Ref: BA 2013-2014

Alex Gilchrist
Its a new old world: A cognitive examination of where Adam
Guettel stands with regard to the past, present and future of
American Musical Theatre
This Independent Project is submitted in fulllment of the requirements for
Module IPR6: Independent Project
Supervisor: Jeffrey Joseph
Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance
15/05/2014
Introduction 3
Girl Crazy - George & Ira Gershwin 5
Carousel - Rodgers & Hammerstein 9
Passion - Stephen Sondheim 14
The Light in the Piazza - Adam Guettel 19
Bibliography

27
2
Introduction
Since what is arguably considered to be the beginning of Musical Theatre as a
genre music has catered to satisfying cosmopolitan audiences en masse; the
popular music of the time being that which has taken its place in some of
Broadways longest running productions. However, with the advent of music
distribution technology and greater general access to music, genres diversied
and Musical Theatre began to grow in complexity of style and take on an
entirely new genre of its own. It began to include greater diversity of musical
styles not necessarily because the public called for them, but because these
were the tools in the ever growing arsenal of the musical theatre composer.
With popular music available from the comforts of home or the nearest record
store and major changes in the socio-political climate, composers began to
have more freedom in the work that they produced.
The Tony Award winning musical theatre and opera composer Adam Guettel
has been described by Alfred Hickling of The Guardian as having an
enthusiasm for drawing on un-Broadway musical sources
1
and his music
described by multi award-winning composer Stephen Sondheim as dazzling.
2

From his debut in musical theatre with Floyd Collins, beyond his notable
success The Light in the Piazza, Guettel has become one of many composers
appreciated by a smaller demographic of theatregoers, with Jason Robert
Brown, Andrew Lippa and William Finn to name a few of his contemporaries.
In this project I am going to examine where Guettel stands as a musical theatre
composer in the history of American musical theatre; essentially historically
situating him. Is he identiable as part of the lineage of his grandfather,
acclaimed composer Richard Rodgers, or is he a part of a coterie of new
theatre writers concerned with nothing but story telling or scrutiny of issues?
To help me explore this I will be focussing on four musicals from American
Musical Theatre history separated as chapters, each discussing the social
climate and circumstances of American theatre at that time. The rst chapter,
3
1
Alfred Hickling, Alfred Hickling meets Adam Guettel, grandson of Richard Rodgers, <http://
www.theguardian.com/stage/2009/may/19/adam-guettel-light-piazza-curve-leicester> (accessed
12 April 2014)
2
Frank Rich, Conversations With Sondheim, <http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/
20000312mag-sondheim.html> (accessed 12 April 2014)
discussing Girl Crazy by George and Ira Gershwin, details the styles used for
the music of the show and illustrates the importance of popular music in early
musical theatre. Secondly, I will discuss Carousel by Richard Rodgers and
Oscar Hammerstein II, including again an analysis of the musical styles used as
well as the controversial story content and its role in shaping musical theatre to
include socio-political issues relevant at the time of production. In the third
chapter I will look at Passion by Stephen Sondheim, noted as one of his
ironically less successful works; the show won several Tony Awards but then
closed within weeks of the award ceremony.
3
The nal musical I will be looking
at is The Light In the Piazza by Guettel himself. In this chapter I will draw
comparisons with other works I have explored examining the constraints of
audience appreciation of the work as well as cultural and socio-political
differences during the period these productions were conceived.
4
3
John Kenrick, Musical Theatre: A History (New York: Continuum International Publishing
Group, 2010), 360.
Girl Crazy - George & Ira Gershwin
Two of the most well known performers in American musical theatre, Ethel
Merman and Ginger Rodgers, were both granted fame with Girl Crazy, the 1930
musical with music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin and a book by Guy
Bolton and John McGowan. Opening at the Alvin Theatre on 14 October, the
musical lasted until 6 June the following year and according to theatre writer
Ken Bloom, The score was one of the Gershwins best.
1
Although having been adapted a number of times since its conception, the
original stage version follows the story of a young man, Danny, sent away by his
wealthy father to Arizona to work on the familys ranch and help him focus on
things other than alcohol and women. On the contrary however, our protagonist
instead turn his familys property into a mens club importing showgirls for
entertainment, including Kate Fothergill (Merman). With business at the ranch
booming and visitors coming from across the state, Danny falls in love with the
local postmistress, Molly Gray (Rodgers) and eventually manages to win her
heart, not before confronting competitors for her affections.
The show introduced songs, Embraceable You and I Got Rhythm which
would later be considered exemplary show tunes of the Tin Pan Alley era.
The Gershwins themselves were no strangers to success with their productions,
beginning from their 1924 Broadway hit Lady, Be Good! up to Georges death in
1937.
George and Ira were raised in Brooklyn, New York and grew up around the
Yiddish Theatre district and frequently visited the theatres, with George even
running errands for members and appearing onstage as an extra.
2
It was when
the Gershwins parents bought a piano for Ira, that George rst delved into the
world of music. Ira would not begin demonstrating his love for English and light
verse until his attendance at College of the City of New York.
The roaring 20s that spawned Girl Crazy, were so called because of the
intense industrial, cultural and metropolitan boom that occurred following The
5
1
Ken Bloom, Broadway: Its History, People, and Places: An Encyclopedia (New York:
Routledge Member of the Taylor and Francis Group, 2004), 2.
2
Howard Pollack, George Gershwin: His Life and Work (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2006), 43.
Great War (later known as World War I), which had spawned an intense feeling
of unity and patriotism within America. This patriotism is shown through the
distinct decline of opera and operetta works on Broadway which were frequently
set in exotic locales, removing audiences from familiar settings into realms of
make-believe, rather than the audiences home, America.
3
By 1917 local
politicians were pressurising schools to stop teaching German; actors and
actresses with foreign sounding names found greatly less work.
4
In 1913-14,
producers mounted more than a dozen Central European imports and their
American clones, but in 1914-15 that number dropped to four.
5
Any producers
that wished to pursue staging Central European operetta did their best to nd
book writers who would be able disguise the works original origins.
6
Moreover, as the 1920s came, following the unprecedented industrial expansion
brought by World War I, more Americans than ever had both stable income and
increased time for leisure. This marked the beginning of the rise of
consumerism which would play a key role in the development of American
Theatre. Similar to the stage blockbusters in the 2000s the chief purpose of
these musicals (aside from making money) was entertainment for the masses;
these shows had to have an appeal to everyone. Tin Pan Alley-type musical
comedies mirrored their audiences lifestyles and frequently reected an aspect
of their own daily lives. Any cultural issues of the time were treated comedically
in these musicals with frequent aspects of Prohibition of alcohol and political
lampooning forming the shows. Politically based shows proved popular offering
themes of current events, whilst always remaining tongue in cheek; for
example, the Gilbert and Sullivan inuenced Of Thee I Sing (George and Ira
Gershwin, 1931) based on political elections in America. Productions such as
these would offer a frisson to audiences, knowing that what they were seeing
was still being discussed in newspapers.
6
3
John Bush Jones, Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social History of the American Musical Theater
(Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 2004), 55.
4
Bush Jones, Our Musicals, Ourselves, 49.
5
ibid., 49.
6
Mark Steyn, Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now (New York: Routledge
Member of the Francis Group, 2004), 37 - 38
The 1920s also brought the Cinderella musical as a new popular model of
story.
7
Most shows still had the boy-meets-girl form however the Cinderella
musical interplayed themes of lower class women, wealth and unattainable love
and was usually set in modern day America. The women in these musicals
would be working-class girls but would often have a sense of grit, Molly Gray
(Rodgers), in Girl Crazy being a prime example.
After the Stock Market Crash on October 29 1929, musical theatre took two
distinct paths but both with the same goal - to entertain. The one side of theatre
continued to depict the free and easy, fruitful American life, except that this was
now a juxtaposition to most Americans lives during The Depression. The other
side of theatre would tackle current issues or events of the time, many featuring
bootlegging (transporting alcohol illegally) or particular scandals of the time as
the basis of a plot, for example, police corruption.
The greatest inuence in the change of Musical Theatre music in the early 20th
Century was Jazz.
8
Its fusion of African-American ragtime and folk music with
European harmony created a sound that had never been heard on Broadway
before. Swung music, featuring polyphony and syncopation proved immensely
popular with audiences, particularly those of the younger generation. With the
prohibition of alcohol and the creation of government deplored speakeasies
where Jazz would be played, audience members were being given a sample of
that illicit lifestyle at the theatre. Although it was Florenz Ziegfeld who brought
jazz into the public eye with Black inuenced dances and music in his revues, it
was the music of composers like Irving Berlin and George Gershwin, that
cemented the place of Jazz in Musical Theatre.
9
In Girl Crazy, the most obvious
themes of Jazz are shown clearly in the song, I Got Rhythm shown in Ex.1
below which features typical Blues chord progressions, syncopation, and swung
rhythm:

