Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

252 Chapter 9 The American Musical Theatre
Sahr Ngaujah plays the title role of Nigerian Afrobeat performer Fela
Anikulapo Kuti in the 2009 Broadway musical Fela!, which treats Fela’s
political, social, and marital views as well as his musical genius. The
director, choreographer, and coauthor of the book was Bill T. Jones.
© Sara Krulwich/New York Times/Redux
Tshidi Mayne plays Rafiki in Broadway’s spectacular musical The Lion King,
created by Julie Taymor and opening in 1997; by the end of 2014 the show
had earned more than 6.2 billion dollars throughout the world. © Geraint Lewis
revived 2014) and Miss Saigon (1991) both became
global megahits and rivaled Lloyd Webber’s productions
with their luxuriant scores and spectacular staging.
The climax of Miss Saigon features a helicopter
descending onto the roof of the American Embassy to
rescue fleeing diplomats—a perfect example of their
“more is more” philosophy. Not only were composers
and lyricists of these shows European, but the productions
were in the main staged by top-tier British directors:
Nicholas Hytner (Miss Saigon) and Trevor Nunn
(Cats, Les Misérables, Sunset Boulevard, and Starlight
Express).
MUSICALS OF THE TWENTY-FIRST
CENTURY
Our new century’s musicals have clearly had their
share of great commercial success. More than ever,
it seems, audiences today crave the fantasy, romance,
and comedy that musicals provide, flocking to recent
hits like Steven Schwartz’s Wicked, Harvey Fierstein’s
Kinky Boots, Alan Menken’s Aladdin, Mel Brooks’s
The Producers, Steven Lutvak and Robert Freedman’s
Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, John Cameron
Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s Hedwig and the Angry
Itch, and Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and Robert Lopez’s
The Book of Mormon.
But the musicals of this century are also increasingly
tackling serious subjects. Gang violence (The
Beautiful Game, 2000), unemployment and its sexual
consequences (The Full Monty, 2000), infidelity and
betrayal (The Wild Party, 2000), environmental degradation
( Urinetown, 2001), immigration and assimilation
(Flower Drum Song, revised version by David Henry
Hwang, 2002), the exploitation of scandal and sexual
anomalies in American popular culture (Jerry Springer,
the Opera, 2003), oppression in race relations (Caroline,
or Change, 2004), sexual ignorance and its ramifications
(Spring Awakening, 2006), the challenges of
barrio life in New York City’s Washington Heights (In
the Heights, 2007), government corruption in Nigeria
(Fela!, 2009), bipolar disorder and suicide (Next to Normal,
2009), blatant judicial malfeasance (The Scottsboro
Boys, 2010), and conflicting sexual impulses within a
single family that lead to the father’s suicide (Fun Home,
2015) have been explored in today’s musical dramas with
sharp, even brutal, insight and penetration.
Some of these plays have been not only serious but
downright grim. John Lachiusa and George C. Wolfe’s
The Wild Party (the second of two Broadway musicals
in the 2000–2001 season with that title, each derived
from the same 1928 poem) cynically depicts the raucous
goings-on at a late-night drinking party, providing
a menu of sexual infidelities and emotional betrayals.
“People like us, we take lovers like pills/Just hoping to
cure what we know we can’t fix,”* says one character at
the party. “You’re out in the clubs/Paradin’ your meat/
*“People Like Us”, from The Wild Party. Words and Music by
Michael John LaChiusa. Copyright © 2000 by Fiddleback Music
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Alfred Music.