Saturday, April 24, 2010
Will Tony put coin in jukebox?
Variety: History could be made when the Tony Award nominations are announced May 4. It's just possible that in the best musical category, all four nominated tuners will be what's affectionately or disparagingly called a jukeboxer -- that is, a show built around pre-existing songs.
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9 comments:
I for one am going to be dissapointed if the best musical categorey is all jukebox musicals. I have a storng dislike for musicals that are a compilation of songs with some lyrics in between. I can make up my own story for American Idiot- if it is so narrative. I don't need to see your version Michael Mayer.
The thing that gets me about these musicals is they will be nominated for best musical- but they lack originality, essentially they are producer's wet dreams because they have a certain recognizability and throw in some lyrics and the job is done, money is made.
Originallty is missed today, and we need to bring it back, restart it, make it new. Let's stop playing the money card and focus on the art- which I know will never happen but hell, I can dream right?
I think it's interesting that the norm is now to go for these songbook musicals. Not only are they more common, but there is that assumption that musicals will be of this type now. I don't think this is a good trend, because originality is what advances art. I agree with Bryce about the story for American Idiot, it really isn't necessary to stage it. However, if the book for one of these songbook musicals is really amazing, and gives a moving experience for the audience, then they aren't a total waste.
I have just thought about this the other day when I was watching Broadway.com for any new deserve-to-see shows. I found out there were a lot of "jukebox" musicals out there. They are almost rock concerts or dance revues.
I was kind of disappointed at this trend. I even start asking so what a musical is anyway... Is this because producers can predict successful results at certain amount easily, or there are no more good original scores and books in the market? I do not think so. Just the market now tends to avoid taking risks. I hope we will regain the cycle of new story-driven musicals in a couple of years.
Back to Tony Awards, seemingly, there are categories of Best Book and Best ORIGINAL Score, other than Best Musical. It would be really disappointing again to see all nominees for the best musical are jukebox musicals, but it might be still understandable if jukebox musicals are considered in that section, as long as the musicals are well organized and performed as a whole.
While I agree with the other commenters that this is a bit of a disturbing trend, and I would rather see more originality in musicals. Concept albums such as these were intended to be just that, albums in which you follow a story through the music, and building it up into a giant musical takes away from that a bit I feel like. While I don't like it necessarily though, I have to agree with Hide that Best Musical category encompasses not only the music used in that Musical, but also the rest of the production as well, and I can understand the choice of these jukebox musicals for nominations in the context of them being good productions overall, not simply on the basis of the music.
Well, this is just annoying. I was already getting kind of tired of the constant creation of new jukebox musicals and the dwindling supply of new, original musicals. Now if these jukebox musicals become the only ones to receive Tony nominations, I am afraid that will result in an even higher increase in unoriginal musicals. When a play with no original music gets awarded (and especially since the book for these musicals is usually either less than stellar or nonexistent), the message sent to that production is pretty much, "Wow, people really like those songs you put in that show! Everyone really enjoyed listening to some of their favorite songs in a theatrical context!" Good storytelling through music should be what merits Tony awards.
Though there are many jukebox musicals that I love, I do think that it's kind of sad that the whole best musical category will be composed of these musicals. To me, this shows that the only kind of shows that are going to survive in this economic climate are ones that audiences will recognize and for that reason, will want to see. But original shows have more difficulties because they really have to promote themselves to audiences that have no idea what these shows are about. Jukebox musiacals have the advantage of being able to reach out to people who already like the music and will want to go to the musicals to hear this music.
I hope that this trend does not keep more original shows from being successful.
its interesting when you think about as songs being created to fit a show vs a show being created to fit certain songs.
I do agree that shows today lack originality, but i dont think it is the jukebox musicals that really lake originality, if done cleverly. Its the movies like spiderman or shrek they turn into musicales that frustrate me. i think the difference is that jukebox shows mostly create their own story, where the ones based on movies are using an already existing story.
I know this runs the risk of inuring the wrath of all those who love musicals, but I'm not really sure how different the idea of a musical built around songs is from musicals with their own original scores. They're still mostly songs. They're still generally waist deep plots that are connected by musical interludes that are normally setup with a bad segway of some kind. So, what's the real difference between a play that is essentially a CD and a show with an original score?
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