7
7
David Walsh and Len Platt, Musical Theater and American Culture (Westport: Praeger, 2003),
76.
8
Piero Scaruf, A Brief History Of Pop Music - The USA Up To World War 2, <http://
www.scaruf.com/history/pop00.html> (accessed 11 April 2014)
9
Joseph P. Swain, The Broadway Musical: A Critical and Musical Survey (Lanham: Scarecrow
Press, 2002), 18 - 19.
Ex.1 Bars 35 - 38 I Got Rhythm - Girl Crazy
10
The zeitgeist of this period of Musical Theatre was dened by these attributes of
Minstrelsy and Ragtime music combined with themes of European operetta
brought over by composers such as, Sigmund Romberg and Rudolf Friml who
were both immersed in the cultural music from their homeland, Europe.
Romburgs father was a polyglot who played the piano and his mother was a
writer of Hungarian poetry and short stories.
11
Frimls father was an accordion
player, a typical Central European instrument, and Friml himself was tutored by
three different piano teachers at the same time in his youth as his mother
wanted him to have a diverse repertoire.
12
This diversity coupled with a much greater availability of music since the
invention and commercialisation of the radio, which was available to most
households by 1919, meant that audiences were gradually becoming
accustomed to a broader range of music - this needed to be satised in the
theatres.
13
Similarly, this advent of communication made it even easier and
quicker, for American citizens to hear news, particularly those involving politics,
as many radio stations were set up just to broadcast local election results.
14
8
10
George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin, Girl Crazy. (New York: Alfred Publishing Co., 1930)
11
William A. Everett, Sigmund Romberg (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 38.
12
William A. Everett, Rudolf Friml (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 2 - 3.
13
Mary Bellis, The Invention of the Radio, <www.inventors.about.com/od/rstartinventions/a/
radio.htm> (accessed 8 May 2014)
14
Erik Barnouw, A Tower in Babel - A History of Broadcasting in the United States (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1966), 62 - 64.
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein 2d, who can do no wrong, have
continued doing no wrong in adapting Liliom into a musical play. Their
Carousel is on the whole delightful. It spins and whirls across the stage of the
Majestic, now fast and rousing, now nostalgic and moving. To it, the composer
of the team has brought one of the most beautiful Rodgers scores, and the
lyricist some of his best rhymes.
Carousel - Rodgers & Hammerstein
If Rodgers and Hammerstein could treat the subject of [my] play as tastefully
and charmingly as they had handled Green Grow the Lilacs [I] would be
pleased to give [my] consent.
1
This is what was said by Hungarian playwright
Ferenc Molnr to Theatre Guild producers Theresa Helburn and Lawrence
Langner, in giving his permission for his play, Liliom, to be adapted into a
musical. It was the great popularity and success of Rodgers and Hammersteins
rst musical together, Oklahoma!, that had prompted Molnr to let them adapt
his work. Carousel was a major milestone in the duos career as it showcased
their abilities to overcome the problem of creating a show to follow the single
most inuential work in American musical theatre
2
, Oklahoma!
Carousel opened on Broadway on April 19 1945 where it proved very popular
with both audiences and critics with The New York Times reviewer, Lewis
Nichols, saying:






