Translations of Broadway hits such as Oklahoma! and South Pacific drew in huge numbers. In the post-war era, Arthur Freed’s unit at MGM produced classics such as Singin’ in the Rain, On the Town and Bandwagon.
During the Great Depression, Busby Berkeley’s staging pushed song and dance towards the edge of surrealism. No other film genre has – to mix maritime metaphors with financial ones – been so subject to boom and bust.įor about 40 years, from the release of The Jazz Singer to the release of Sgt Pepper, the musical was a reliable staple of mainstream Hollywood entertainment. Since the late 1960s the weather has, however, been extremely changeable. The studios behind the upcoming West Side Story and tick, tick. Obituaries are constantly written for the film musical. The cinema fails to flog the Great White Way’s prize winners. So the love affair is over? A little less than a century after talkies began with a musical – Al Jolson telling us “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” in The Jazz Singer – the relationship has come to an unevenly balanced end? Broadway and the West End convert Hollywood’s hits. At time of writing, Variety magazine has it ranked at number 41 in the race for best picture. The film was, even after factoring in Covid adjustments, a financial bomb of sizable proportions. Released to largely positive reviews, the adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical about life in Dominican uptown Manhattan was expected to restart the US box office and stake an early claim for Oscars. The relative failure of In the Heights during the summer sent up different shapes of red flag. There was, among the film press, a sense of “What the hell is this thing? How the hell did it become a hit on stage? Why the hell is it being inflicted on blameless cinemagoers?” Stupid theatre. Catch some shade under that “only a Broadway audience” shelf. Atad described Platt as being “costumed like a geeky middle-schooler from the ’80s in a manner only a Broadway audience could find convincing”. Most of the attention has, however, focused on the absurdity of casting Platt, a 28-year-old who here looks 35, as the compromised Evan.Ĭorey Atad in Little White Lies magazine was one among several who sensed a disconnect between theatrical and cinematic sensibilities. The ingenuousness of the confessional songs has strained patience. The script’s queasy conciliation with the protagonist’s deceit has raised eyebrows. Ben Platt revives his role as a troubled youngster who, for reasons too contrived to detail, gets mistakenly identified as the supportive friend of a schoolmate who has taken his own life. The kindest word to use about the reviews would be “mixed”. This week we get Stephen Chbosky’s take on the Tony-winning teen musical Dear Evan Hansen. Meanwhile, translations of theatre musicals to film are having a difficult time. The film was, even after factoring in Covid adjustments, a financial bomb of sizable proportions In London, indifferently received song-and-dance translations of Back to the Future, Pretty Woman and The Prince of Egypt have opened alongside Mary Poppins and The Lion King.
Moulin Rouge!, adapted from the Baz Luhrmann film, just won the Tony award for best musical. A glance at Broadway and the West End would suggest that, at the top of the market, musical theatre is cowed by moving pictures. That happened with Mamma Mia! It happened with The Greatest Showman. Yet, every now and then, the public will pluck an unheralded musical release from the schedules and turn it into a smash. There is still a suspicion that too much of the audience has an allergy to these things. Remember all those trailers for film musicals – most notoriously the 2007 version of Sweeney Todd – that cynically failed to include any singing. The newer medium can’t quite decide how it feels about its senior partner. Baltimore Ravens is a registered trademark of the Baltimore Ravens LLC.Cinema and musical theatre have, for the last 50 years or so, been in and out of relationship counselling.
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