife”), the show is based on the Maysles brothers’ 1975 documentary about the eccentric Beales -- mother and daughter -- cousins of Jacqueline Kennedy who were discovered living in squalor in a decaying East Hampton manse.

In the past, it would be highly unlikely that a show that received such a dismissive notice from the New York Times -- though critic Ben Brantley raved about star Christine Ebersole -- could transfer to Broadway. Yet the transfer serves as a marker of how much fresh capital is floating around Broadway these days, with producers East of Doheny willing to gamble with the show. Tested in the process will be the audience’s appetite for the offbeat in Broadway musicals. While there is a certain camp value to the fashion vagaries of the young Edie Beale -- wrapping sweaters around her head and safety-pinning sarongs around the waist -- the story is tragic by any measure.

Nonetheless, the arrival of another new team on Broadway will certainly dampen the argument that jukebox musicals are consigning originality to the dustbin. This season Phil Collins (“Tarzan”), Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray (“The Color Purple”) joined Broadway’s pop music veteran club, founded by Elton John and Pete Townsend. Contributing pastiche scores were Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin (“Wedding Singer”), and Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison (“The Drowsy Chaperone”).

Producer Jeffrey Seller (“Rent”) notes that there has been “an explosion of talent” in the last couple of years. “I’m stunned at how many young talents are breaking into the business,” he says, citing Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, who won the 2004 Tony for “Avenue Q,” which Seller co-produced with Kevin McCollum. “When ‘Rent’ won the Tony in 1996, the other nominees were [‘Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk’], ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’ and some musical revue [‘Swinging on a Star’]. Now you have an amazing output feeding the pipeline. Will they all reach Broadway? No. But there’s a lot of potential.”

Even more encouraging, says Seller, is that some of these new teams are in their 20s, with Lincoln Center Theater making a concerted effort to reach out to that generation. Seller is developing a new musical, “In the Heights,” with a Latino team -- 26-year-old Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiera Hodes, a 29-year-old writer. That show deals with social and racial issues in the barrio. Another musical, “High Fidelity,” based on the Nick Hornby novel, will represent the Broadway debut of Tom Kidd and Amanda Green.

“ ‘In the Heights’ will be done off-Broadway, but that’s where ‘Rent’ started, too,” Seller says. “The point is that there is room for all sorts of shows on Broadway right now. Jukebox musicals, pastiche scores, musicals based on films, Disney cartoons, it’s not mutually exclusive. The good stuff will break through. Given a chance, it always does.”