3
The show also proved popular in the 1950 West End production with just as
complimentary reviews, (although there were charges of gross sentimentality by
some critics in London) remaining there for over a year and a half.
4
The plot follows Billy Bigelow, who fascinates and eventually marries a young
millworker, Julie Jordan. Billy eventually loses his job as a carnival barker just at
the same time he nds out that Julie is pregnant and in a desperate attempt to
nd some money to support his family, he attempts to rob a wealthy townsman.
9
1
Hugh Fordin, Getting to Know Him: A Biography of Oscar Hammerstein II (New York: Da Capo
Press, 1995), 222.
2
Thomas S. Hischak, The Rodgers and Hammerstein Encyclopedia (Westport: Greenwood
Press, 2007), 201-202.
3
Lewis Nichols, Carousel, The New York Times, 20 April 1945, The Play In Review, 24.
4
Stanley Green, The Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre (New York: Da Capo Press, 1980),
62 - 64.
The moral dilemma that is dramatized though its hero - Billy Bigelow - represents
a growing sophistication, a serious treatment of good and evil and the struggle
between them... The evil in Billy Bigelow, however, is presented as endemic, and
humanized in a particular American way to t in with Americana.
The robbery goes awry and Billy, faced with the prospect of going to jail, takes
his own life and is sent to heaven. He is eventually allowed down from heaven
for a day to make amends for his bad acts in life, however not so successfully,
he hits his now grown daughter in anger. He later manages to instill a sense of
hope and pride into Julie and her daughter before he returns to heaven forever.
The opera-like intensity that the show often possessed superceded that of
Oklahoma!. Note the overture, which sets the musical style for the entire show.
The plot also proved controversial with complex gender and status examination
as well as challenging traditional protagonists. David Walsh and Len Platt write:

5
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II had already produced a substantial
body of work before working together. Rodgers had worked extensively with
lyricist Lorenz Hart, spawning hit shows such as Poor Little Ritz Girl (1920),
Babes In Arms (1937) and Pal Joey (1940) to name a few. Hammerstein had
considerably more experience than Rodgers when they rst met and has
worked as lyricist for some of Broadways most famous composers, for
example, The Desert Song (1926) with Sigmund Romberg, as well as many
Jerome Kern musicals including the revered Show Boat.
Rodgers was born into a middle class German Jewish family in New York and
began playing the piano when he was six inspired by his mother, who was a
procient pianist, and by the families ever-growing collection of vocal-piano
scores from theatre lobbies.
6
As an excellent ear pianist he found great
inuence from the Metropolitan Opera House where was able to buy Saturday
night tickets for $17.
7
In 1930 he married Dorothy Belle Feiner and together
they had a daughter, Mary, who became a childrens book author and also
composed the music to Once Upon a Mattress (1958). Marys son and Richard
10
5
Walsh and Platt, Musical Theater and American Culture, 107.
6
Richard Rodgers, Richard Rodgers - Musical Stages an autobiography (London: W.H. Allen &
Co. Ltd, 1975), 8 - 9.
7
ibid., 21 - 22.
Rodgers grandson, Adam Guettel, would be the only of Rodgers grandchildren
to go into the eld of musical theatre.
8
Hammerstein was born on July 12 1895, to an middle class family in upper
Manhattan. His father was a theatrical manager at Hammersteins Victoria
Theatre, one of the most successful vaudeville houses in New York, and his
Prussian (now Polish) grandfather was a renowned theatre impresario.
9

Hammerstein originally went to Columbia Law School during which his father
passed away from misdiagnosed Brights Disease.
10
Following his fathers
death, he quit law school to pursue theatre, inspired by the friends he met at
Weingarts Institute, a boys camp, which included Lorenz Hart, a future
collaborator with Richard Rodgers.
11
Some of Hammersteins earliest
collaborators include Otto Harbach, Herbert Stothart and Frank Mandel.
In the period between Girl Crazy and Carousel, America went through a great
change brought by the depression of 1929. Unemployment rose to 25% and
many theatres began to switch to the much cheaper alternative of showing
motion pictures instead.
12
As such, the popularity of Talkies meant that many
composers including Irving Berlin and Cole Porter, went to Hollywood to write
music for these motion pictures at the expense of Broadway. In 1933 Prohibition
was brought to end establishing a greater sense of freedom and frivolity for
Americans, but also had the effect of enabling people to drink at home, without
needing to go to speakeasies to obtain liquor.
13
As World War II drew closer,
audiences still went to the theatre although seats were half as full as they had
been in the mid 1920s, and many of the most popular revues of the earlier
period stopped using the trademark Ziegfeld style and instead became much
more intimate and affordable productions.
14

