Comedy Tonight!
When musical theater was called musical comedy, the creators had one goal in mind: to make the audience laugh. Today, as shows are often laden with drama and heavy-handed material, the music and lyrics naturally suffer, and the story takes over. It’s not that only comedies have good scores, but if the score is written around the story and not the other way around, the score may take a hit (or conversely, the score may lift otherwise poor musical text). Today’s musical comedies are often written with slapstick, pastiche-filled tunes, which are good, but writers who write dramatic and serious music receive more critical praise than do their comedic counterparts. Who are today’s great musical comedy writers and what does their music sound like?
Lucky for us, in addition to the number of great musical tragedies that have premiered over the last few years, there are a number of great musical comedies. This all came to mind as I began to unearth the script and score of The Full Monty, which I am music directing for ReVision Theatre on the Jersey Shore this summer. Not only does The Full Monty have a great comedic script (by Terrance McNally), but its score (by David Yazbek) is quite superb too. Yazbek’s style is distinctly “Yazbek” and inherently comedic (but also touching), in the same way that Leonard Bernstein had his own distinct style of comedy music in Wonderful Town, On the Town, and Candide. Think about how many contemporary composers you can identify just by hearing his or her songs, in the way that you can identify a Gershwin, Porter, Loesser, Bernstein, or Sondheim tune.