#also apologies to my opera mutuals i used to be mostly a musical theater person

[supercantaloupe]

i don't think it's a coincidence either that oklahoma is the one show (or at least the first) to get a radical reimagining on a big stage, of all the musicals. because it's, like, The original musical. the one that started it all. so it's like the only one old enough to 'warrant' something new by broadway standards. and because oklahoma, both in its text and its context in broadway history/culture, has an extremely well established Tradition already, no one has dared stray from prior to daniel fish's staging.

anyway, i firmly believe that a large factor in why musicals are Like This while operas aren't is because the musical a post-recorded sound and video medium/genre. sure, plenty of individual operas were created after the inventions of recorded audio and video, but opera as a Tradition and an Institution and a Form was already hundreds of years old, and what counted as 'tradition' for an opera had already changed multiple times over those centuries. whereas when musicals popped up out of operetta/vaudeville/minstrelsy and tin pan alley recording traditions...well, they were born into a world that was already used to documenting specific individual performances and preserving them, often as 'definitive.' throw copyright and licensing into the mix in the 21st century too and now you're literally legally disallowed from changing things Too Much (if at all) from what the 'correct' text and its interpretation is.

it is interesting to see the shows that push against this rigidity of course. the ones that have 'new' revivals. usually it's just in aesthetic but sometimes it's in content. like your pippins, your cabarets, your 1776-es, your my fair ladys and your camelots (hello bartlett sher. why am i not surprised to see you also direct opera?) and the shows that revise after broadway like the addams family (whose tour and license-able book + score are rather different from what ran on broadway) and heathers.

obviously shows with well documented pre-broadway versions are interesting and fun to look at from a developmental/dramaturgical perspective (anyone who's spent time in the hadestown fandom would know that). but if and when a show Makes It on broadway, that particularly version becomes Definitive in a manner that's incredibly difficult to change. the reception to dan fish oklahoma, to circle back and tie this knot finally, was not universally beloved; countless audience members found it offensive and heretical to 'the tradition' and walked out.

as an aside, i remember a couple years ago i attended a discussion panel with the dramaturg for hadestown and he more or less said that it was 'finished.' that anais mitichell would probably tweak a couple of things here or there in the lyrics in the subsequent tour and london productions (which i think did happen, at least in london), but the show in its broadway version was more or less 'done.' which, man. eye opening thing to hear

i genuinely really think that, besides my “musicals are what you get if you make operas not autistic” theorem (another thing for another day), there is One massive thing that stands in the way of me liking (modern) musicals and it’s the relationship they have to their texts vs operas.

with an opera, it’s kind of established that part of the big game is that every production is a negotiation and not a reproduction. it’s a conversation. there is no one “canon” version of an opera and it’s the audience expectation that every production will differ somehow. this especially kicks in when we’re dealing with operas that have harmful ideas either explicitly (madama butterfly) or implicitly (die meistersinger von nurnberg) because you can turn those works into ruminations on themselves. you’re dissecting the animal but the animal is conscious and fully consenting and marvels at your work as you go.

with a musical, meanwhile, there is usually a dedicated version you are looking at and an insistence on a CANONICAL way things are Meant to be interpreted. there is One Accepted Concept and branching into reinterpretations counts as “headcanons” or another modern fan term. a musical is not seen as “sociological/anthropological record of multiple time periods” but as “Content”

musicals have two problems. 1) they don’t have the gap in time that allows for that kind of retrospective look (which is fair that’s not a them issue), and 2) they have a fandom cultivated around them and are seen as Content. they also are so “concurrent” with our time (and also very fast) that they don’t have a sense of Allowing for reinterpretation. sure, you’ll have your regional/student productions that’ll do some minor detail like a character acting slightly differently or a silent interaction included- but you aren’t going to have your deconstructed heathers that pulls apart how it’s kind of immediately fallen apart in a post-2018 world, or a lion king performed as if it was a brand new text without any regard for the details of either the original film or julie taymor’s stage treatment. god forbid you start deconstructing your musical! that’ll make the fans sad!

and until we get to the de-fandomization of musicals and acknowledge them as sociological texts and not Content(TM), we aren’t going to get there. but alas that culture is baked into musicals, especially as the shows see shorter and shorter long-term visions as the machine of broadway grows hungrier for money and so brand identity and imposition of ‘fandom culture’ grow stronger with it.

(this is also why i’m so fascinated with chess the musical, which is a musical that doesn’t work So Much that nearly every new production is some extensive revision or another (usually making it somehow more incomprehensible in the process). the idea of “musicals can be reinterpreted” is there! we’re getting there! but it’s Not Quite. and i find that Fascinating from a dramaturgical context.)

Anyway if i had my way every new musical revival would be like the daniel fish oklahoma over and over and over FOREVER!!!! YOUR BRAND IS DEAD AND BOW TO THE NEBULOUS CONCEPT OF REGIETHEATRE AS YOUR NEW KINGGGGG