11
8
Geoffrey Block, Richard Rodgers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 247.
9
Fordin, Getting to Know Him: A Biography of Oscar Hammerstein II, 3 - 6.
10
ibid., 26 - 27.
11
ibid., 24.
12
Kenrick, Musical Theatre, 208 - 209.
13
Sue Goodwin, American Cultural History <http://www.kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade00.html>
(accessed 8 May 2014)
14
Kenrick, Musical Theatre, 201 - 213.
In the early 1940s, most people in the [theatre] business saw little reason to take
musical theatre so seriously. With war reigniting in Europe and Asia, the only
thing audiences supposedly expected from a stage musical was a solid good
time.
The regular radio broadcasting that had began in the 1920s now dominated the
media market as an instant electronic source of information and music; any
family that could afford a radio, owned one.
15
As war loomed ever larger in
Europe, America began to increase its armed forces and the militarisation of the
country began the slow but steady procedure of pulling itself out of the
Depression. Although, American public opinion was negative towards the acts of
Hitlers Germany, there was little interest in foreign affairs until the rst
peacetime draft. John Kenrick writes:




16
In 1943, Oklahoma! opened to huge praise at the St Jamess Theatre and every
show ended to thunderous ovation.
17
A book musical had scarcely been seen
before (there is a counter argument that Kerns Showboat was the rst book
musical): the opening of the show, bare, with a solo male voice; the use of
dance, singing and voice for story telling in a ballet; and the serious
consideration of typically satirical issues i.e. Mental ability, sexism and violence.
These grand themes, Rodgers rousing and symphonic orchestrations; and
recurring musical motifs, connecting the music with story, revealed a
relationship to opera. This can also be heard in other works by the duo, for
example the chorale prelude to The Sound of Music and the almost
experimentally inected ending of The King and I which bespeaks a broad
sense of what the theatre can do. It is argued that Hammerstein brought this
new way of working to Rodgers. Hammerstein would always ensure he knew
the entire book he was writing lyrics for, and also wrote all the lyrics rst which
he would then give to Rodgers, whereas when Rodgers worked with Hart it was
opposite.
18
This was likened to the style of Gilbert and Sullivan, as the duo
12
15
Eric Barnouw, A History of Broadcasting in the United States: Volume 2: The Golden Web,
1933 to 1953 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 65.
16
Kenrick, Musical Theatre, 238 - 239.
17
Frederick Nolan, The Sound of Their Music: The Story of Rodgers and Hammerstein (London:
Everyman, 1993), 27 - 28.
18
ibid., 1 - 25
Oklahoma! was most certainly the rst integrated musical, but it was the rst
organic musical play, in which every element serves as a crucial, meaningful
piece of the whole. Musicals following this form would continue to be billed as
musical comedies but this was a misnomer. While laughs still counted, they
took a backseat to dramatic coherence.
believed it would encourage a more thorough interpretation of song and story.
19

Kenrick again, states:





20
With Carousel, the classicality of the music and the seriousness of the project
placed Rodgers and Hammerstein at the head of new, innovative writing
whether it be through the consistent use of underscoring to help convey story in
If I Loved You, or with the hymn-like nale Youll Never Walk Alone, or the
operatic length of Soliloquy. Soliloquy is exemplary at showing this musical
innovation with its harmonic changes from when Billy is talking about his son-to-
be with the driving, condent music compared the sustained lines and chromatic
harmony when he is talking about his daughter shown in Exs. 2 and 3 below:
Ex. 2 Bar 52 - 56, Soliloquy - Carousel
21
Ex. 3 Bar 205 - 208, Soliloquy - Carousel
22
13
19
Kenrick, Musical Theatre, 245 - 246.
20
ibid., 248.
21
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Carousel (New York: Williamson Music, 1945),
107.
22
ibid., 116.
[Passion] was a show that, in its own way, was as commercially dangerous
as Assassins... The lovers story was somber, the speech was articulate, their
minds analytical, and their fates tragic. Sondheim continued to be the
conscience of an art, refusing to toss out sops of entertainment in the form of
show tunes and Broadway exhilaration (a kind of entertainment of which he
was so capable and frankly loved). Instead, he challenged his audiences
intelligence as he stretched his own, expanding still further the possibilities of
musical theater.
Passion - Stephen Sondheim







