Broadway Rhythms

A fringe benefit of having family who live in New York: one has a home base for exploring the Theater District – Disneyland for folks like me who enjoy seeing plays and musicals. And treating my brother Paul to a show is the least I can do for imposing my smelly, hairy, often grumpy self on his family (that's them in the photo: Audrey, Rebecca, Chloe, Paul).

Recently we saw Equus. You know, the one where Harry Potter (I mean, Daniel Radcliffe) gets his kit off and then blinds a bunch of horses?

(Click here to find out more about the play)

I won’t write much about this play (since it’s not a musical) except to say that it was thoroughly engaging, a bit melodramatic, wonderfully acted and staged, reductive in its portrayal of the psychiatric profession and the spiritual opportunities of “madness” – and that Daniel Radcliffe isn’t a kid anymore. He’s quite diminutive – 5’ 2’’ I’m guessing – but has great stage presence nonetheless.

Speaking of short folks… “hey Shorty!” -- that’s what a homeless guy shouted at my niece Chloe on New Year’s Eve, right before he fell onto 59th street. Ah, New York… someday I’ll have to visit again with my ten Brazilian brats. Name that reference and I’ll give you $50 for the powder room.

Anyway, Chloe is six now – and this Christmas, my present was to take her to see Stomp. (I’ve already bought her every Polly Pocket imaginable.) You may have heard about or seen Stomp – it’s all percussion, no dialogue beyond grunts and shouts, and the “instruments” are everyday objects like brooms, lighters, basketballs, tubing, sticks, newspapers. This show is extraordinarily entertaining and inspiring. Here are a couple of clips:






The performers played characters: the leader, the joker, the jester… and it had a great dramatic arc – intense and loud numbers were balanced by quieter ones, with humor thrown in. Let me put it this way: six-year-old Chloe was never bored by the hour-and-forty-five minute show (neither was Uncle David), and she laughed out loud several times. Actually, her laughter became an obbligato to the performer’s improvisations – and at one point, part of the show, when they did a John-Cage-inspired number – coming onstage, totally silent, then riffing on the audience’s coughs, laughs, and assorted shufflings.

The audience was more actively involved as well. We did call-and-response clapping, and at the end the “leader” encouraged us in this activity as he slowly exited, the message seeming to be “go feel the rhythm and music of everyday life yourself.”

Unfortunately the only rhythm I could feel upon leaving the theater was the chattering of my own teeth (December in New York…). However, at the Virgin Megastore on 14th Street over hot chocolate and Doritos (don’t ask), Chloe let me know that the Stomp outing had been a success: “they were really good! I want to do that!” She also kept saying “I want to be her!” in reference to one of the performers: a tall, muscular African-American woman with dreadlocks.

Just as an aside -- not to get political, but I’m writing this on the eve of the historic inauguration. I’m old enough to remember a time when, and from a part of the country where, for a 6-year-old white girl to say that she wanted to “be” a black woman would have been almost unthinkable. So I think it’s pretty cool that Barack Obama is the first president that Chloe and my other nieces, Ande and Audrey, will remember. Ande (who’ s Chinese, BTW) was recently given a choice of 2009 wall calendars for her room: Disney Princesses or Barack Obama. She was adamant: “I want Rock-a-Bom-Bom!” Audrey is only 13 months old and as yet apolitical. The change she seeks almost always involves a diaper.

Back to the theater -- I was less satisfied by the other show I saw in New York: Spring Awakening. It’s a rock musical in the tradition of Hair and Rent, with music by indie-pop star Duncan Sheik, set in 1890s Germany, dealing with various teenage challenges: oppressive teachers, clueless parents, raging libidos, depression, suicide, abortion… all set to rock music. I’d been warned away, but when the show won a bunch of Tony’s (including Best New Musical) I thought I’d check out this phenomenon for myself. So I did with my dear friend Heidi, who bussed up from New Jersey.

I could wish that instead of seeing this show, Heidi and I had continued our pre-show activities: eating pub food, drinking Guinness, browsing music stores, and talking about Emily Dickinson. English Teachers Gone Wild!

Spring Awakening is basically Rent meets High School Musical minus brain cells. It’s Rent-like in its high tragedy (people dying for no good reason, others carrying on despite their pain). It’s like HSM in that it features almost completely clueless kids confronting tough ethical dilemmas for the first time. It’s Rent for those who’ve never had to pay rent.

