Is it time to defend jukebox musicals? Or at least to stop snarking about them?
They’re not going away, after all; “Mamma Mia!” grossed more than $600 million during its 14 years on Broadway, “Jersey Boys” almost as much in 12. Carole King, Jimmy Buffett and Cher have, or will, see their songs on the biggest of stages; Alanis Morissette may well, soon, too.
Ben Brantley and Jesse Green, the Times’s chief theater critics, joined the critic Elisabeth Vincentelli to answer the big questions: Why are the bad ones so bad? Why are the good ones better? And are there good ones? Scott Heller, the theater editor, played referee.
Here are edited excerpts from the conversation, set to the music of Abba, the Go-Go’s, Donna Summer, Bob Dylan and more.
SCOTT HELLER Jesse, it was nice seeing “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” with you the other night. Am I right that we both left with our heads spinning? I almost think you became a convert to the joys of the jukebox musical!
JESSE GREEN Nothing could cause that conversion, but then “Smokey Joe’s” is only a jukebox in the most rudimentary sense. It is not, like many of these shows, biographical; it does not apply an invented story to an existing song catalog; it does not pour sanctimony and Brylcreem over the top. It’s a revue — and, as I was surprised to find — a good one. The singers were sensational and were allowed to do what sensational singers can: Make drama out of their voices.
BEN BRANTLEY I haven’t seen this incarnation (though I now want to), but I did review the original Broadway production two decades ago, and thought it was a harbinger of worse to come.
ELISABETH VINCENTELLI Is it worth starting with how we define the jukebox musical? You could argue that there are lots of Sondheim jukebox musicals, but they are usually called “revues,” which is a way to avoid a certain stigma.
GREEN Note, though, that those are jukeboxes of songs written for the theater. One of the problems of the regular kind of jukebox is that the songs are not, typically, theatrical and, as such, often just flop on the stage like dead fish.
VINCENTELLI I vehemently disagree that pop songs flop in a theatrical setting. But I agree that the core of the jukebox musical challenge is: How does Broadway deal with the rock-era American Songbook?
BRANTLEY Usually by taming the danger of a once-transgressive genre to the dimensions of a Branson tent show. Which is what occurred with such unfortunate early ventures as “Good Vibrations” (the perky Beach Boys musical) and “All Shook Up” (the castrated Elvis musical).
GREEN Worst are the “authorized” jukeboxes, which paradoxically do not seem to have authors but compilers. I’m talking about bio-musicals or auto-bio-musicals like “Motown,” “Summer” and — I know this is not a popular opinion — “Jersey Boys,” which I loathed. The only one I’ve liked so far in this category was “Fela!” Any others? Or, wait, Elisabeth, you’re a fan of “Jersey Boys,” I think?
VINCENTELLI I wouldn’t say I’m a fan, but I do admire the way the show is constructed. I feel the same way about “Beautiful,” which was very clever about connecting what happens in a song factory to the “journey” (I don’t like that expression but it fits here) of one woman.
HELLER What I sometimes detect in your criticism of jukebox musicals is a resistance to pop music itself.
GREEN Wrong. It’s just that pop song forms are not the same as narrative song forms. Doesn’t mean they’re not great, or that they can’t advance a story. But partly because they were pre-written for a different context — or for no context — and partly because they tend to cycle through one generic emotion, they make character development difficult.
VINCENTELLI Their connection to the audience is very different, and so is their connection to a show’s narrative. In some cases, we have to reconsider what exactly is a musical-theater narrative. The repetition of the chorus, for instance, is rare in theatrical songs and common in pop, and that poses a challenge to book writers, directors and choreographers.
GREEN The ones I’ve seen that function best as musical narratives are “American Idiot,” “Fela!” and — though it still needs a lot of work — “Jagged Little Pill.” All fairly recent music. Or do you want me to stand up for “Kismet,” the jukebox musical based on melodies by the 19th-century Russian composer Alexander Borodin?
