Move over Andrew Lloyd Webber: how musicals got real
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It was hardly a surprise that musical theatre became a basket-case late last century. Not only had it overdosed on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sugar-coated soporifics, it also kept banging its head against the twin brick walls of rock-based music and jukebox inanities. No, the surprise was that musical theatre ever regained its health – and it’s done that with bells on.
While straight theatre ties itself in Gordian knots of “relevance” – art is fundamentally good or bad, not relevant or irrelevant – several recent musicals have done something only Stephen Sondheim had previously approached: make the idiom a genuine standard-bearer for theatrical innovation.