The Musical as Drama

Most American literature, and most American drama, is cast
in a realist mode and takes the portrayal of the individual char-
acter as the normal intention. That is not true of the musical,
in which the shared formality of song and dance leads to an
awareness of multiple performance as a logical outcome—
duets, quartets, ensemble singing and dancing. Often a num-
ber seems to express a character’s deep feeling, as though song
and dance can reach into the area of subtext and transform the
private motivations found there into performability. But the
private motivation does not matter so much as the performa-
bility. If subtext is to be explored by the realistic actor in the le-
gitimate theatre, it is to be changed into accessible song and
dance formats in the musical. There is no subtext the musical
cannot get to, and once gotten to, the hidden motive will be
obvious to everyone, transformed into a different beat, into a
melody that can be shared, into a lyric others can join. When
others join, the musical is moving into its ensemble tendency.
The sentimentality of the genre is one result of this shared
performability. Rodgers and Hammerstein clarified the ensem-
ble tendency of the musical and they also clarified its senti-
mentality. They opened a great opportunity for later writers to
play off against the sentimentality. Most successful writers of
musicals after Rodgers and Hammerstein took up this oppor-
tunity and turned the musical toward ironic or satiric versions
of the ensemble outcome. I am thinking of Loesser, Kander and
Ebb, Cy Coleman, Sondheim, William Finn, among others—
writers who may use the ensemble outcome too, and do not
turn away from the occasional moment of sentimentality them-
selves, but who also test these things, challenging the Rodgers
and Hammerstein legacy while using its capital. This double at-
titude toward the musical’s past is one reason why the musical’s
future is turning out to be deep and complex.
The chapters that follow unpack these ideas and spread
them out more fully. First, there is the musical’s challenge to
the codes of “rugged individualism” to which a great deal of
nonmusical American literature and drama seems to be de-
voted. The musical’s ensemble tendency has ideological impli-
cations that we have not yet explored. I then take up several

76 CHAPTER THREE