BRANTLEY Might I say that I am a secret fan of “Mamma Mia!,” the show that devoured Broadway and gave birth to a slew of progeny? But it’s the only one (with the exception of “Moulin Rouge!,” a work in progress) that had the full courage of its corniness and spoke to the way such songs become the soundtracks of our minds/lives.
HELLER There’s a direct line from that show to “Head Over Heels,” which is one of the more adventurous recent approaches to using a pop songbook, anachronistically and self-consciously. Ben, we know you didn’t go for it. Jesse? Elisabeth?
GREEN I admired the ambition of “Head Over Heels.” Attaching songs associated with the Go-Go’s to an Elizabethan comedy was gutsy and, in a way, liberating, because the music did not really have to develop the action, just provide texture and laugh-baiting incongruity. But I didn’t feel it added up to as much as it might have. And that’s my fundamental problem with most jukeboxes: Is there anything they want to say? Or are they merely brand extensions, like “Escape to Margaritaville”?
VINCENTELLI I enjoyed “Head Over Heels” very much, while acknowledging some issues with the book. It represents an ambitious way to not just use a catalog of songs, but use it to reframe a band: from bubble gum pop wonders to ahead-of-their-time advocates of feminist agency and sexual freedom. In that sense, a jukebox musical works on two levels: the show’s own agenda and the band’s legacy.
HELLER Who else has benefited from that effect?
GREEN Fela Kuti certainly did. Maybe the show didn’t burnish his legacy so much as introduce his songs to people who may not have known them and dramatize the conditions of joy amid oppression that produced them.
BRANTLEY “Movin’ Out” made you rethink the role that Billy Joel played in the lives of the working/middle class Long Island he came out of, and by extension, a whole generation.
GREEN But “Movin’ Out” wasn’t really a jukebox musical; it was a jukebox dance-ical. The songs did not carry the storytelling so much as the choreography did.
BRANTLEY Yes, but we seem to be too restrictive in our definition, a point Elisabeth raised earlier. “Contact,” for example, Susan Stroman’s hit collage of nearly 20 years ago, uses prerecorded music to tell a story (again through dance), and in using existing tracks, it is perhaps the most literal of jukebox presentations.
VINCENTELLI Exactly. It depends on what we think carries the narrative. For me, it’s a combination of everything, the musical as an illustration of Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, which I’m sure you never imagined you’d hear in conjunction with “Movin’ Out.”
GREEN But again, what’s the “werk” about? In most jukeboxes, mostly nothing.
HELLER Let’s talk about how songs get theatricalized. There seems to be a built-in tension between what audiences want — the songs the way they were — and what you, as theater critics, appreciate.
GREEN The original versions are a high bar for me. I’d rather listen to them on my phone than see wan theatrical attempts to make them do things they can’t.
VINCENTELLI I enjoy when the songs (especially ones I don’t care about) get mangled in a new context. So I was fascinated by Twyla Tharp’s Dylan musical, “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”
BRANTLEY And by the way, I don’t think that most of these shows are giving us the songs the way they were, but a relatively anodyne version of them. My principal objection to “Head Over Heels” was that it didn’t capture the go-for-broke, ragged hedonism of the original Go-Go’s recordings.
GREEN I’m happy for people to find pleasure in the theater however they can. But I keep looking for the jukebox musical that will bring to the genre the level of skill we see in shows like “Fun Home” and “Dear Evan Hansen” and “The Band’s Visit.” I watch way too many of these jukeboxes, whether comic or serious, and find myself saying: Couldn’t they do better than that?
VINCENTELLI Totally agree. There has been a lack of artistic ambition so far. I wonder if this has to do with the original act’s keeping tight control, or if it’s more a matter of Broadway associating a big-selling act with lowest common denominator art.
BRANTLEY On the other hand, the pure klutziness of “Mamma Mia!” is what makes it a strange work of genius. It picks up the inner karaoke demon in all of us.
