In the late 1990s, Universal Pictures acquired the rights to Gregory McGuire’s novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West with the intent to develop it into a motion picture. After reading the book, however, composer Stephen Schwartz and producer Marc Platt asked the studio to turn it into a Broadway musical instead. Universal, envious of Disney’s Broadway success, agreed, and the show that eventually became Wicked was born. The studio was the show’s largest investor, contributing $10 million of the show’s $14 million budget.
Wicked’s worldwide gross to date? At least $4.6 billion — more than double Universal’s highest-earning film.
Wicked is just one illustrative example of Broadway’s resurgence over the past two decades. The location — and art form — that was once at the center of American popular culture slowly faded into oblivion over the second half of the 20th century. Ticket sales declined, and most outside of the theater community lost interest.
The past two decades, however, have breathed new life into Broadway, and have proven that live theater still has a magic unlike anything else. Audiences have returned, and profits — as well as ticket prices — have soared. Cast albums are topping the charts once again, and pop superstars are covering musical theater songs. Shows are even being invited to perform at the White House.
In a way, Broadway has come full circle. An art form built upon using popular music to tell stories strayed from that vision and suffered because of it. Today, however, the music of the day has returned to Broadway, and groundbreaking shows like Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen have pushed their way back into mainstream consciousness. Combining contemporary musical styles with an emphasis on representing today’s America, these shows are breaking boundaries and redefining musical theater, attracting massive audiences along the way. Broadway is thriving again.
How To Succeed
When the curtain in the St. James Theatre rose not on a spectacular chorus number, but on a lone cowboy singing about corn and meadows, Broadway was changed forever. So began Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s groundbreaking musical Oklahoma!, sparking the reign of the composer and lyricist duo that would rule Broadway for more than a decade.
Oklahoma! was a huge hit, and its success redefined musical theater. It was the first show to integrate all the elements of a modern musical into the plot; song and dance became elements of “storytelling rather than spectacle.”
With Oklahoma! as a model, Rodgers and Hammerstein led the way into a new era of prosperity for Broadway. In the 1940s and ‘50s, the Great White Way — so named for its massive marquee signs lit originally with white light bulbs — was the center of American culture. Actors and actresses were national superstars, hit shows made massive profits, and composers wrote the soundtrack for a generation of Americans.
“During that time, if you look at the top 40 on the radio … the top 40 was almost all showtunes. All the major singers covered showtunes,” said Robert Viagas, founding editor of Playbill.com and a teacher, lecturer, and theater critic, in an interview with the HPR. Indeed, songs from Broadway’s golden age, such as Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “My Favorite Things,” are still heard on the radio today.
The key to this cultural and commercial success? According to Viagas, Broadway musicals garnered their appeal by “using contemporary pop music like opera to tell stories with songs.” By writing in the musical language of the masses, composers were able to break away from opera’s traditional upper-class audience and connect with ordinary Americans. That special connection took Broadway to unprecedented heights.
Ya Got Trouble
If Broadway’s golden age led to its remarkable success, it was equally responsible for sowing the seeds of its downfall. “Around the early- to mid-’60s, Broadway had become so successful that it kind of created its own sound … that was not connected to the popular music of the day,” said Viagas. “That was a big problem.”
In the early ‘60s, Viagas explained, shows stopped “telling contemporary stories in terms of contemporary music. … In that moment, they lost the audience, and it was very hard to get it back.” Instead, Broadway “started to breathe its own air, and I think that was fatal.”
The sound of the ‘60s was rock and roll, and Broadway occasionally tried to adopt it. Hair is a notable example, and that musical actually did fairly well. However, though many other shows tried to reestablish a populist connection through rock music, rock musicals always seemed “half a decade behind. [They] didn’t feel real to people,” said Viagas. Without authentic popular music to draw in the masses, shows lost their audiences.
As a whole, Broadway was suffering. When a Shubert theater “was empty for a long time … they would put up a sign that said, ‘See a show for the fun of it,’” recounted Viagas. “There were some theaters that would have ‘See a show for the fun of it’ for two or three seasons because theaters would just sit there empty. And that was a tragic, tragic time.”
A Tale as Old as Time
A multinational corporation seems an unlikely hero for an industry predicated on artistry and originality, but Disney’s arrival on the Great White Way was undoubtedly a turning point. Beauty and the Beast, the company’s debut Broadway musical, premiered in April 1994 to a withering New York Times review; David Richards wrote that the show was “hardly a triumph of art, but it’ll probably be a whale of a tourist attraction.” Despite the negative press, however, Disney had seen something Broadway — and theater critics — had missed.
By returning popular music to musical theater, Disney led the medium back to its roots. Though it rattled the establishment and was widely derided, a show that catered to audience’s tastes rather than reflecting theater’s traditions was exactly what Broadway needed.
Disney followed up Beauty and the Beast with more successful musicals and, not coincidentally, Broadway attendance began to rise. The company’s success pushed Broadway back into the realm of popular music for good and catalyzed Broadway’s return to the winning formula of its golden age: using popular music to tell relatable stories.
Defying Gravity
With Broadway firmly re-grounded in popular music, shows are now challenged to keep up with an ever-evolving genre. To stay current, Broadway has continued to evolve over the past two-and-a-half decades.
