The evolution of style in musical theatre repertoire is difficult to keep up with. In this issue’s column, read on to find inspiration to expand your knowledge and your “book.”
Recently I was thinking about the YouTube rabbit holes I dive down, and how unusual their subject matter may seem to my friends or students. For instance, I’m obsessed with learning about how objects and foods are made in mass quantity—if there’s an automated assembly line making pencil erasers or Oreo cookies, count me in! Once I was in the kitchen making lunch and my partner told me that a documentary on roasting coffee beans was about to begin. In near panic, I exclaimed, “Pause it! I don’t want to miss a single second!” “We have a good time, don’t we, baby?” he replied.
I maintain a similar passion for podcasts about historic business rivalries. I’ve devoured nearly every episode of 98 seasons of Business Wars on the Wondery podcast network. And whether it’s Coke vs. Pepsi or Netflix vs. Blockbuster, I simply can’t get enough. The more I thought about my fascination for all of this, the more I came to realize that this isn’t unusual just because I spend most of my life in eighth notes and ah vowels. People have interests outside of their training and work lives, and these are just some of mine.
This got me thinking about one of my voice teachers at Peabody Conservatory when I was there for my MM in voice in the early 2000s. As I was researching their teachers (as much as 2003 Internet could allow), I read that in addition to creating roles in Benjamin Britten’s final five operas, the late, leading bass-baritone John Shirley-Quirk held a fascination with clock-making.
Ultimately it didn’t take much more pondering to realize that my career as a voice teacher and singer lines up readily with an interest in manufacturing and creating. And an interest in the historical context for the epic, ongoing battle for cola dominance between Coke and Pepsi is also much like comparing and contrasting rivalries between verismo composers or competing opera companies.
Understanding and communicating about crossover is comparable. This notion of maintaining multiple interests is why we have pickleball, American Idol, Steve Martin’s banjo-centric musical Bright Star, and art song and song cycles. We can talk endlessly about the whole Gesamtkunstwerk of it—if we want to get all Wagner about it—but for now, let’s narrow the scope to musical theatre (MT) repertoire.
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Specifically, let’s take a look at how the combined musical interests and affinities of both writers and consumers alike have resulted in the creation and production of several shows on (or recently on) Broadway now. I’m emphasizing production to shine further light on the audition, stylistic training, and rep coaching concerns central to producing a staged musical. In short, let’s address some of the MT repertoire matters affecting us as singers, voice teachers, and coaches the most—specifically, blended genres.
In the same way that there isn’t just one type of opera or soprano, musical theatre as an artform and industry isn’t monolithic. If I’m helping a student to program and prepare a recital, I’m not going to simply advise, “Now do some opera here, and then some art song after that.” We’ll likely work together to see if her Purcell set has a musical or thematic tie-in to the Vaughan Williams cycle she loves so much. And we’ll consider a roadmap for pacing the program—a plan that’s suitable for vocal sustainability, as well as diversity of tempo, language, and sonorities. I know I’m preaching to the choir here. And, yet, I’ve listened to enough competition videos and otherwise beautifully curated classical recitals with a generic MT set slapped on as a coda to know that MT repertoire guidance in the classical voice world is needed.
Voice teachers and coaches in more classically geared programs can tend to assign the same musical theatre rep out of habit, or because they’re not aware of or familiar with a healthy portion of it. This is largely because MT rep evolves and quite literally increases at a rate that opera and art song literature simply don’t. Just as art song texts and libretti draw from a diversity of countries, contexts, and poetic devices, MT rep similarly draws from wide-ranging texts and storytelling traditions and musical styles, as well as the blended interests and strengths of MT rep writers—remember Steve Martin and his banjo?
So let’s get to it. Here’s a sampling of shows on Broadway in 2024 featuring mixed idioms and musical styles aimed at inspiring repertoire ideas and recommendations for studio and audition use. As you read, stay mindful that initial submissions and audition requirements usually ask the singer for a song “in the style of” and not from the show. So get as creative with your rep or your students’ rep as you like—if you love Dolly Parton and the audition notice asks for country, bust out the tattered “Coat of Many Colors.”
The Outsiders
The songs in The Outsiders musical feature lyrics and music by the folk rock band Jamestown Revival (Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance) and Justin Levine. The score blends folk, bluegrass, Americana, and rock, all set in the context and confines of 1967 Tulsa, Oklahoma. My initial reaction is to stream some Jamestown Revival and see how it might (or might not) work with my instinct to assign the title song “Bright Star” from Bright Star or “Memphis Lives in Me” from Memphis.
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& Juliet
Jukebox musicals blend idioms to varying degrees depending on whether or not it’s biographical and traces an artist’s career like Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. “Beautiful” features not only the singer-songwriters iconic solo stye, but also songs she wrote for others and their idioms. On Broadway now, & Juliet is a jukebox musical featuring pop megahits like “Oops!…I Did It Again,” “I Want It That Way,” and “It’s Gonna Be Me.”
Similar to the advice above, do a deep dive (or not so deep, depending on your age in the early 2000s) into your memory for other songs by Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, or Britney Spears for rep ideas. Just last year, much of the Princess of Pop’s catalogue was featured on Broadway in Once Upon a One More Time (a.k.a. the Britney Spears Musical), and the soundtrack is rich with rep ideas for & Juliet.
Water for Elephants
Reviews can also result in a better understanding of a musical’s stylistic vibe: “The music and lyrics in Broadway’s Water for Elephants are expansive and a rich tapestry of American music ranging from folk, to swing, jazz and bluegrass.” (Variety, April 2024) And “…they [writers: PigPen Theatre Co.] took inspiration from the popular music of the 1930s time period: bluegrass, folk, and jazz.” (Playbill, March 2024)
The Great Gatsby
The New York Theatre Guide characterizes writers’ Nathan Tysen and Jason Howland’s setting of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic novel as being “…all set to jazz-pop music that brings the Roaring Twenties into the 2020s.” (NYTG, June 2024). The score is tuneful and exuberant, and its fusion of jazz and pop music make an easy argument for choosing repertoire from both the popular TV series (and soon-to-be Broadway musical) Smash, as well as the recent Broadway hit Some Like It Hot, which features of a score bursting with jazzy, singable tunes that are easily “cuttable” into powerful 16- and 32-bar samplings.
This brief survey of some new cross-genre crossover repertoire offers a glimpse of just how musically inclusive Broadway continues to become. And we haven’t even addressed the wide-ranging subject matter held under the magnifying glass in these four shows.
As you continue to grow your crossover practice—whatever that looks like for you—I encourage you to keep an open mind and be on the lookout for where you find your own interests, musical and otherwise, popping up throughout the musical theatre canon. There truly is something for everyone.
