The Musical as Drama (review)

Scott McMillin simply and confidently asserts that there is no question, after more than a century, that the musical is a major form of American drama and therefore requires a new theoretical perspective, which he proceeds to offer. The bombshell he drops is that musicals' powerful drama and the pleasure they offer audiences are not a result of smoothly integrated parts, but are rather the rough edges of differences among book, song, dance, design, and orchestra. He refutes the commonly accepted theory of integrated musicals using song and dance to advance a book's plot, and suggests instead that "the book sets forth the turn of plot and the number elaborates it, in the spirit of repetition and the pleasure of difference. Most songs and dances do not further characterization, they change the mode of characterization—difference again. These are the aesthetic principles that all songs and dances follow" (8).

According to McMillin, a musical's book and numbers each follow a different order of time. Numbers suspend book time and allow characters to express second versions of themselves in lyric time; using song and dance is a risk for both performer and character, making them vulnerable and open to failure, but the risk creates difference in their performance. Numbers also offer audiences the pleasure of something different, where time is organized by repetition. Millie Taylor is also exploring the pleasures offered by the different order of time occurring in songs and will no doubt build upon McMillin's analysis here of what musical numbers can achieve when they suggest alternative orders of time and illusions of realism.

While providing easy-to-follow musicological analyses of songs, McMillin seizes the differences within the form to unpack and challenge many of our most basic assumptions about musicals. With examinations of classic musical theatre moments such as the bench scene and Billy Bigelow's soliloquy in Carousel, McMillin finds more pleasure and more to explore than in any characters' race, religion, gender, or sexuality. His chapters therefore investigate how specific key elements of the musical (book and numbers, characters, ensemble, the orchestra, scenic technology) perform their different functions and create drama by doing so. He briefly discusses film musicals and suggests that they have perhaps achieved more Wagnerian integration than the stage musical ever will.

McMillin demonstrates his own passion for musicals simply and honestly. Once the reader adjusts to his consistent surprise and delight over the fact that the characters he discusses not only sing, but sing well, one begins to realize that the simple joys of the musical form are indeed ripe for complex discussions. His feigned naiveté becomes a convention itself, necessary to secure the reader's commitment to consider the obvious: If the magic that transforms a tavern into a barricade in Les Misérables could only be harnessed by the people, surely they could succeed in their struggle? The stage technology is showing its omniscience, McMillin concedes, but suggests that even scenic design, especially in a musical, is more than just a background to drama and therefore is important to examine for its function in the total work.

McMillin's writing is conversational throughout, but maintains the gravity of his argument: "It seems natural for two dozen musicians to be chiming in when some cowboy is yodelling about a fine morning, and when no one questions such an absurdity, a basic convention of musical theatre must be operating. The significant point is that no one ever asks about this—it is obvious" (127). He happily asks the basic, obvious questions such as: What drama develops in performance when Gaylord and Magnolia in Showboat sing the same melody, or in West Side Story when the Jets dance beautifully but violently in their near-rape of Anita? In his concluding chapter, he examines more radical musicals such as Follies, Cabaret, A Chorus Line, and Pacific Overtures, investigating their aesthetics and "their penchant for getting to the roots of the musical and dramatizing the conventions of the form. . . . They make the...