Page 8 - STA Hony Tonk Laundry Playbill 111020

FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

A few years back, Honky Tonk
Laundry playwright Roger and
I had a spirited discussion
about the reputation of jukebox
musicals. The brilliant director
Des McAnuff had gone on record
decrying anyone who called
his hit show Jersey Boys a
jukebox musical.

McAnuff argued that his work was of a much higher status and the association with
jukebox entertainment belittled his efforts. I love Jersey Boys and I hear what Des is
saying but in the end, I believe it is a jukebox musical and it should be proudly heralded
as such. I got on a soapbox about the issue and Roger said I really needed to write it all
down in essay form. Lucky for you readers – here is that essay all these years later!
In 1728, writer John Gay created a ground-breaking work that was the most popular
play of the eighteenth century – The Beggar’s Opera. An immediate hit in its own time,
the play used comic lyrics set to popular tunes. As the century wore on, the lyrics were
updated to fit the times. It was in essence the first jukebox musical and is still played
to this day. Notably, it is also the source material for Brecht’s masterpiece, The
Threepenny Opera.
Here in America, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, theater was largely an
imported program of European traveling companies supplemented by American talent
who presented a slate of classics. Following the Civil War and westward expansion,
American producers created entertainments that mixed popular music with current
events and folk stories and played these shows in saloons on the frontier – arguably the
first “regional” theaters in the country. And the fare was populist entertainment, meaning
popular songs amidst light stories about love, family and community.
This was the standard – pop songs as score – until March 31, 1943, when Oklahoma!
changed everything. Oklahoma! became the first show to use an original score to forward
the story, needs and desires of the characters – song and dance as the psychological
truth of the evening. Oklahoma! and all musicals that follow it are an evolution of form –
a meaningful one for sure – but must we throw the baby out with the bathwater? Why is
the original form of pop song musicals considered inferior today? If the reason we have
Oklahoma! is because we had Penny’s Proper Peppers in 1911, should they all count?
Roger Bean is not trying to be Richard Rodgers when he writes his work. He is, however,
working on the same spectrum with different tools and in the end, if the playwrights and
songwriters do their jobs, you feel something. And whether that something is pure joy at
hearing your favorite song in a new context or powerful catharsis rising from a spectacular
book musical – for me what matters is that someone used their gifts to reach your heart.