The Musical as Drama

scenes I have mentioned political in design, but these instances
of multiplied self that put power off balance bear on Brecht’s
theory of estrangement in the Epic Theatre, where the actor
seeks to become a reporter of his character’s actions even as he
plays the character. Brecht sought political explicitness in the
estrangement effect and Kierkegaard did not. Brecht would
have objected to the rhetoric of being carried away. But the de-
mon is released in both Brecht and Kierkegaard, in outbreaks
of doubleness valued for their resistance to linear plots, and the
resistance subverts established norms in ways true to the low
and illegitimate theatre.
What kind of theatre is this? Its invasions of subtext turn
hidden motives into song and dance, but the demon released
in the performance of a number resists definition. Readers of
Kierkegaard would say it is non-Hegelian. Readers of Brecht
would say it is non-Aristotelian. There would be heated argu-
ments, but they are saying what this theatre is not, and the
exchange of negativity would imply that the musical is doubly
theatrical, ready to travesty any attempt to think of it as one
thing. The numbers counter the book by bringing its agents
into a second order of time. Characters expand into song and
dance, resisting expectations that action is progressive, sub-
stituting repetition instead, and making intellectuals uncom-
fortable. It is not closet drama at all. It brings what is closeted
to the stage in the spirit of performance—one reason why gay
spectators are among its ardent followers. But everyone has a
closet. This theatre is prepared to open the door and be glee-
ful with what it finds there. It is not that the contents of re-
pression are represented. It is that they are reformulated into
what may look like the triviality of song and dance, catching
power off guard, and insisting in its ensemble tendency that
this invasion of our privacy is not so much psychological as it
is political. Or at least it yearns to be political. Most musicals,
including most good musicals, are not overtly political. But
they belong to a theatre aesthetic that looks toward the po-
litical, not with the direct glare of Brecht and not with the
sidelong glance of Kierkegaard, but with full regard for the

WHAT KIND OF DRAMA IS THIS? 199