1
Martin Gottfrieds description of Passion is completely accurate. The musical
throughly interrogated the issues of a damaged relationship more than many
musicals had done previously.
Passion opened on May 9, 1994, to mostly negative audience reception
although fairly positive reviews. The general public found some ideas in the plot
so unbelievable and Fosca so unpleasant they began to boo every time she
entered the stage. In one of the preview performances, an audience member in
the balcony yelled, Die, Fosca! Die!.
2
This assisted in marking Passion in the
history of musical theatre, being the shortest running musical (280
performances) ever to win the Tony Award for Best Musical.
3
The plot follows handsome besotted captain Giorgio and his experience with
love, obsession, illness and manipulation after meeting his commanding
ofcers sickly cousin, Fosca. Fosca, falls devastatingly in love with Giorgio, to
the point where it makes her more ill when the love is not returned to her. Over
the course of the show Giorgio comes to terms with what love really means and
ultimately returns his love to the now dying Fosca, whose weak body cannot
stand their consummation of passion and dies just before the end of the show,
leaving captain Giorgio alone.
This particular Sondheim show presented difculties similar to that of his other
musicals, but more so. Like opera, most of the show is underscored; Sondheim
14
1
Martin Gottfried, Sondheim (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000), 187.
2
Meryle Secrest, Stephen Sondheim: A Life (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1999), 386.
3
Kenrick, Musical Theatre, 360.
himself has described the show as one long rhapsody.
4
This combined with the
constant repetitions of specic musical motifs make it near impossible for
audiences to hear individual songs. This problem was further exasperated with
no song titles being listed on the original program.
5
Stephen Sondheim was born March 22, 1930, an only child, to his father, a
dress manufacturer, and his mother, a dress designer. He began to take piano
lessons at age seven, inspired by his father.
6
Following his parents separation
in 1940 Sondheim went to New York Military Academy, followed by George
School, where he wrote his rst musical, By George!. According to Sondheim,
after his father left, his mother was focussed on poisoning Sondheims mind
against his father; as well as this, she began to attempt to seduce him.
7
After
moving with his mother to a farm in Pennsylvania, just four miles from Oscar
Hammerstein IIs family, Sondheim found great solace and paternity in the
Hammerstein family over the coming years, separating himself from his
mother.
8
After showing his rst musical, By George! to Hammerstein, he was
told that it was the worst thing he had ever seen. Hammerstein then went on to
tell Sondheim, in great detail, why it was terrible, marking this as one of
Sondheims most important lessons about Musical Theatre.
9
In 1947
Hammerstein invited Sondheim to come onto the set of Allegro (1947) as a
gloried ofce boy; it was during the show period that Sondheim became
inuenced by the idea of experimenting with theatre (the show featured a Greek
chorus as the chorus and had innovative set-design enabling scenes to ow
from one to the other with cinematic effortlessness).
10
Wanting to attend a small college and attracted by the theatre space, Sondheim
attended Williams College from 1946 where he studied Music with organist and
15
4
Francis Davis, Giving Them More Than They Can Chew?, <http://www.sondheim.com/
discussions/passion.html> (accessed 8 May 2014)
5
Steyn, Broadway Babies Say Goodnight, 144.
6
Secrest, Stephen Sondheim, 19 - 20.
7
ibid., 30 - 31.
8
ibid., 32 - 36.
9
ibid., 40 - 45.
10
ibid. 54 - 56.
pianist Robert Barrow, and later studied with acclaimed composer Milton
Babbitt.
11
Sondheims rst commercial success was when he wrote the lyrics to West Side
Story (1957) with music by Leonard Bernstein, who hired Sondheim after
hearing his music and lyrics.
12
He also wrote the lyrics for Gypsy (1959) which
was followed by Sondheims rst Broadway musical, A Funny Thing Happened
On the Way to the Forum (1962). After this production, Sondheim began to
experiment with the form of musical theatre, making Forum his only Vaudeville-
style product.
Over the course of Sondheims continually growing career, he has won over a
dozen Tony Awards and has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for
Sunday In the Park with George (1985). Sondheim is also the only living
composer to have a quarterly journal published in his name.
13
Sondheim is also known as a pedagogue, having mentored songwriters
including Jonathan Larson (Rent) and Richard Rodgers grandson, Adam
Guettel.
14
During the mid 20th Century the rst inexpensive paperback books were being
printed with book sales rising from one million to twelve million volumes a year,
greatly increasing adult literacy across the country.
15
In 1954, integration had
begun at school, allowing African-American students to study alongside their
white counterparts.
With music, from Blues that had dominated the popular music scene, Rock and
Roll was developing and was popular with young Americans looking to break
out of the conservative, American stereotype.
16
In the 50s, television became
the new form of mass media over radio, and productions in Broadway theatres
became much more topical, with A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee
16
11
Secrest, Stephen Sondheim, 67 - 69.
12
Stephen Schiff, Deconstructing Sondheim, The Sondheim Review 17/2 (2010), 18.
13
Mick Brown, Still Cutting it at 80: Stephen Sondheim interview, <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
culture/music/8022755/Still-cutting-it-at-80-Stephen-sondheim-interview.html> (accessed 8 May
2014)
14
Rich, Conversations with Sondheim [online]
15
ibid.
16
ibid.
Williams proving popular showing its themes of sexuality, domestic abuse,
alcoholism and sexism as well as mental health.
Most notably, The Civil Rights Movement made great changes in society,
beginning with the work of Martin Luther King, leading peaceful protests, and
Malcolm X, who spoke publicly about Black Nationalism - the term blacks
became socially acceptable, replacing negro.
17
There was also an acceptance
of radicalism on stage promoted by the Civil Rights Movement and by anti-war
sentiment of the time. Drug use took a major increase, with marijuana as well as
mind-altering drugs such as LSD being prevalent in most youth circles.
Within the youth there was a much greater social awareness of the gay
community and women, and minorities demanded full legal equality in society.
In 1979, woman surpassed men in college enrollment.
18

