Theater News

I Hate it When They Say "I Hate it When They Sing!"

Filichia argues that he’s not a weirdo because he likes musical theater — and neither are you!

So there I was at a panel discussion of Theatre Resources Unlimited on the future of musical theater. Moderator Bob Ost was gracious enough to ask me to join my TheaterMania colleague David Finkle; Kathy Evans, the executive director of the National Alliance for Musical Theatre; Mark Hollman, who co-wrote Urinetown; and Bobby Lopez and Jeff Marx, who did the music and lyrics for Avenue Q.

One attendee made the point that musicals just don’t score with the younger generation. I had to take issue with that. While I admit that was true a generation ago, that opinion sure can’t be validated by the e-mail I get. Yes, I recently heard from a gentleman who told me he’s 81, but much more often I hear from someone like Lucas McMahon, who, at 14, is — pro-rated — the most musical-theater savvy person I’ve ever met. So many of my readers are teens and twentysomethings. Musical theater is reaching these kids, no matter what anyone tells you. And we’ll have a better society for it.

Then someone in the audience remarked that young people are still unnerved by the sheer essence of musical theater, the artificiality of someone breaking into song after speaking some dialogue. Here I go again: I had to address that oft-made complaint, too. For the “I hate it when they sing!” argument is one I really can no longer bear to hear.

How many times have we all heard musical-phobes (barbarians is actually a more appropriate name for them!) say, “I hate musicals because people don’t just walk down the street and start singing!” Granted. But you know something, barbarians? People don’t just walk down the street holding a guitar, either — yet you sure don’t seem to mind when Bruce Springsteen stands in front of a microphone with one. And then he starts singing, doesn’t he? Why is it that you don’t say, “That’s not real life! He shouldn’t be singing! He should be talking to us because TALK is what people do in real life.” For that matter, people certainly don’t walk down the street with a drum set in front of them but you don’t balk when Fabrizio Moretti of The Strokes stands in front of you with his. No, you accept it as an art form. So why is it such a leap for you to accept our art form? If life were all reality, no one would sing, period. And who’d want to live in a world like that?

I actually feel that a singer walking on stage and singing while also playing an instrument is a more artificial situation than a character in a musical singing. I first realized this in the late ’70s at a Judy Collins concert when she entered, approached the microphone, and sang “Send in the Clowns.” Yeah? Why? What motivated her to sing this? I don’t mean, “Why did she choose this particular song?” I know the answer to that; it’s terrific. But I thought, “What makes this person named Judy Collins need to tell us this story she’s telling us?” In the context of A Little Night Music, “Send in the Clowns” makes specific sense. All night long, Desirée has been in a silly romance with Carl-Magnus and has witnessed Frederick’s equally ludicrous relationship with his teenaged wife, Anne. Now, Desirée makes the observations that culminate in “Send in the Clowns” — and that makes much more sense than Judy Collins spouting them for no reason whatsoever than to just blithely sing so that everyone can settle for a nice song done by a nice voice.

Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez(Photo © Michael Portantiere)
Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez
(Photo © Michael Portantiere)

Back to the panel discussion: Ost asked Lopez, who’s all of 29, how someone of his generation became interested in musical theater. Although Lopez was joking when he replied that he “was always a weirdo,” I couldn’t let such a remark pass. “We who love musical theater are NOT the weirdos” I insisted. “It’s people who AREN’T interested in this terrific art form who are the weirdos.” For we who prefer musicals as our ultimate form of entertainment are a community of largely peace-loving people; we are moved by the sights and sounds of witty, charming, and sometimes ribald characters far more often than angry or dangerous ones. Can you really find our values wanting when compared to people who go to action movies to see the next outlandish car crash or building explosion? We’re the weirdos, huh? Filmgoers who prefer to see The Matrix Reloaded (gross: $735 million and counting) are the ones who are really cool, aren’t they? Like 19-year-old Matthew Lovett, who was such a Matrix fan that he called himself “the Antichrist” and “Neo” after characters in the film while he was planning a Columbine-style murder spree. (His plans resulted in his getting a prison stay that will last till at least 2011.)

Whenever one of these kids does something atrocious in their schools, authorities check their rooms to see what’s in them. If any of their CDs are original cast albums or their videos musicals, I’ve yet to hear about it. No kid has ever been captured after committing an atrocity and then explained, “I went over the edge after I saw Hello, Dolly!” or “Paint Your Wagon made me do it!” or “I saw Brigadoon and I just snapped!”

So instead of weirdos, I have another term for what we are, which first came to mind in 1976 when I went with my buddy P.D. Seltzer to see An Evening with Betty Comden and Adolph Green in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After the first heavenly act, I turned to him and swooned, “We really are the rich people of this world.” He uttered an expletive that I won’t repeat here — as I say, I have a lot of young readers — but he followed his utterance with a handsweep that took in the entire orchestra section of predominantly gray-haired, rich Republicans. “Every one of the people in this room is richer than we are.”

I don’t think so. And you know something? P.D. doesn’t feel the way anymore. We had dinner last month, when the tour of Miss Saigon — for which he’s company manager — played an engagement in Newark. Now that 27 years have gone by and P.D. has worked in the theater for the lion’s share of them, he knows that few people are as happy in their career choices as he is in his. He knows that he’s a rich person of this world, partly because he’s someone who can appreciate musicals.

We musical theater enthusiasts need to lose the grammar-school mentality of thinking ourselves inferior because our likes and dislikes are different from those of the (allegedly) cool people. Let’s realize that, rather than weirdos, we really are the rich people of the world, with taste more rarefied than so many others display. It’s okay; we can admit it. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing at all.

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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@aol.com]