Even though its characters were dealing with heavy stuff, Spring Awakening didn’t make much impression on me because I found it almost impossible to care about what I was watching. I began to wonder why, and thought about it. Heidi and I talked about it (English Teachers Gone Wild! Deluxe Edition: The Critical Review). I realized that I had a hard time engaging with Spring Awakening because its characters were presented in no recognizable historical or social context. They could have been anywhere, so they were nowhere. It was a musical starring teenaged Platonic forms: here’s Libido, here’s Misunderstood, there’s Naïve and her friend Sexual Abuse Survivor, Oppressed will now sing a ballad…

I could care about the characters in Rent, by contrast, because that show is forcefully located in Reagan-era Alphabet City, when AIDS and gentrification were systematically destroying the bohemian culture of the East Village. Even to High School Musical I could relate – I know what it’s like when you have to choose between high school friends who don’t get along. Another example: West Side Story… I’m not a Shark or a Jet, or even a Maria (except for that one Halloween…) but their particular environment is presented so convincingly that it becomes universal. Other examples: The Breakfast Club – a more “80s movie” can’t be named, but it’s timeless in its portrayal of in groups and out groups. The Graduate, Hair, Harold and Maude: quintessentially 60s/early 70s, but universal in their themes of angst, desire, and hope for the future.

With Spring Awakening… eh. It didn’t flesh out its 1890s German context at all, aside from telling us in the program that the show is “set in 1890s Germany,” giving characters names like “Wendla” and “Melchior,” and dressing the cast in old-timey costumes. The characters were located in a Never-Neverland of teenage angst.

I suppose that’s where teen angst lives – a timeless world of self-doubt and self-discovery – but to get adults to care about that, a few details would be helpful. Perhaps the point of this vagueness was to bridge past and present: “hey look! What was going on then is still going on today!” Hopefully this awareness would be of some comfort to younger audience members.

And it seemed to be, judging by the head-banging of the emo-teens seated in front of Heidi and me. Still. I can’t help but think that substandard art like this dumbs down the experience of adolescence, and does a disservice to kids trying to figure out who they are through the representations our culture gives them.

Consider the contrast in the poetry: lyrics from “Somewhere” (West Side Story):

There's a place for us,
Somewhere a place for us.
Peace and quiet and open air
Wait for us
Somewhere.
There's a time for us,
Some day a time for us, 

Time together with time to spare, 

Time to look, time to care, 

Someday! 
Somewhere. 

We'll find a new way of living, 

We'll find a way of forgiving 

Somewhere.

Or High School Musical (admittedly, lesser poetry, this is Disney-fied adolescence, after all):

Now I know you’re not a fairytale
And dreams were meant for sleeping
And wishes on a star
Just don't come true
Because now even I can tell
That I confused my feelings with the truth
Because I liked the view
When there was me and you.

Here are the lyrics I remember from Spring Awakening:

“We’ve all l got our junk and my junk is you.”
“Blah! Blah! Blah! Blah! Blah! Blah! Blah! Blah!”

Don’t kids today deserve more than “junk” and “Blah”?

Well, at least no one blinded any horses. The actors did get partially nude, though, and have simulated sex onstage, which had all the appeal of an Ann Coulter interview. 

Sometimes good music can make up for a weak book (hello, Funny Face). I didn’t find this to be case with Spring Awakening. The songs alternated between forgettable plaintive ballads, more forgettable heavy, angry rock, with a few gems scattered throughout that I would have loved to hear songwriter Duncan Sheik sing himself.

Now, I’ve been a fan of Duncan Sheik for quite a while. He writes tender, intelligent chamber pop; his voice and delivery are heartbroken and vulnerable. He’s capable of some beautiful work.

Check this out if you’re interested:



Sheik has said that he’d like to write for Broadway again, and I hope he does, and if so, perhaps he’ll find better source material. His talent requires it.

I’ve gone on longer than I intended. Substandard art just really disturbs me. It’s a wonder that I can stand to hear myself play the viola. But then, I keep practicing. It’s the activity that matters. As John Updike said: "Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity...any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better."

DH

PS. Viola joke: In addition to shouting “fire!” in a crowded theater, what else can land you in jail?

Shouting “viola solo!” in a crowded concert hall.