With Broadway being hit hard by the popularity of cineplexes, revivals were
frequent as they could be sure to drive in audiences. Revivals such as,
Brigadoon, West Side Story, The King and I and Gypsy all did well at the box
ofce.
19
This continued through and beyond the 90s, with some musicals being
made into lms, including Evita starring Madonna. This could have contributed
to the commercial failure of Passion.
A far cry in style from Sondheims previous musical, Assassins (1990), Passion
focusses on the internality of human nature and interrogates the ever-relevant
cultural issue of appearance and subjective attractiveness. This is not forgetting
that Sondheim was already a probing composer and lyricist who was intent of
the examination of issues; the distinction with Passion, is its internalisation.
Fosca is considered repulsive and ugly however the gallant captain falls in love
with her in spite of this, saying that love within reason - that isnt love.
20
A
notion such as this is hard to swallow for 1990s audience, where appearance
goes hand-in-hand with attractiveness. Although the musical is based on the
novel Fosca by Iginio Ugo Tarchetti (and so is in effect a book musical), the
style of the show contains traits that make it a concept musical: isolated
characters, reection and internal monologue songs, symbolic staging and
17
17
Rich, Conversations with Sondheim [online]
18
ibid.
19
ibid.
20
Stephen Sondheim, Passion (New York: Hal Leonard, 2003), 222.
lighting, and emphasis on thematic metaphors and motifs.
21
An aspect of this is
shown in Ex. 4 from Act 2 Scene 14 below which illustrates the Happiness
theme which reoccurs consistently throughout the piece with the female
characters.
Ex. 4 Bar 8, Scene 14 (Fosca) - Passion
22
This makes it very similar to Sondheims other concept musicals, Pacic
Overtures (1976) in which Japanese Kabuki methods of theatre were used, and
Follies (1971) which held strictly to the history of its story.
23
It can be argued that
the success (or lack of success) of Passion could be because of its status as a
concept musical. Drama theorist and critic Kathryn Edney states that the
concept musical is rarely popular or particularly protable, although it often
garners critical praise, scholarly attention, and a cult following among the
musical theater cognoscenti
24

Since Cabaret (1966) (which is widely considered to be the rst concept
musical) featured a political dilemma at the expense of congenial family
entertainment it can be argued that it was not until Sondheim (as a politically
opinionated theatre writer) reused that way of promoting a theatrical piece, that
it was seen so ingrained in a piece of American Musical Theatre.
18
21
Scott McMillin, The Musical as Drama (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2006), 23 -
25.
22
Sondheim, Passion, 223.
23
ibid.
24
Kathryn Edney, Resurrecting the American Musical, The Journal of Popular Culture 40/6
(2007), 937 - 939.
The Light in the Piazza - Adam Guettel
Its a new old world and we are nally here.
1
The Light in the Piazza opened at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, April 18, 2005,
where it ran for 504 performances. It is based on a 1960 novella by American
writer Elizabeth Spencer and by the time it closed July 2, 2006, it had won six
Tony Awards including Best Original Score and Best Orchestrations. The show
opened to mixed reviews with critics commenting positively on Guettels
arresting music as well as the performance of Victoria Clark as the heroines
mother, but felt that having over a third of the production in another language
without subtitles was excessive and that the Brechtian asides that were used
disrupt[ed] the emotional momentum of the show.
2

