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7 “New Music”: The Megamusical in the 1990s
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292 7 “New Music” The Megamusical in the 1990s The 1990s saw the premieres of megamusicals by those who had helped to create the form in the 1970s and 1980s, and also by a new generation of composers, lyricists, directors, and producers who had been influenced by the earlier megamusicals . By the end of the decade, many of the original creators of the genre were no longer clearly leading the pack. Indeed, the megamusical itself, having dominated the Broadway musical in the 1980s, would share the stage with a host of other styles by the end of the century. Creators began to stretch the elements of the megamusical in new directions; for example, megamusicals no longer needed to be sung from beginning to end or based on a romantic, melodramatic plot. Still other features of the 1980s megamusical began to find their way into shows outside the genre or to fall by the wayside altogether. Nevertheless, the megamusical clearly matured and adjusted through the 1990s. First, we look at the megamusical offerings from those who led the field in the 1980s, beginning with the team of Schönberg and Boublil and then Andrew Lloyd Webber. Then we move on to megamusicals and megamusical-influenced shows created by new teams, most of whom were composed of Americans, New York having chipped away at London’s dominance. This chapter is more inclusive and less detailed than the previous chapters on the 1980s, not only because there were fewer iconic works in the 1990s, but also because the megamusical’s influence grew increasingly far-reaching and diversified. By the end of the decade, the megamusical was still going strong in new forms and helped give rise to a number of related styles. The Megamusical in the 1990s 293 Schönberg and Boublil in the 1990s: Miss Saigon Miss Saigon is a quintessential megamusical. Most of the shows discussed so far, especially those written after the first wave of the 1980s, demonstrate many but not all the features of a megamusical. But Miss Saigon has it all. It features a sung-through score from the creators of Les Misérables, Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil. It was produced by the leading force behind the megamusical , Cameron Mackintosh. It featured expensive, elaborate sets, including one hugely famous coup de théâtre, a helicopter that landed onstage and flew away again. John Napier designed the sets, as he did for Cats, Starlight Express, Les Misérables, and Sunset Boulevard. Costume designer Andreane Neofitou and lighting designer David Hersey had worked on Les Misérables, as did most of the other key players on the creative team. The plot had all the epic, emotional qualities that megamusical audiences expected, with a plot drawn from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, an opera with smaller dimensions but equally romantic, exaggerated emotions. (Miss Saigon was the first of a mini-wave of Broadway productions based on operas, followed by Jonathan Larson’s Rent, based on Puccini’s La Bohème; Elton John and Tim Rice’s Aida, based on Verdi; and La Bohème itself, in a trendy staging by Baz Luhrmann.) It was the biggest of Mackintosh’s “high-tech spectacular ‘event’ musicals” so far, yet one with a personal, somewhat realistic story.1 Miss Saigon takes place in Vietnam in April 1975, as the last American troops are being pulled out of the war, just before Saigon falls and Ho Chi Minh takes control. Kim, a seventeen-year-old girl whose family of rice farmers has been killed in the war, has just arrived in Saigon and is working her first night as a “bar-girl” in the sleazy nightclub Dreamland. It is run by a half-French, halfVietnamese man known as the Engineer, who makes shady deals, pimps his employees, and cares for nothing but his own profit. Kim, full of charming wideeyed innocence, falls immediately for Chris, a tired marine stationed at the American embassy in Saigon. Despite the desperate urgings of Chris’s fellow soldier John, Chris spends the last tense days of the American presence holed up in blissful love with Kim. They even participate in a ceremony that Kim considers a wedding. Unlike Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly, Chris does not intentionally leave Kim behind. Saigon falls, the embassy is evacuated, and Chris and Kim are separated in the chaos. We learn this only later, in a flashback in the second act. But by the end of the first act, three years...