THE MUSIC-TO-MUSICALS TREND
Money-spinning musicals based on real-life performers’ lives have proved stage gold. But has the bubble burst?
As if a tap had been turned, the new millennium saw theatre stages abruptly flooded with musicals celebrating the work of real-life music icons. For a time, it seemed a familiar rock or pop soundtrack was a surefire guarantee of success and – opening at Dubai Opera on Wednesday – The Four Seasons tribute Jersey Boys was just one of the most profitable products of the gold rush. Yet today, there is evidence the “jukebox musical” trend is already in decline.
Who would have imagined, just 20 years ago, that we would soon welcome musicals celebrating artists from the Spice Girls to Scottish pubrockers The Proclaimers; Billy Joel to Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti? That a Green Day album would be adapted to the stage (American Idiot) and German euro-disco group Boney M’s oeuvre would prompt a modern telling of Romeo and Juliet named Daddy Cool?
Asking the question “How much fame should an artist have accrued to adequately carry an entire stage production based around their back catalogue?” today warrants a distinctly different answer to the same inquiry posed just a few years ago. So what happened? Put crudely and simply, producers on and off Broadway alike hit upon a lucrative home truth: rather than employing composers to work up fresh musical scores – which take years to enter the public lexicon, and even only then with ample servings of luck and flair – why not use existing tunes, already known and loved by the masses?
While a precedent was set by Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story – a bio-drama that ran for 14 years in the West End from 1989 – most date the zeitgeist to a decade later, with the debut of Mamma Mia! Having enjoyed an unbroken London run ever since, also clocking 14 years on Broadway, this feel-good celebration of Abba’s biggest hits would reach more than 60 million punters, gross Dh7 billion and inspire 2008’s star-studded film adaptation, featuring Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan and Julie Walters.
This still-unrivalled success no doubt inspired the bombastic media support offered to We Will Rock You, the blockbuster Queen musical penned by Ben Elton, which defied the critics to clock 10 years in the West End from 2002. The comedian and novelist quickly followed up with successful Rod Stewart tribute Tonight’s the Night.
From here, our story shifts stateside, where the floodgates promptly opened – by the middle of the decade, it felt like every impresario with a chequebook in their inside pocket was working their way down a list of the world’s best-selling acts, outbidding one another for song rights. Jersey Boys arrived at the peak of the crest, in 2005, the same year that also saw Broadway welcome Beach Boys singalong Good Vibrations, Elvis tribute
All Shook Up and the earnest, Beatles-dodging, Yoko Onoendorsed Lennon.
The following year, two further rock legends were immortalised on NYC stages, with Johnny Cash portrait Ring of Fire and Bob Dylan tribute The Times They Are a-Changin’, while the Michael Jackson-themed Thriller – Live opened in the West End. Cirque du Soleil also got in on the act in 2006, with smash Beatles-based Vegas circus spectacle Love. Still running today, the success inspired follow-ups Viva Elvis and two Jackson shows – including The Immortal World Tour, which visited Dubai in 2013. Before their later reunion, even Take That got the touring musical makeover with Never Forget, while the unlikely Fela! opened on Broadway in 2009.
But the bubble had to burst – and it burst spectacularly with Viva Forever!, which famously clocked some of the most toxic reviews in living memory. Mamma Mia! producer Judy Craymer’s Spice Girls show was reportedly at least Dh24 million in the red when it closed in 2013 after seven months in the West End. A year later, a rare foray into hip-hop ended sourly, with Tupac Shakur musical Holler If Ya Hear Me axed after just a month on Broadway.
In recent years, the flood of jukebox musicals has reduced to a modest trickle, and while there have been successes – The Kinks-inspired Sunny Afternoon held a year on the West End, while Beautiful: The Carole King Musical played favourably on both sides of the Atlantic
– it now seems that theatre producers have learnt to think twice before pulling out the chequebook.
Rob Garratt
Who would have imagined that, just 20 years ago, we would soon welcome musicals celebrating artists from Billy Joel to Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti?