Out of tune

Going to see the new smash hit show Matilda the other night, I was once again reminded that, as a creative musical force, the contemporary West End musical is dead. It contains the sort of music you only find in musicals; it has no relevance to contemporary music; it exists in a creative ghetto. The musical has become divorced from popular musical culture.

Theatre critics seem to have no value system for judging the music in musical theatre. They might declare that a new show has ‘a sparkling score’, which means that to their ears it was relatively unobjectionable, didn’t get in the way of the story and wasn’t too loud, but they’ll ignore the fact that the music and lyrics have one foot in the past and the other in parody, are utterly forgettable and unremarkable, and in the larger popular music culture are irrelevant. Even supposedly ‘cutting edge’ shows of recent years are musically insignificant.