Preview '05-'06: The Jukebox Plays On
Of course, there's nothing new about this phenomenon. Such classic movie musicals as Singin' in the Rain, The Band Wagon, and An American in Paris featured original scripts cleverly fashioned around pre-existing song catalogues. Like the current All Shook Up, Play On! 1997 updated the story of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night to Harlem in the '40s and fashioned that update around pre-existing songs by Duke Ellington.
And Broadway shows like the "new Gershwin musicals" My One and Only 1983 and Crazy for You 1992 might also be termed jukebox shows, even if they were very loosely based on earlier Gershwin musicals. The chief distinction in the case of My One and Only and Crazy for You is that most of the songs featured were written for characters to sing in stage shows and films. So the songs had at least a degree of theatricality and felt at home on a stage, even if they were now being placed in the mouths of newly invented characters.
Mamma Mia! made the fitting of beloved contemporary pop into a new narrative look like a good idea. If its libretto is even less substantial than Mamma Mia!'s, All Shook Up is the most successful Broadway jukebox musical since the ABBA smash. Elsewhere, other titles have met with varying degrees of success. London had a Madness musical called Our House that received excellent reviews, won awards, but didn't enjoy a long run. The West End also had a short run of Tonight's the Night, featuring the music of Rod Stewart. Far more successful has been London's Queen musical, We Will Rock You, which is full of tongue-in-cheek, self-referential humor and which, while continuing in the West End, is now playing world wide, from Germany to Las Vegas.
Why hasn't We Will Rock You played Broadway? Those involved correctly realized that the New York critical reception would not be favorable, and indeed, the show has received two negative reviews in The New York Times one by Brantley in London, the other by Isherwood in Vegas. But the producers were merely playing it safe, for surely We Will Rock You would have been a better bet for Broadway than Good Vibrations, last season's entry that singlehandedly gave jukebox musicals a bad reputation.
Most people seem to list Movin' Out as a jukebox musical, but while it features the songs of Billy Joel, they are not sung by characters in the story, but are rather used as suggestive background music to what is not a musical at all but instead a two-act, evening-length ballet. Unlike the music in Contact, those Billy Joel songs are sung live every night in Movin' Out. But were they pre-recorded, Movin' Out would still play well as the ballet that it is.
This season's first new Broadway musical, Lennon, is a different sort of jukebox musical, somewhat in the vein of The Boy from Oz, a biographical show about the life of a singer/songwriter, featuring songs written by the show's subject.
While Good Vibrations was first seen at New York Stage and Film at Vassar, that was an informal situation, not open to critical review. The show would have been much better off playing an official tryout at a regional theatre or in a pre-Broadway run, where it could surely have been improved. All Shook Up took advantage of both situations, playing its first engagement at Goodspeed then reopening for a commercial, pre-Broadway run in Chicago.
Which brings us to this season's second Broadway jukebox musical, Jersey Boys, brought to us by the Dodgers, the same producers who gave us Good Vibrations. But this time the show, which tells the story of the pop team the Four Seasons, has played an official regional tryout, last fall at the La Jolla Playhouse. And it proved to be one of the more popular attractions at that venue.
The director is Des McAnuff, stager of one of last season's biggest flops, Dracula, as well as one of its biggest hits, 700 Sundays. Playing the team that gave us songs like "Sherry," "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Can't Take My Eyes Off You," and "Rag Doll" were David Norona Frankie Valli, Daniel Reichard Bob Gaudio, J. Robert Spencer Nick Massi, and Christian Hoff Tommy DeVito. For Broadway, John Lloyd Young will be Frankie Valli, with Hoff, Reichard, and Spencer continuing in their roles. The songs are mostly by Gaudio and Bob Crewe, the latter played at La Jolla by Peter Gergus. The script is a collaboration between Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice.
As Variety critic Joel Hirschhorn reminded us in his review of Jersey Boys, "Frankie Valli was the person John Lennon most wanted to meet on his first visit to the U.S." So perhaps it's fitting that Broadway is getting bio-musicals of those two figures within the space of a couple of months. Hirschhorn found the La Jolla Jersey Boys "consistently enjoyable," although he felt that too many songs didn't quite get their due and failed to become the showstoppers they could be.
With its division of its title character among nine performers, Lennon tells its story in somewhat unconventional fashion. But Jersey Boys appears to be more in the traditional style of bio-musicals like The Boy from Oz and Buddy. While Jersey Boys has no stars like Hugh Jackman, the public loves the doo-wop songs of the Four Seasons, so it's easy to envision Jersey Boys finding a ready audience. Perhaps even the critics will find it to their liking, or at least give it a pass. Jersey Boys opens on November 6 at the Virginia Theatre, where Little Women failed last season.
If Lennon is the season's first new Broadway musical, Jersey Boys is its third. So, although it does not appear to be a jukebox musical, let's also include here the season's second new Broadway musical, another show by a pop songwriter that has a theatre and a date set. Beginning performances September 27 at the Music Box and opening there on October 20 is In My Life, featuring book, music, lyrics, and direction by Joe Brooks, who is best known for the Academy Award-winning title song of the film You Light Up My Life, a picture Brooks also wrote and directed.
In My Life is described as a love story set in New York City between a singer-songwriter and a journalist. It's not clear if this is autobiographical, but one assumes that's a possibility, considering the project is all Brooks.
Brooks' chief musical theatre credit was as composer and co-lyricist/co-librettist on the somewhat intriguing, expensive London flop Metropolis, the pop opera that played the Piccadilly Theatre in 1989 and starred Judy Kuhn, Brian Blessed, and Graham Bickley. This time out, Brooks appears to be thinking on a less grandiose scale.
The ad copy describes In My Life as "the slightly dysfunctional story of a musician with Tourettes, a girl with OCD, and the one affliction they share---true love." Not exactly the sort of thing likely to send hordes rushing to the box office or jamming phone lines for tickets, particularly with no cast names yet attached. It's also fairly daring to offer the show directly on Broadway, without the benefit of a previous regional production or tryout run. If In My Life doesn't work, the blame will have to fall squarely on Brooks.