We mustn’t meddle with the meaning of our classic musicals
In the past few weeks, as we have seen our crippled theatre industry slowly trying to rebuild itself, one thing has become very clear: producers have been on a mission to get cautious punters back into their venues. This is not just in terms of addressing their concerns over Covid, but also in terms of what’s on offer. The solution to the latter is very simple: stop the politically correct hand-wringing, ignore the illiterate thoughts of a few very vocal bullies on Twitter (who probably make up approximately a zillionth of the UK’S theatre audience anyway), and give the people what they want.
And what the people want is razzle dazzle. Musicals, it seems, are more popular than ever. The big shows are back – the West End stalwarts such as The Phantom of the Opera and Mary Poppins of course, but also the classics which have been enjoying revivals. Over at the Barbican, Cole Porter’s
Anything Goes is sending audiences into a state of euphoria (at least it did on the night that I attended), while Chichester has resurrected Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific.
The latest is another by that prolific duo – Carousel – which is being staged at the Open Air Regent’s Park, in London. However, while there is an essential element of the feelgood factor in both South Pacific and
Carousel, there is also an irrevocable darkness. In the former, we see the prejudices of Nellie, who is happy to accept that the object of her affections, Emile, has once killed a man in combat, but cannot come to terms with the fact that he fathered two children with a Polynesian woman.
In Carousel, the brutal Billy is a wife-beater and thief who eventually takes his own life. Then, he returns to Earth (with the approval of the Starkeeper, a celestial official) to try to help his daughter, Louise, in a bid to redeem himself. He tells her not to be dragged down by his own failure as a parent, and after the emotionally hefty number You’ll Never Walk Alone, sung by Seldon the town’s physician, Billy whispers in Louise’s ear and tells her to believe in Seldon’s words. Then, having been granted forgiveness, he ascends to heaven.
But hang on – what have they DONE to Billy in this latest version? He is guided down to Earth not by the celestial Starkeeper but by a judgmental chorus of women. That final scene – Billy’s moment of grace – has been radically altered so that he is absent (as is Seldon) and it is the town matriarch who provides Louise’s salvation. It seems that Billy’s behaviour is simply too problematic in the age of Metoo. That once you have done Something Bad, you cannot be allowed to atone for your sins.
The problem with such an overhaul is that it starts to play with history, to take us away from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s intent. It also reduces the show’s power immeasurably. If Billy, whose life has been blighted by poverty and is therefore worthy of at least some sympathy from the audience, is missing in that final scene, it is harder to really care about him.
Rodgers and Hammerstein were not
reactionary dinosaurs whose work should be immediately cancelled. South Pacific makes an impassioned plea for racial tolerance, as illustrated in the extraordinarily powerful number You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught. To meddle with the creators’ thought processes has the very slightest whiff of Maoism. And isn’t it patronising to think perhaps that audiences won’t get the idea of historical context – that we can’t find our own resonances in something created more than 60 years ago?
Furthermore, if we start meddling with Carousel, aren’t a lot of other musicals going to be fair game? Another from the Rodgers and Hammerstein stable, Oklahoma!,
features the lonely, emotionally off-kilter Jud who everyone in this tough, dust-filled, dirt-poor town abuses. If that lack of kindness for the outsider is reduced in new productions, would we, as audience members, feel so moved by Jud’s essential tragedy?
Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady is another example of a musical that is ripe for change if revisionism is in the air. Professor Higgins is a terrible misogynist and Eliza Doolittle is his project, his piece of social engineering, which allows him to control the opposite sex. Change any of that and you move far, far away from Higgins’s sense of repression, his blithe disregard for anyone female or working class, which is crucial to the story.
I am not saying that we shouldn’t be allowed some correctives. In Anything Goes, mobster Moonface and hapless Billy’s impersonations of two Chinese men have been mercifully jettisoned from the Barbican production. Also, they are not integral parts of the musical, just bits of vaudevillian fluff that do not have any bearing on the emotional or psychological heart.
The age-old problem with some musicals is that there is a juxtaposition between the jazz-hands jollity and the jolly serious. Some people find it grating, but actually there is no reason why the two can’t work together. Doesn’t a bit of mawkish schmaltz actually serve to heighten the dramatic tension? Does it not chip away at our emotions?
Today’s theatre-makers need to stop manipulating the past and seeing it in terms of the problems it poses. These musicals from the golden age are classics for a good reason. They cheer us up, of course, but they also speak truthfully about the human condition. To think we know better, as Open Air Regent’s Park clearly does, is just asking for trouble.
Their creators were not reactionary dinosaurs whose work should be cancelled