The Theater Will Rock: A History of the Rock Musical, from Hair to Hedwig

289 Pages·2006·0.872 MB·English

by  Elizabeth Lara Wollman

The Theater Will Rock

The Theater
Will Rock
A History of the Rock Musical,
from Hair to Hedwig
Elizabeth L.Wollman
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS
Ann Arbor
For Andrew and Paulina
Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2006
All rights reserved
Published in the United States of America by
The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
c Printed on acid-free paper
2009 2008 2007 2006 4 3 2 1
No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise,
without the written permission of the publisher.
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wollman, Elizabeth L., 1969–
The theater will rock : a history of the rock musical : from Hair
to Hedwig / Elizabeth L. Wollman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-472-11576-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-472-11576-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Musicals—History and criticism. 2. Rock music—History
and criticism. I. MacDermot, Galt. Hair. II. Trask, Stephen.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch. III. Title.
ML1711.8.N3W65 2006
782.1'416609—dc22 2006010056
ISBN13 978-0-472-11576-1 (cloth)
ISBN13 978-0-472-03402-4 (paper)
ISBN13 978-0-472-02700-2 (electronic)
Acknowledgments
Many people assisted in the completion of this project. I must ‹rst
thank my informants: Martha Banta, Richard Barone, Carla Bianco,
Catherine Campbell, Michael Cerveris, Bill Compton, Tom D’Ambrosio,
Nina Machlin Dayton, Natascia Díaz, Martha Donaldson, Paul Scott
Goodman, Walter Michael Harris, Clifford Lee Johnson III, Marjorie
LiPari, Galt MacDermot, Heather MacRae, Evelyn McDonnell, Ken Man-
delbaum, Annmarie Milazzo, James LL. Morrison, Natalie Mosco, Tom
O’Horgan, James Rado, Bill Schelble, Connie Schlier, Stephen Schwartz,
Leigh Silverman, Mark Stewart, Don Summa, Steve Sweetland, Steve
Swenson, Stephen Trask, Jack Viertel, Tom Viertel, and Billy Zavelson;
without their willingness to be interviewed, their wisdom, and their can-
did insights, this book could not have been written. Thanks also to the
members of my dissertation committee for the many comments made
during the writing of what turned out to be the ‹rst draft of this book:
Peter Manuel, John Graziano, Judy Milhous, Andrew Tomasello, David
Savran, and Stephen Blum. Additional thanks go to Judy and to Rob
Hume for the crash course in indexing.
I am grateful to the staff at the New York Public Library for the Per-
forming Arts for helping me secure rights to photographs, as well as for
digging up myriad archived clippings folders. Tom Lisanti from the per-
missions department was particularly helpul. The members of the Fine
and Performing Arts Department at Baruch College, as well as many of
the college’s administrators, have lent their advice, support, and friend-
ship; particular mention is due to Christopher Bruhn, Myrna Chase, Skip
Dietrich, Mikhail Gershovich, Gary Hentzi, Philip Lambert, David
Potash, Gene Scholtens, Leonard Sussman, and Andrew Tomasello.
LeAnn Fields, Rebecca Mostov, and Marcia La Brenz at the University
of Michigan Press have acted as fearless guides for this ‹rst-time author; I
deeply appreciate their good humor and the skill with which they have
handled my manuscript. Three anonymous readers of earlier drafts made
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
comments that were enormously helpful; one reader in particular sug-
gested the current format for this book, for which I am eternally
beholden. Dagmar and Marcia Hudson were particularly kind in helping
me obtain the rights to use pictures from Dude, Your Own Thing, and
Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death. John Michael Cox, Jr., identified
the actors in the Dudephoto for me.
Many friends, colleagues, and family members offered advice, guid-
ance, and camaraderie along the way. I thank Meena Bose; Jak Cheng;
Jim, Gail, and Jennifer Dunn; Joanne Hoffman; Marion Jacobson; Nancy
Langer; Ann Lyons; Sandra Mardenfeld; Lisa Miller; Jason Oakes; Shuli
Passow; Elijah Pluchino; Josh Saltman; Joe Sampson; Mark Stein; Steve
and Jessica Swenson; and Paul Yoon. The exceptionally talented Laurice
Perez deserves special mention; knowing that my daughter is in her capa-
ble hands on weekday mornings and afternoons has allowed me precious
worry-free time during which I have been able to work on this book.
I am forever grateful for the support of my parents, Barbara and
Michael, who instilled in me a love for music and the theater, and an
interest in supporting the performing arts; my sister Jessica, who patiently
listened to me read many a long passage from this book, and who always
offered honest, intelligent advice (about the book and countless other
topics); and my brother-in-law, Dan, who on many occasions listened to
(and usually clari‹ed) my rambling theories on popular music history
and performance. Finally, I thank my husband Andrew and our daughter
Paulina for their unending patience, support, encouragement, and love.
Earlier versions of portions of this work have appeared in the following
publications:
Sections of interlude 1 and chapter 5 appeared in Bad Music: The Music
We Love to Hate, edited by Christopher Washburne and Maiken Derno
(Routledge, 2004).
Material from interludes 3 and 4 appeared in “The Economic Develop-
ment of the ‘New’ Times Square and Its Impact on the Broadway Musi-
cal,” American Music20, no. 4 (2002).
vi
Contents
Introduction 1
1 The Birth of the Rock Musical in New York City 12
Interlude 1: Rock “Authenticity” and the
Reception of the Staged Rock Musical 24
2 Hair and Its Imitators 42
Interlude 2: Audiences 65
3 Rock Concept Albums and the
Fragmented Musical of the 1970s 73
Interlude 3: Megamusicals 120
4 Spectacles of the 1980s 130
Interlude 4: Economics and Marketing 142
5 Rock Musicians in the Musical Theater: The 1990s 158
Interlude 5: Merging Aesthetics, Making Performances 201
6 Rock-In›uenced Musicals at the Millennium:
The Dawning of the Age of . . . the Revival 213
Conclusion 223
Notes 229
Bibliography 245
Index 259
Illustrations following page 72

Introduction
Rock music has always had an uneasy relationshipwith the Amer-
ican musical theater. Before the rise of rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s, theater
composers routinely acknowledged popular idioms—jazz and ragtime,
for example—by appropriating them for theatrical purposes shortly after
their emergence. Yet, while there have been repeated attempts over the
past half-century to unite rock music with musical theater, their sociolog-
ical, ideological, and aesthetic divergences have made such unions espe-
cially tricky.
Although rock ’n’ roll was introduced in the United States in the mid-
1950s, and became increasingly sophisticated and in›uential in the follow-
ing decade, most of those who were then creating American musicals dis-
missed the new popular style as a noisy, vulgar fad. A few musical theater
composers experimented with rock ’n’ roll through the 1950s and 1960s,
especially once it became clear that the music was not only not going
away, but was outselling Tin Pan Alley fare. Nevertheless, it was not until
1967 that Hair,the ‹rst critically and commercially successful rock musi-
cal, opened at Joseph Papp’s new Public Theater in the East Village neigh-
borhood of New York City.
When Hair transferred from Off Broadway to Broadway in 1968, its
phenomenal popularity and impact led some theater critics to proclaim
that rock music’s in›uence would revolutionize the musical theater,
which by then had begun to decline in popularity among the American
people. And indeed, the rock musical has become something of a staple in
New York City. Almost every season since Hairarrived at the Biltmore, at
least a few musicals that borrow heavily from contemporary popular gen-
res have appeared on, Off, or Off-Off-Broadway to wildly varying degrees
of commercial and critical success.
Yet despite their constant presence, staged rock musicals remain some-