Special Musicals from Viertel

Some Broadway musicals are just entertainment. We go; we see; we laugh and cry; we leave; we forget. But early on it occurred to me that some shows were different.

Jack Viertel in his splendid book, The Secret Life of the American Musical, explained the distinction with much greater clarity:

A lot of Broadway musicals are well-made machines, but the best ones rise above—they stand up and dance on their own, with their own unique beating hearts.

I have had certain uplifting experiences during and after seeing certain musicals. Like me, you may have come out of a theatre in awe of the musical you had just seen. Perhaps you have had an experience inside the theatre that forever transformed your life outside the theatre.

Have you ever asked yourself “what just happened to me?”

Viertel attempted to answer that question:

That intangible thing that separates the special Broadway shows from the routinely competent ones—My Fair Lady from Camelot, or Hairspray from Legally Blonde—is partly a matter of craft, but who really knows what makes that final difference happen? Every now and then the divine spirit comes down for a visit, that’s all.

Viertel went on the describe the nature of a visitation from the divine spirit: we get a “universally recognizable sensation” that does not rely on philosophical definitions:

Audiences understand the story—the characters and what’s at risk for them as they try to achieve their dreams. But sitting there in the dark, they also experience a certain kind of visceral charge that goes well beyond the logic of storytelling. Musicals tap into an emotional center that creates profound feelings of ecstasy, sadness, heroism, nobility, or simple giddiness. That’s why the hair stands up on the back of your neck, that most illogical but universally recognizable sensation.

Viertel perhaps gave the best definition of spiritual sense, when he described it as “sudden, unexpected, apparently completely surprising and spontaneous.” Here is his description of his emotional experience at the end of the first act of Sunday in the Park with George:

But art has somehow given the stature to an everyday moment—visually, musically, and narratively. The whole first act has been preparing an unsuspecting audience for this moment, and it’s overpowering. The emotions are sudden, unexpected, apparently completely surprising and spontaneous. We weep because we’ve been shown something we didn’t expect to see—a vision of everyday life elevated.

Viertel and I have both concluded that the musical theatre can stir within us an elevated response that goes well beyond mere theatrical craft. Furthermore, it well may be the province of musical theatre, with its integration of words and music, that can best illumine a spiritual universe and soar above what can be achieved by words or music when presented separately.

Imagine the shock experienced by audiences when they first saw the musical Brigadoon; they were asked to believe that an entire village could appear in Scotland once every hundred years.

For those people in the audience who were prepared to accept the premise of Brigadoon, they undertook a spiritual journey of self-discovery. This was not a physical journey; instead it was a mental journey in which they let go of their preconceptions and opened their minds to new ideas.