3
The show is set in 1950s Florence, Italy, where a middle-class divorcee,
Margaret Johnson, is taking a cultural holiday with her daughter, Clara. In a
piazza outside a museum, Clara by a chance encounter meets Fabrizio and the
two are instantly fascinated by each other, however Claras mother steers her
away from this encounter. After Clara tries to nd Fabrizio again on her own she
gets lost in Florence and begins to scream and cry before her mother nds her
and takes her back to the hotel where she reveals that Clara was kicked in the
head by a pony when she was a child, stunting her mental and emotional
capabilities. When Margaret goes to the bar for a drink, Fabrizio nds his way to
Claras room and with great difculty tries to express his love for Clara in
English, before Margaret returns and nds them embracing semi-dressed. After
much convincing, Margaret surrenders to the idea of Clara and Fabrizio getting
married and over the course of some wedding rehearsal misunderstandings the
pair are eventually happily married, leaving Margaret to contemplate her
repressed doubts and yearnings.
Purportedly created because Guettel wanted to write a love story because [he]
hadn't found love when [he] wrote it and needed a vessel to pour all that energy
into, The Light in the Piazza has inarguably been Guettels most successful
19
1
Adam Guettel, The Light in the Piazza (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2008) 3.
2
Ben Brantley, A Wise Autumnal American in Florence, <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/
theater/reviews/19ligh.html> (accessed 14 April 2014)
3
John Simon The Light in the Piazza - A review, <http://www.nymag.com/nymetro/arts/theater/
reviews/11817/> (accessed 19 April 2014)
show, considering not only its awards and accolades but also by its general
audience reception.
4
Guettel was born into an upper class family in New York City. His late father,
Henry Guettel, was a lm executive with 20th Century Fox and Columbia
Pictures as well as a Broadway producer, and his mother, Mary Rodgers
Guettel, is a musical theatre composer, an author of childrens books, and is
also the daughter of acclaimed musical theatre composer Richard Rodgers.
Guettel saw his rst production, the revival of Oklahoma!, when he was two and
thought that it was incredible and that he had a visceral reaction to the
experience of live theatre.
5
As a teenager he did not wish to follow in his
grandfathers footsteps and also did not want to be a part of what was - as was
increasingly apparent - marginalized culturally. The more theatre [he] saw the
less good theatre was becoming.
6
It is because of this that Guettel pursued
Rock music as a teenager and in his early twenties however upon attending
Yale University and devising a one-act opera based on a Dr Seuss book,
Guettel found himself again interested in the musical drama eld. At Yale
Guettel played upright bass and sang but he is also a competent pianist and
guitarist, playing guitar in The Light in the Piazza cast recording.
7
As well as having teaching and advice from his mother, Stephen Sondheim was
always a lifelong friend of the Rodgers family and gave Guettel mentoring and
musical theatre advice.
8
His music was rst heard off Broadway in the play Love and Anger (1990) by
George F. Walker, which Guettel composed the music and sound for.
9
His rst
musical was a collaboration with director Tina Landau as was Floyd Collins
(1996), also presented off Broadway which won the Lucille Lortel Award for
Outstanding Musical. It was also this show that brought Guettel into the public
20
4
Hickling, Alfred Hickling meets Adam Guettel, grandson of Richard Rodgers [online]
5
David Savran, Adam Guettel Faces the Music, <http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/Jan04/
guettel.cfm> (accessed 14 February 2014)
6
ibid.
7
Guettel, Adam. The Light in the Piazza. Original Broadway Cast Recording, prod. Steven Epstein.
CD, Nonesuch, 2005.
8
Rich, Conversations with Sondheim [online]
9
Steven Suskin, Show Tunes: The Songs, Shows and Careers of Broadways Major Composers,
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 394 - 396.
eye. Within the next two years, Saturn Returns (1998) was created, also with
Tina Landau, and ran for sixteen performances off Broadway. The show was
structured as a revue with no through plot which gave audiences a great
opportunity to listen to Guettels versatility with music; the songs range from
synthesized jazz and piano ballad to gospel and musical theatre. Guettel also
performed on the cast recording as one of the soloist singers.
10
With the 2000s marked as a time where American-made musical comedy was
once again the dominant force on Broadway, anything that Guettel created
would be heavily scrutinised and compared due to his American musical theatre
heritage.
11
This coupled with the aftermath of the September 11 attacks of 2001
causing huge patriotism not seen since World War II, makes any output from
American composers open to heavy criticism. As well as this, with a large
percentage of Broadways sales coming from tourist dollars, it was ever more
important for productions to have a very broad spectrum of appeal. Shows like
Aida (2000) and The Full Monty (2000) had long runs due to their pop culture
appeal and their pre-existence in other formats: Aida, Verdis opera, and The
Full Monty, the lm.
12
More so than in the 80s and 90s, revivals featured heavily
on the stage as well as productions featuring celebrities as these factors would
all contribute to getting more audiences in theatres, particularly those from
overseas who would be willing to pay a premium for tickets. The most notable of
these include a minimalist revival of Gypsy (2003) starring Bernadette Peters,
and a revival of Nine (2003) which featured movie star Antonio Banderas.
Since 1995, the world population using the internet had increased from 0.4%
(1995) to 15.7% (2005) and video and audio was now readily available online.
13

Such growth in media availability had not been seen since the inception of radio
and then television in the early 20th Century. The Worldwide Web which
provided a wealth of knowledge to users at the touch of a button, changed all
industries of entertainment as it provided total transparency of cultural
21
10
Steven Suskin. ON THE RECORD: Little me, Charlie Brown and especially, Adam Guettel.
http://www.playbill.com/features/article/65865-ON-THE-RECORD-Little-Me-Charlie-Brown-and-
specially-Adam-Guettel/pg3> (accessed 10 May 2014)
11
Kenrick, Musical Theatre, 371.
12
ibid., 372 - 374.
13
[Unsigned], Internet Growth Statistics. <http://www.internetworldstats.com/emarketing.htm>
(accessed 7 May 2014)
information. Culturally relevant productions became much harder to sustain as
culture would now so quickly change, with audiences constantly in the loop with
the latest trends concerning anything but most certainly music. With the ability
to search for music and listen to it in your own home gave consumers the
ultimate freedom in what they could listen to. This therefore created enormous
diversity in musical tastes across the country. This mass consumerism boom
made the theatre industry much more selective on what could be produced; it
was no longer the reputation of certain composers or directors that would be
enough to carry a show - it was the consumers who essentially governed what
would and would not be popular.
Since Guettels work does not frequently t many of these cultural bonds
(celebrity casting, pop/rock music), it can be argued that he being Richard
Rodgers grandson is one of the selling points of his work and what gives it
celebrity status; this itself draws a key similarity to that of the early work of
Sondheim, since he was also was personally introduced to many of the biggest
creatives in the industry via his almost adoptive father, Oscar Hammerstein II.
14

