I've been reading the most spectacular book, The Happiest Corpse I've Ever Seen : The Last Twenty-Five Years of the Broadway Musical.

I think I heard about it from Melissa, and if I didn't, Melissa, you need to read it immediately! And Eliza, too, whose entry about musicals may have been for Melissa, but could just as well have been for me! And if you have read it, then allow me to recommend Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical "Follies" by Ted Chapin.

I got it out of the library the other day and have been sucking it down like blood for the past couple of days.

It's about, well, the last 25 years of Broadway musicals, aka, not the Golden Age of Broadway, but there are a lot of really interesting shows that have happened. Huge piles of shows that I never had the slightest interest of hearing are now on my library list.

The writer, Ethan Mordden, is wonderful, and very opinionated. As I go through the book, I have learned that if the show is a flop, he'll have at least three good things to say about it, along with the fact that it flopped because it's too smart a show and audiences are stupid, and if it was a hit, he'll have at least three bad things to say about it, along with the fact that it succeeded because it's a stupid show and audiences are stupid.

The predictability aside, this is a remarkably well-written book, and frankly, it's a treat to read a book that is basically a history book that isn't afraid to express an opinion. Or about 20,000 opinions! On the other hand, he has really good things to say about Falsettos, A New Brain and Parade, and that's okay by me!

The words are so great, I want to eat them. You can chew on them like gummi bears.

"At the age of eight, I understood how Merrily We Roll Along ran backward, and I was not "confused". And if an eight-year-old gets it, who are these jackasses in 1981 who say they don't?"..."And let us consider also the many walkouts during Merrily's six weeks of previews and 16 performances. Did these people really have something better to do in the succeeding hour or so than to hear the rest of the latest Sondheim score? Whom are you contentless loons trying to impress?" (italics mine)

"Perhaps Styne saw The Red Shoes as another of those Last Operettas; it certainly had a dated feeling. The overture began with a molto fortissimo tympani blow--the first moment of countless fifties shows--then built through a few tunes while heading for the big ballad as trembling strings sounded the warning...wait for it...and..."When It Happens To You" broke out in the clarinet in a steady fox-trot to the snare brushes and the muted brass choirs. I love this kind of thing, but everyone else is tired of it."

"Then there's the old dodge of writing new shows using defenseless old music by dead writers who can't stop you."

"We're all glad that Encores! is there, but it must be said that if the musical were still in its Golden Age we wouldn't need encores: we'd have new shows. I mean good ones. The reason that Encores! had to be invented to bring good old ones back is that many of the new ones blow dead rats in hell."

"Or they can be simply Bat Boy (2001), because he is a bat, though I increasingly think that the farther we get from shows with a valid role for Barbara Cook, the farther we get from what is enjoyable. This may be an insufferably eccentric opinion, but I don't want to see a musical treating Christina Rosetti, a transsexual rocker, or a bat."

"Say Florenz Ziegfeld got a tip about a bubble-dance in vaudeville. Yes, it was a genre: a cutie wearing the legal minimum in Grecian silk dances around with a big fake floating bubble. Ziegfeld likes the cutie, and her name--Beth Beri-- will read well on the hoardings. Ziegfeld buys out Beri's vaudeville contract to put her in...well, his next show is Kid Boots (1923), an Eddie Cantor vehicle with a country-club setting. Beri can bubble-dance while the stagehands are changing sets. And when Beri comes delectably out in one with her bubble, the audience won't think, Who's this interfering stranger? They'll think, Great, a bubble dance."

"One knows how easily Urinetown might have been unappreciated. Recommending it to friends, at least when it was new, was like recommending Watership Down. (Friends: "It's about what?)"

Seriously, who now doesn't want to read this book? I mean, it helps to like musical theatre, I suppose, but something with sentences like this transcends subject matter. You don't have to particularly care for cycling to love Breaking Away, and you don't have to particularly care for musicals to love this book.

My favourites are "whom are these contentless loons trying to impress" and "blow dead rats in hell", and in fact, managed to throw the latter into casual conversation about two hours after reading it. Contentless loons is going into the repertoire as well.

Today's horoscope:
Some cosmic energy is due to go off this afternoon, big time. Don't get too crazy, though, especially when it comes to work -- even though you've been thinking that it's time to switch jobs. Easy, there.

One year ago today:
Maybe not, though, considering the fact that having dinner with a bunch of old people whom I have never met sounds to me like the last circle of Hell.

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Last Updated Thurs 21 April 16:19:09 2005