Tomorrow Morning: the Musical
Sometimes I get into a kick where I scour the web for new musical theater works - it both satisfies my morbid curiosity about “the competition” (in scare quotes as I would have to exist on the playing field for me to have competition), and my occasional desire for new good musical theater fare.
Unfortunately, most of the shows I find aren’t really my cup of tea, or, since I hate tea, I guess, Sprite Zero.
Tomorrow Morning: the Musical is an example. Most new musical theater stuff these days (that isn’t produced with mega-zillions of dollars) consists of spirited actors singing hook-less and generally uninteresting (but mildly pleasant) melodies over artful piano playing, usually about modern, “relevant” stuff that I don’t give a flying patootie about. I might be made to give one or more flying patooties, however, if the music was better than blah. The more shows I listen to, out there, however, the more blah I find.
My friend Adam Wood suggests that the reason most new musical theater songs don’t have hooks is because writing hooks is hard. That seems reasonable enough, but a lot of these shows don’t even try. The music isn’t structured to have a hook, or even, quite often, a sense of “title-ness.”
Oh well. I can only keep working at making my stuff as good as I can get it.