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Writing A Musical by Richard AndrewsDateline: 27th October, 1997Richard Andrews has worked on 22 West End shows, from hits like Superstar to flops like Barnardo. He's been a stage manager and a producer, and he is co-founder of FACADE, an organisation which creates, promotes and produces new musical theatre. He has not, however, written a successful musical. That's not intended as a snide comment. Because he has not written a successful musical, he cannot instruct others how to do so from personal experience; all he can do is base his advice on an analysis of the successful (and unsuccessful) shows he knows. In other words, his advice is the advice of the critic (in the proper sense of the word), not of the creator. Inevitably this leads to a kind of "writing by numbers" approach: A, B and C are characteristics of successful musicals, whereas D, E and F are not. You should, therefore, do A, B and C and avoid D, E and F. Now this may very well be true, but doing so does not lead to automatic success - if it were so, then no one would ever produce a bad show! But even Homer nods sometimes, and Shakespeare did write Timon of Athens and Pericles! Perhaps we should look for more apposite comparisons: if there were a formula for success, then no one can doubt that Andrew Lloyd Webber has it (but what about Song and Dance and By Jeeves?), as do Boublil and Schönberg (but what about Martin Guerre?). But just a moment! Andrews does not rate these writers as highly as the public. His ideals are the Broadway writers: Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Steven Sondheim, and so on - Guys and Dolls rather than Superstar, Sweeney Todd rather than Miss Saigon. Now I am the last person to decry the great Broadway shows. I enjoy them, both on film and on the stage, both as a member of the audience and as a participant, but it is wrong, I believe, to hold them up as models of what a musical should be. Art forms must grow, develop and change. change. If they don't, they die. We see that within the Broadway musical itself: there is a huge difference between Showboat and Company, although they are recognisably the same genre. Eventually there comes a time when the artist, no matter what his medium, feels compelled to break the accepted mould. This is how progress is made. Just occasionally, the mould is not just broken but smashed to smithereens, and what is essentially a new form is thereby created. It seems to me that Richard Andrews is a rather Canute-like figure, trying to tell the sea of change to recede. Thus this book is, I believe, flawed on two counts: it adopts an analytic and therefore critical and prescriptive approach, and bases its advice on a previous generation of musicals, a generation which has already passed into history. Indeed, one gets the impression that he would rather the line of development which has led to Lloyd Webber and Boublil and Schönberg had never happened! In his favour, whilst spending time on A, B, C, D, E and F, he does mention X - that magical (and totally unquantifiable) ingredient which is the true indicator of success. In addition, he is at great pains to emphasise the necessity for sheer hard slog, the working and reworking of material, the willingness to jettison that which, although dear to the writer's heart, does not contribute to the proper development of the show - the 99% perspiration. If this was all there were to this book, one would have to consign it to the ranks of the worthy-but-not-much-use category, but, fortunately, he does have much more to say, and the second half of the book, when he moves from how to write a musical to how to market it, really does have a lot to offer. Here he takes the would-be writer through all the steps necessary to get the newly-written musical from the page to where it belongs: on the stage. He makes very clear the pitfalls and problems, showing just why so few of the many musicals written make it into production, and why fewer still achieve any success. This is essential reading, and, although just a very few chapters, well worth the price of the whole book. Music theatre is a very contentious subject, with the Broadway versus the Euro camps deeply entrenched. Back in April this column looked at the "Lloyd Webber is no good" syndrome from a British perspective. Now - but with a little more subtlety - Richard Andrews wades into the debate, putting his weight behind the Broadway Supporters Club. This, along with his writing by numbers approach, makes the book less useful than it might be, but it does have some good things, and it should certainly be read by all those who aim to try this very difficult field. You may, like me, disagree with the main thrust of his argument, but at least you'll be thinking about the genre, which is always a good thing. Writing a Musical, by Richard Andrews, is published by Hale at £9.99 (paperback). ISBN 0-7090-5913-2.
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