Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now by Mark Steyn Faber & Faber 346pp, £20 in UK; Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical from Show Boat to Sondheim by Geoffrey Block Oxford 410pp, £25 in UK
There is an apocryphal saying by an actor (I think it's apocryphal; I've never met him, anyway) which always reminds me of musicals. "Everyone hates me except the public," he says, which seems to be the general view of what used to be called musical comedy.
What is it about musicals? Despised by the majority of "legit" theatre people and most types of musicians alike, the form regularly seems on the point of extinction, but always somehow goes on (and on). For all its faults, it is now the only truly popular form of theatre, the only kind capable of existing without some manner of outside subsidy.
Broadway, that lengthy New York avenue which is forever associated with the form - though most of the theatres that actually stage musicals are on other streets - is always just about to die. Yet just when everyone has given up hope, it stages, if not a full recovery, then some sort of remission that breathes new life into it. Currently (too late for these books, apparently) the whole area has been Disneyfied and where not too long ago there were rotting buildings, porn shops and strip joints, now new hotels, restaurants and playhouses are rising - a sort of Theatre Theme Park. What's on offer there won't altogether please those who long for the golden age of musicals, but there has never been more money coming in at the box office and that is - and always has been - the bottom line.
So, mourn the era that gave us Guys and Dolls, Show Boat, Kiss Me, Kate, West Side Story and all those other great shows, but remember that the current revivals of Chicago and Cabaret are booked out for years, that The Lion King is such a big hit that they're talking of building another theatre across the street to stage a duplicate production (only in New York) and that "Les Miz" and all those Lloyd Webbery things continue all over the world, it seems forever. Mark Steyn's witty book - surely one of the best ever on the subject - examines the rise and fall, as he sees it, of the musical. They started, according to his thesis, in Viennese operetta. Here the music was everything, the plots, with their gypsies and Ruritanian counts and hussars, nothing. When New York became the centre of the theatrical world around the turn of the century, the form crossed the Atlantic and soon became something more democratic and brasher. To begin with, it followed the old way, but under the influence of Tin Pan Alley and its song writers (mainly Jewish immigrants or their sons) the song lyrics became increasingly important.
This was the great age of popular song, with the likes of Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, and the Gershwin brothers producing work of a wit, technical perfection and sophistication that has never been equalled since. Yet while the songs were superb, the "books" (i.e. the dialogue and story line) of the shows remained as featherbrained as ever - so much so that they would be unstageable today and have to be heavily rewritten for revivals. There were, of course exceptions (most notably Show- boat), but it was not until the arrival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! in 1943 that the fully integrated musical really arrived, giving, if not equal, at least adequate, weight to all the elements - music, book, lyrics and dancing.
Steyn insists that, after a couple of decades, the musical has fallen into artistic decline, despite its huge box office success. Having lost its place in the hit parade to rock (inherently unsuitable to the theatre, as it is so difficult to hear the words and so sloppy about its lyrics), show music has become a sort of soft, poppy nothing. The rise of Lloyd Webber, too, has meant the downgrading of book and lyrics. (Who can remember the names of the writers of his shows? They are back, in fact, to the status of the forgotten and forgettable librettists of 19th-century operetta.)
Show dance has largely abandoned the ballet-inspired choreography of the musicals of the Forties, Fifties and Sixties in favour of the quick fix of tap dancing. Add to this the enormous cost of the modern musical, with its gargantuan sets, used as a sort of insurance against failure, and the loss of a whole generation of Broadway's best talents to AIDS, and it's no wonder that there is no longer a place for the innovative, risk-taking show. Instead, we get revivals of past hits, and even these, in the Steyn's view, are inferior, driven too often by the "concepts" of directors more interested in their own egos than in serving the work.
The exception, of course, is Stephen Sondheim, the only contemporary writer of musicals admitted to the critical pantheon. But popular he is not. His music is too difficult, not amenable to be sung as "numbers", his eye is too misanthrophic, his subjects are too diffuse and "difficult". Perhaps the truth is that the musical has run its course and that, as Mark Steyn surmises, all the "lively" arts" eventually devour themselves. Certainly the unique alliance between commerce and art that made good, original musicals no longer seems possible. Commerce has overwhelmed the more delicate element and the best we can hope for is half decent revivals of classic shows. Sad, but why not? We don't, after all, expect very much from new work in opera or operetta.
Geoffrey Block is a musicologist and his book will mainly be of interest to musicians and scholars. These may be keen to know, for instance, how Bernstein is influenced by Wagner in his West Side Story songs, or to read a detailed analysis of the music of Guys and Dolls. The lay reader will find more to interest him, however, in the often fascinating descriptions of how the fourteen classic musicals described came to be written.
Fergus Linehan is a lyricist, novelist and Irish Times staff journalist