VINCENTELLI Oddly I’m not a big fan of “Mamma Mia!” but that’s because I love Abba so much that the show messed with my pre-existing ideas about the songs.
GREEN Needless to say, I hated it.
HELLER And “Jersey Boys,” too? What’s your problem?
GREEN My problem is that I am looking beyond the music to the story and not finding anything there. “Jersey Boys” is a whitewash of a nasty tale, made to seem triumphant. And “Mamma Mia!” is a big cipher beneath the earworms. I get no pleasure from the fact that the monkey was made to dance. What’s it dancing about?
VINCENTELLI If the monkey dance looks great, I’m happy. Sometimes I don’t need to find meaning, just pleasure.
GREEN I don’t think we’re paying enough attention to the reason many of these shows are built: to make more money out of a singer’s or composer’s catalog. With that as their motive, I don’t see why I have to give them a pass on the values by which we normally judge theater.
VINCENTELLI Right, but I think, Jesse, that your objection reaches much deeper since it appears to have a lot to do with how storytelling is done in a show.
GREEN Yes. And we are still awaiting the jukebox musical that reaches the level of storytelling of some non-jukebox musicals and contemporary dramas. Will “Girl From the North Country,” the Conor McPherson/Bob Dylan show, achieve that?
VINCENTELLI We need an equivalent to “I’m Not There,” Todd Haynes’s Dylan “biopic” — ambitious in style and storytelling, not slavishly illustrative.
BRANTLEY The songs in “Girl,” when I saw it in London, were transcendent. But they’re not meant to further narrative in the sense of a conventional musical, but to create an emotional atmosphere — privation and rudderlessness during the Depression.
GREEN That could solve the problem we’re describing.
VINCENTELLI Absolutely. For most of us, a pop song is a madeleine, reminding us of a specific mood at a specific time. For an ambitious jukebox show, this could be a starting point.
BRANTLEY Did anyone see what John Doyle did with a much earlier era of song in “Ten Cents a Dance,” using Rodgers and Hart? That was exquisitely atmospheric, and became a kind of catalog of one person’s regrets for lives not lived.
HELLER I completely loved it. “What’s It All About?,” the Burt Bacharach show at New York Theater Workshop, too. In both cases I think rearranging familiar songs makes a difference. Which is what “Moulin Rouge” does as well. You get what you know, but not just what you know.
GREEN “What’s It All About?” was so sublime I forgot it was a jukebox musical. But Kyle Riabko, who assembled it, took care to disassemble it first. He completely reinvented those songs and did not try to squinch them into too narrow a story.
BRANTLEY My principal criterion for jukebox musicals is do they summon the pleasure we once derived from the works being hymned?
GREEN And I see them as another form of attempted drama, usually failing.
HELLER We just learned that “Ain’t Too Proud,” the Temptations musical, is coming to Broadway this season, alongside “The Cher Show.” What could make those two productions rise above the pack?
VINCENTELLI For me, a Motown-based jukebox would focus on a lesser-known figure like Cholly Atkins, who was the label’s house choreographer. He could provide the backbone for an ambitious dance- and song-heavy look at how Motown functioned. A girl can dream.
HELLER Let’s wrap up on a related note: Suggest the songbook you’d love to see used for a musical. Jesse, no Frank Loesser’s younger brother!
GREEN Frank Loesser’s older brother.
HELLER Touche!
GREEN But actually, I’d be fascinated to see what someone might do with a group like The Roches. Those songs are already halfway to stories.
VINCENTELLI The Go-Betweens or Joy Division. But not biographical shows — rather, new stories incorporating the songs. Each of these bands was the product of a very specific scene at a very specific time in a very specific place, and that’s what the show should try to capture.
BRANTLEY Joni Mitchell, with a cast of all women taking us through the trajectory of a maverick life of love affairs.
HELLER I’m there for all of them.