In 2003, Wicked marked another major milestone, cementing the age of the ‘pop-rock’ musical. Combining orchestral instrumentation such as woodwinds, brass, and strings, with electric guitars and a drum set, Wicked popularized a sound that was expanded upon in Legally Blonde and The Book of Mormon, and the genre still resonates today in works like Frozen.
Since 2010, Broadway music has continued to grow in stature, and recent shows, such as Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s Dear Evan Hansen, have attained a popularity that was unthinkable in the 1980s. Dear Evan Hansen had the highest-charting debut for an original cast album since 1961, and a remix of the show’s hit song “You Will Be Found” reached the top spot on Billboard’s “Dance Club Songs” Chart.
Stacey Mindich, the Tony Award-winning lead producer of Dear Evan Hansen, credited the show’s “contemporary and fresh” sound for its widespread appeal in an interview with the HPR. She also cited a symbiotic relationship between Dear Evan Hansen and its composing duo’s other works, noting that the score for the movie The Greatest Showman “achieved a worldwide recognition for Pasek and Paul.” Their success demonstrates a new era for Broadway: In the past few years, musical theater has not only used popular music, but helped to shape it.
With Broadway music’s increased prominence has come attention from celebrities, creating a feedback loop that has helped to expand musical theater’s audience. Ariana Grande, for instance, got her start in showbiz, landing a role in 13 before she became a pop sensation. She recently returned to those roots to participate in Wicked’s 15th anniversary special. Katy Perry recorded her own version of the hit Dear Evan Hansen song “Waving Through a Window.” And a little show called Hamilton released a mixtape of its songs featuring artists as diverse as Sia, Kelly Clarkson, and Chance the Rapper.
Who Tells Our Stories
It is impossible, of course, to write about Broadway today without discussing Hamilton. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s mega-hit musical took audiences by storm, smashing box-office records and gaining a cultural following unmatched by any Broadway show in recent memory. The show represents an important step forward for Broadway not only through its use of musical styles uncommon on Broadway, but also for its ability to create a story that resonates with more diverse audiences.
“Hamilton is a huge [show] when we think about representation for people of color and representation for people of different socioeconomic backgrounds,” said Ashley LaLonde, a Harvard junior who has acted professionally with the American Repertory Theater, in an interview with the HPR. In contrast to previous eras, today’s Broadway has “lots of different stories being told by a very diverse variety of performers … and [audience members are] drawn to stories that [they] can connect with.”
Audiences connected with Hamilton because its groundbreaking casting lended an authenticity to its music; for example, Daveed Diggs, a member of Hamilton’s original cast, had established a career as a successful rapper before joining the show. Furthermore, the diversity of the performers onstage allowed a wider range of audiences to relate to the show’s material. By bringing in such a broad audience, Hamilton has helped redefine Broadway as a whole.
“[Dear Evan Hansen] benefitted tremendously from Hamilton,” said Mindich. “A show that brings in people who wouldn’t traditionally see a Broadway show is good for all of us because then you’ve interested someone in theater, and they look for more.”
Though Hamilton obviously broke new ground, LaLonde pointed to other shows, including Dear Evan Hansen, as examples of Broadway’s increased commitment to types of representation that go beyond race. “Dear Evan Hansen is centered on someone who is dealing with major mental health issues … [and] that sort of dealing with mental health on stage never would have happened in the past.”
Though she acknowledges that “Broadway has a long, long way to go before becoming truly inclusive,” LaLonde believes that today “we’re getting more stories of ‘non-mainstream’ American culture, which means we’re getting the opportunity to tell stories of people of color, stories of immigrant populations, stories of people with varying abilities … and we’re now able to tell those stories in a way that [they] were never told before.”
These new stories have drawn in new audiences and made Broadway “much more of a reflection of society than it was in the past,” according to LaLonde. They have also contributed dramatically to Broadway’s newly rediscovered relevance and success.
You Can’t Stop The Beat
For Broadway to continue its ascent, it must also continue to evolve. Though popular music will inevitably change, and Broadway must reflect those changes, shows also have to react to new technologies and consumption patterns in order to stay relevant.
“Social media and generally the internet has totally changed Broadway,” said LaLonde. In a way, it is creating a fan experience that has never been possible before: “Even if [fans] are physically distant, [they] can feel emotionally close to the performance.”
Both Viagas and Mindich echoed LaLonde’s description of social media’s ability to draw in fans who might be physically far from a show, and Viagas also referenced social media’s “democratization of criticism.” He argued that the internet has reduced the role of established theater critics in favor of online reviews by audience members who have seen the show. Similarly, Mindich emphasized the importance to Dear Evan Hansen of word-of-mouth advertising, which is increasingly driven by the same online platforms cited by Viagas.
As Broadway heads into the next decade and beyond, it is well-positioned to retain its status as a force in American entertainment. Theater has “a very human aspect” to it, said LaLonde. Even in a time of declining face-to-face contact and everyday Instagram perfection, there is still something riveting about “a group of people onstage in costumes under lights doing everything live.”
Popular music and relatable stories are the bread and butter of the Great White Way; without them, it would almost certainly be destined to return to oblivion. To continue to grow, however, Broadway must stick with many of its newest innovations, including representation and social media. It must strive to tell the stories of all Americans. If it can do that, the shows will go on for generations to come.
Image Credit: Unsplash/Paul Green