The anticipation of what works these people might create is a key factor in their
nancial success.
Disregarding any musical similarities, The Light in the Piazza bears a number of
traits that make it very dissimilar to the other works I have mentioned as well as
alike. It does not possess the seemingly strict plot and music style structure that
dominates Girl Crazy: with its classic Tin Pan Alley score and light satire. It does
not examine an issue like Carousel, but bravely uses its format as part of its plot
line in a Broadway context which demonstrates the openness of Broadway to
the acceptance of (in The Light in the Piazza s case) mental disability without
examining it. Passion, on the other hand, does present more similarities in that
it that it tackles themes that can be hard for a modern generation to grasp i.e.
Attractiveness regardless of appearance. Although greatly simplied, the show
is completely about love, which is what The Light in the Piazza plays on also -
romantic love.
15
However, Passion interrogates is topic far more thoroughly
and is a much stronger examination of a situation than of The Light in the
Piazza.
22
14
Secrest, Stephen Sondheim, 40 - 45.
15
Savran, Adam Guettel Faces the Music [online]
Guettels work is also notable for being very different to his contemporaries
wholly due to his experience with musical theatre and with his training as a
musician and a musical theatre composer. The most notable of Guettels
contemporaries would be Jason Robert Brown, Andrew Lippa, William Finn and
Jeanine Tesori. The overwhelming difference between Guettel and his
contemporaries is musical theatre experience and his extensive training as a
classical musician. The majority of his contemporaries use their individual
backgrounds as musicians to guide what they write: Brown is a Rock pianist;
and Lippa plays Jazz and trained to teach music.
1617
The wealth of experience
and his immersion in musical theatre due to his heritage is what truly separates
Guettel. The opportunity he had to listen to the greatly varying styles of music
that domineered Broadway and to train as a musician with guidance from some
of the biggest names in theatre inform places him alongside Sondheim in how
he professionally grew.
As well as this, the sheer volume of Guettels musical inuences show the great
variety of music that he has been exposed to: Stravinsky, Stevie Wonder, Adam
de la Halle, Harry Nilsson, Bjork, Korngold, Richard Rodgers, Benjamin Britten,
Sondheim, Marvin Gaye, Edward Elgar, Ravel, Samuel Barber ...
18
This diversity of musical style can be heard in The Light in the Piazza with the
Stravinsky-like counterpoint of Claras Tirade in Act 2 shown in here in Ex. 5:
Ex. 5 Bars 35 - 37 Claras Tirade - The Light in the Piazza
19
23
16
Ellen Pall, The Long-Running Musical of William Finns Life. <http://www.nytimes.com/
1998/06/14/magazine/the-long-running-musical-of-william-finn-s-life.html?ref=williamfinn> (accessed
20 April 2014)
17
Andrew Lippa, Andrew Lippa. <http://andrewlippa.com/bio/> (accessed 20 April 2014)
18
Erin James, A Quick Chat With Adam Guettel. <http://www.aussietheatre.com.au/features/
20-questions/a-quick-chat-with-adam-guettel#.U3JOaS_HjnR> (accessed 20 April 2014)
19
Guettel, The Light in the Piazza, 130.
As well as this we can see similarities between Guettels music and that of his
grandfather when comparing the overture of The Light in the Piazza, with
Lover from Love Me Tonight (Rodgers and Hart, 1931) which have very similar
chord transitions shown in Exs. 6 and 7:
Ex. 6 Bars 6 - 9, Overture - The Light in the Piazza
20
Ex. 7 Bars 37 - 46, Lover - Love Me Tonight
21
As well as featuring a wide array of music styles in his musical theatre shows
Guettel also involved modern relatable themes including love, travel,
24
20
Guettel, The Light in the Piazza, 1.
21
Richard Rodgers, Songs of Richard Rodgers: A Definitive Collection (New York: Random House
Trade, 2002), 49.
In the face of Capitalism it is safest to grasp the concept of the postmodern as an
attempt to think the present historically in an age that has forgotten how to think
historically in the rst place.
bildungsroman, disability and, in Floyd Collins (1996) the power of publicity.
These two factors make Guettels work widely more accessible than the works
of his contemporaries and even the work of creatives who have preceded him,
such as Sondheim. His success could however be considered as ironic
whereas other composers dispositions will tailor their music to a certain
demographic (Finn and Tesori: Pop and Rock, John Bucchino: Jazz and Blues)
and be well received in those elds, Guettels work has no agenda on the style
that it is going to use. It is true that his shows feature some similar musical traits
however the music styles of each of these pieces are individual in their own
right.
It is Guettel breaking the mould of culturally dominated music in modern musical
theatre that appears to be what has made him popular as a musical theatre
composer. The work that is composed is tailored to each piece and follows no
measurable Broadway structure and it can be argued that this may be the
future of American Musical Theatre. With this playful expansiveness of style and
approach that he adopts, we can detect the trends of Postmodernism in his
work: a composer and lyricist that is not bound by educational constraints or
weighted down by the past endeavors. Guettel stated himself that the more
theatre [he] saw, the less good theatre was becoming, and this was during the
time where Jukebox and Pop and Rock musicals featured heavily in American
Musical Theatre due to their frequent nancial success.
22
This almost Capitalist
way of working makes Postmodernist traits in Guettels work seem ever more
clear. Frederic Jameson, a literary critic and political theorist states:

23
It is up for debate that, with guarantees of nancial success being what governs
a shows production, original art has nearly been lost from Broadway -
corporate and private capitalism dominates a shows fabrication.
Guettels creations do not follow the cultural structures of interrogating their
issues as part of the plot such as the Concept Musicals of the past fty years,
25
22
Savran, Adam Guettel Faces the Music [online]
23
Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1991), ix.
and his creations do not follow the musical structures of popular music that
have governed most shows success for the past hundred years. It could be
argued that this is a healthy manifestation of Broadway creativity and that this
would appear to promote a rich diversity of future productions for American
Musical Theatre.
26
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Sound Recordings
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Tom Aldredge. Image Entertainment, 2003.
31