When I first began rehearsing a musical, I discovered to my genuine surprise that I was breaking an unwritten rule…that directors of serious ‘legitimate’ theatre should not dirty their hands by contact with such a lower form of entertainment! Since that time, it’s become almost impossible to name a leading play director who has not been successful and influential with musicals.
It’s just possible that, back in 1986, our Royal Shakespeare Company show Les Misérables, which survived a universal critical drubbing in this country, was a vital step forward in proving that a musical could actually be about something — poverty, injustice, revolution, religious fundamentalism, that sort of thing. But it’s more likely that the change came about through the gradual recognition of the genius of Stephen Sondheim, a composer/lyricist of Shakespearean dexterity, felicity and originality. A thaw has slowly set in, a climate change, still at times as difficult to prove as the melting of the ice caps.
I confess I have no idea from where this frigid antipathy arose.
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