This week’s topic – occasioned by a recent evening at a Broadway theater -- is the (often blurry) boundaries of art. More specifically, it’s the Broadway musical, a genre notorious for sometimes straddling that boundary. The show in question was a production of “Merrily We Roll Along,” with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The great Stephen Sondheim, whose career began with his lyrics for one of greatest of all musicals, “West Side Story” (1957), with music by Leonard Bernstein. Now that was a work of art.
But you don’t have to love musicals (I don’t necessarily), or live near Broadway, to get my point, and you don’t have to agree with my taste or judgements. I’m not even sure I agree with myself. Ambivalence is my home. It lies at the intersection of uncertainty and complexity. It’s not a bad neighborhood; in fact, it lies in the heart of the liberal arts.
What I mean is this: art is a communal experience but also a very personal one; art is where you find it, and we don’t always find it in the same places. The same goes for its evil twin, entertainment.
I was raised on musicals by parents who loved the “legitimate” theater and musical theater alike. The latter had its roots in Vaudeville and the music hall tradition, which now look shallow and often racist. I saw most of the Broadway classics, from Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” (which is arguably more of an opera) to “West Side Story,” “Oklahoma!,” “South Pacific,” “My Fair Lady,” The Music Man,” “Carousel,” and so on.
I enjoyed those shows as a kid, and still remember dozens of tunes from them. But as I aged and Broadway evolved, we grew apart. I became a bit more, shall we say, discerning in my tastes. I retained a deep love of the theater but mostly stopped going to the musicals. I’m no expert on the genre, but it’s clear that Broadway has become a purely commercial enterprise, based on tourist dollars, while a small cadre of more serious composers and lyricists – such as Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Weber, and a few others -- maintained higher aspirations for the evolving genre.
Consequently, I’ve seen very few musicals over the years. And since the era that I think of as the heyday of the Broadway musical – the 1940s-1960s era of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Kander and Ebb, and their ilk, I’ve mostly lost interest. I finally saw “Hamilton,” and I liked it. “The Book of Mormon” not so much.
One of my favorites from the golden age of Broadway musicals was “The Man of La Mancha,” based on Cervante’s “Don Quixote.” Since then, I’ve seen only two truly memorable shows: one was “Ain’t Misbehavin’” (1979) with the effervescent music of Fats Waller. The other, more recent one was an unfathomable commercial flop: a beautiful blend of music and theater by Sting, “The Last Boat.” That it failed says more about American public taste (if there is such a general thing) than anything else.
In the 1990s I also discovered a wonderful late work by Cole Porter titled “Out of This World,” a hilarious bit of musical theater about Greek gods and their proclivity for consorting with mortal humans. Because it was a bawdy romp, my kids loved it too. But we never saw it staged.
This year was marked by the revival of Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along.” I had never seen it; and I’ve never warmed to Sondheim since “West Side Story.” I say this with some shame, because he’s widely acknowledged to be a musical and theatrical genius, and I’m not here to dispute that. I never saw his classic “A Walk in the Woods” either. I did see “Sweeney Todd” in London decades ago and found it hard to enjoy a musical about a mass murderer. But that’s just me.
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Let me briefly digress here to restate the obvious. There is no consensual agreement on what identifies a work of art. Art and entertainment always intertwine -- as they should. They intertwine because we are hardwired to spectate on different levels and for different reasons; and serious messages and themes blend with pleasure in our minds just as food does in our stomachs. We want to be moved, and sometimes we want to be provoked or informed.
Wherever there is creative genius, there is art. But what does that mean? In this context it can mean, among other things, musical virtuosity, inspired production, and theatrical depth; or more basically, insight into human nature, morality, psychology, social mores, or history. Art reflects us back to ourselves, while kitsch does not. The circus isn’t art, and neither is baseball, as interesting and cerebral as it is. Art isn’t everything.
My final obvious point is this: no one can tell us how to feel or respond to either art or entertainment. It’s all about what we personally take away from it: pleasure, insight, emotional stimulation, empathy, memory, affirmation, or a sense of connection to a community; the appreciation of great composition, production, or performance, or of the courage and talent to take risks – all of it.
Critics play an important and complex role here. But critics are merely there to inform, guide, provoke: to make thoughts or conversations happen, share facts and judgments, and no more. Like the rest of us, they are sometimes wrong, ignorant, stupid, opinionated, or just have bad days. I know because I’ve been a book critic.
I am not qualified to review “Merrily We Roll Along.” But at least three friends told me it was worth seeing, and so I took the plunge. At the intermission, I was so bored that I nearly left; but something made me stay, reluctantly, to get the full experience of the show. The second act was much better, and by the end I felt I was getting something out of it.
It also left me full of questions: Did I like it? (Not really). Was it “good”? (The acting was terrific). What was it actually about? What don’t I get about Sondheim? Why do I resent his boasting (in the script of the show and elsewhere) that his songs aren’t “hummable,” as if that proves they are superior?
Plot-wise, “Merrily” is about is a group of friends in the film and screenwriting business. It’s about friendship, success, failure, and how these interweave. But the characters are shallow and mostly uninteresting; and the fact that the events in “Merrily” are portrayed in reverse sequence, beginning, as I recall, in the 1990s and ending at the 1950s, made no logical sense whatsoever. As a narrative technique (and not a new one) it seemed more of a gimmick designed to confuse, and thus to compel closer attention, than a way of enhancing the theatrical experience.
So much for my non-review. I have no doubt that Sondheim was a great artist. (His obituary convinced me of that). While I didn’t love “Merrily We Roll Along,” it did make me think about what makes art and how it blends with the alternatives. (I have otherwise sophisticated friends who don’t like Shakespeare or baseball; I feel sorry for them for what they’re missing.) It helps to remember that life is short, no one can relate to everything, and we’re not all great cultural citizens. (Many can’t afford it.) We’re all uniquely limited beings.
Most of the classic musicals that I grew up on seemed to share a common theme: they were magical mirrors on America, portraying us as a wonderful and deeply innocent people. They celebrated the best in us and ignored everything else. There are obvious limits to that, and it’s a good thing that Broadway has moved on. (A recent revival of “South Pacific” at Lincoln Center in New York was wonderful; but the Broadway revival of “West Side Story” was a disastrous attempt at contemporary relevance.)
I’m intrigued by the vague boundaries between art and entertainment because they remind us of why we need to distinguish them, why they so often blend, and why we need both. I still listen to, and hum in my head, the old tunes that were emotional cornerstones of my childhood. They aren’t “art,” and don’t need to be. They just make my showers pleasanter.