The Medley of Extemporanea

The musical theater opening number is a vital tool to establishing the tone of a musical, readying the audience for what they're about to see, and introducing important characters and themes. Ubiquitous as it is as a "song type," it is in fact extremely varied in the method of its execution. In this season finale, we'll examine different kinds of openings and why they work. SONGS FEATURED: "Comedy...

Of the plug-and-play song formats that punctuate our understanding of musical theater structure (the "I Want" song, the Lowest Point), perhaps none is more of a guilty pleasure, more pure fun, than the Villain Song. Here we examine several forms of this vital category, exploring how musical theater villains can play on our moral outrage, our sense of vicarious spite, and our understanding of chara...

Composers and lyricists rub off on one another, pointing each other in new directions and influencing each other's styles. What can we learn from these relationships -- and who, ultimately, deserves the credit for a successful musical theater song? SONGS FEATURED: "They're Playing My Song (Hers)" from They're Playing Our Song "My Eyes Are Fully Open" from Ruddigore "Fascinating Rhythm" from Lady,...

Film, literature, and television have often used either real or fictional musicals within their stories as a way to convey certain ideas about performance or the attitudes of an era. Real-life musicals can be historical touchstones; fictional musicals or musicals within other media can draw our attention to that media's "rules" of storytelling. SONGS FEATURED: "On the Side of the Angels" from Fior...

A brief timeline of sex on stage in musicals through the decades, from the wink-wink nudge-nudge ribaldry of Cole Porter's 1920s to the high-flown metaphor of Spring Awakening to the relatively damp squibs of explicit discussion of sex in musicals of the 2010s and '20s. As with all things in art, what's important is less what's being said than what's not being said, and musical theater has always...

Oklahoma! , the ur-text of musical theater, is at its heart the story of no-holds-barred combat for sexual partners in a lawless society where such partners are scarce. Its reputation for squeaky-cleanliness is in part thanks to the musical's central theme being the way in which a society purges itself of undesirable elements. SONGS FEATURED (All from Oklahoma! ): "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" "E...

Musical theater is concerned with words and their function, and how our frequent inability to communicate with one another can be overwhelmed by personal, heartfelt expression. It makes sense, then, that the art form should be concerned with languages. In this season finale, we'll examine the use of non-English language in Anglophone musical theater, and examine how non-English languages are somet...

For great songwriters, every decision about how lyrics sit on music is made consciously. Rhyme and rhythm are the dynamic ingredients that allow the craftspeople who write musical theater to convey things about plot and character that simple dialogue couldn't. SONGS FEATURED: "Almost Like Being in Love" from Brigadoon "The Wedding Dance" from Brigadoon "Rock Island" from The Music Man "Ya Got Trou...

Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's 1987 classic Into the Woods is the prototypical example of wild but successful ambition in musical theater. Through the lens of traditional fairy tales, it encompasses the fundamental precepts that make us human and how we can use them to construct better communities on the domestic and political levels. Exploring the structure of this magnificent piece tells us...

For years, musical theater has been dogged by an aggressively moralistic stance on the part of audiences, who are unwilling to accept immoral behavior by characters in musicals unless it's roundly punished at the end of the story -- a stance the same audiences rarely take when it comes to straight plays and movies. What motivates this difference in approach, and what have been the effects on the a...

Some of the most interesting musical theater does its work by playing with the blurred boundary between diegetic music -- music that actually exists within the world of the show -- and non-diegetic -- the imaginary, elevated emotional music that defines the art form in our imagination. (Sweeney Todd isn't singing in his universe; the Michael Jackson of MJ is.) That's one of the reasons why musical...

Examining the origins of the musical, above and beyond its relatively limited American history, is a thorny trail, leading from the songspiels of 17th-century middle Europe to jazz-age Berlin. It's a story that's much larger than Show Boat and The Black Crook . SONGS FEATURED: "He is an Englishman" from HMS Pinafore Overture from The Magic Flute "Overture" from Show Boat "March of the Amazons" fro...