hey there i'm mike rignetta and this is
the last episode
of crash course theater so get ready for
like nine curtain calls at the end
but for now we're grabbing our playbills
and our twizzlers to spend an episode
with america's greatest
theatrical invention the singing dancing
orchestra in the floor sensation that is
wait for it the broadway book musical
why does the broadway book musical
matter well it's changed
theater as we know it along with
hollywood movies it's america's most
influential entertainment export
a billion dollar industry that has
zoomed its way
across the world to every continent
except
antarctica and onto cruise ships too
today we'll focus on the golden age of
the broadway musical trying to figure
out how
song story and the occasional dream
ballet
come together to create this singular
sensation
lights up
theater and music have always been
closely intertwined
greek tragedies were mostly sung and
danced liturgical dramas had
key musical components melodrama was
originally a musical form
and most styles of traveling or folk
theater were strongly musical
not to mention the 19th century rise of
the opera and pretty much
every style of asian theater we've
studied american theater of course has
its own
musical theater traditions including the
troubling and
unfortunately very popular minstrel show
which we looked at in an earlier episode
in terms of imported forms america also
went big for vaudeville
pantomime operetta and comedy burlesque
which is different from the modern tell
dirty jokes and take her clothes off
sexy burlesque in the 1860s we got what
some consider the first
american musical the black crook
the black crook basically happened
because a theater burned down
and a parisian ballet troupe was
stranded so some enterprising producers
were like
well we can't just put french girls in
flesh-colored tights on stage and
leave them there the people demand a
story
do they anyway the producers paired the
dancers with a
totally incomprehensible play about
black magic
and fairies and really weird new year's
eve
and they tricked it out with scenery and
songs the total package
that lasted five hours and made no
sense the first american musical
comedies on broadway were created in the
1870s by a duo called
harrigan and heart they started with a
variety act that made fun of
drunk neighborhood militias armed and
hilarious
and then expanded these sketches into
song-filled shows like
the mulligan guard they poked fun at all
sorts of working-class types and they
never met an ethnicity that they
couldn't mock
stereotyping was huge and the songs
didn't have
anything to do with the plot but these
shows made audiences hungry for more
more more musical farces with more
more more irrelevant songs at around the
turn of the 20th century there was
a vogue for african-american musicals
which we discussed in our episode
on the theater of the harlem renaissance
in 1907
the follies were born and musical
theater got very
leggy the follies were evenings of
loosely linked sketches and
popular songs but the big draw was the
chorus of folly's girls
each year producer florence ziegfield
assembled a group of beautiful koreans
who had to have
he said beauty of face form
charm and manner personal magnetism
individuality grace and poise
the scripts not great in the first
follies captain john smith and
pocahontas drop in on 1907
new york and meet all kinds of people
yeah the follies walked the line between
titillating and classy pretty much
perfectly
they were girly shows that men could
perv out to while sitting next to their
wives
because middle-class wives enjoy a kick
line
too between 1907 and 1931 there was a
follies every year
each leggier and more sumptuous than the
last oh
and ziegfeld's follies were the tame
version
other producers just threw a bunch of
nude showgirls and raunchy comics on
stage and
called it a day broadway could have gone
on forever with classic girly shows and
questionably hilarious ethnic
stereotyping but thankfully
instead something wonderful happened the
birth of the book musical
the father that would be jerome kern a
guy who got his start fixing up
imported british musicals the songs he
contributed were really good
usually a lot better than what he'd been
handed the melodies were catchy
and the lyrics conversational at the
princess theater kern
and the lyricist guy bolton started
writing charming
low-key musicals which became even more
charming
when comic mastermind pg wodehouse
joined them notable shows include oh boy
and oh dear oh well maybe they seem like
piffle now but
at the time book musicals were
revolutionary
the characters were recognizable the
situations were contemporary
the plot lyrics and style of song
actually
went together bolton told an interviewer
every line funny or serious is
supposedly to help the plot
continue to hold whoa
now i know what some of you are thinking
that gilbert and sullivan
already did this and you're not wrong
but those were operettas
mostly sung through and they involved
fantastical situations
the princess theater musicals were
different by the late 1920s this
newfangled idea that
maybe the songs should have something to
do with the plot
and the plot could be minimally coherent
was really catching on
more than 50 reviews and musicals
crowded broadway
every year and there were so many new
composers and lyricists like
richard rogers or the romantic lawrence
heart or the astonishingly witty cole
porter a man who could rhyme anything oh
and
oh my god george and ira gershwin it's
wonderful people and hey
look irving berlin probably the first
thoroughly modern musical was the 1927
showboat which is tricky to revive today
because its racial politics are
a mess but as written by jerome kern and
oscar hammerstein
and set on a mississippi showboat it
pushed the musical in a more serious
direction
towards an honest examination of racism
it offered rich roles for
african-american actors and gave them
character-driven songs like old man
river
and can't help lovin that man which are
still standards the broadway musical
made it through the great depression and
while world war ii was being waged
the musical leveled up again entering a
20-year golden age the musicals of this
era were defined by their wit
sophistication extremely humble songs
and dazzling often
athletic choreography and by their
willingness to allow
genuinely complex characters to exist
now we're going to take a look at the
american musical that finally
put it all together music and lyrics and
book scenes and ballet to tell a
distinctly american story
welcome to oklahoma notice the
exclamation point
this one is exciting even though it's
set in
oklahoma no offense to my oakies out
there this 1943 musical written by
richard rodgers and oscar hammerstein
is based on lynn rigg's 1931 play green
grow the lilacs the exclamation point
wasn't all they added the play opens in
1906 when oklahoma is still a territory
and a surrey wagon is a plausible way to
get around
town help us out bubble cowboy curly
comes forward and sings oh what a
beautiful morning as though chatting to
the audience the times critic brooks
atkinson wrote that after a magnificent
song like that the banalities of the old
musical stage became
intolerable curly and to farm girl lori
clearly like each other but can't seem
to get along
laurie has another suitor loner farmhand
judd fry
who is basically a golden age in cell
this guy is bad
news to make curly jealous laurie agrees
to go to the box social with judd even
though she's kind of afraid of him
curly takes the news well so well that
he goes to see judd
and sings a joke not joke song
suggesting that judd
kill himself judd also a really mature
guy decides that he's gonna marry lori
whether she wants to or not lori is so
confused that she buys a magic potion
from the persian peddler ali hakeem
she takes it and falls asleep and that's
when we get a 15 minute dream ballet
where laurie imagines marrying curly and
judd
murdering curly that is a bad dream and
a good ballet
when she wakes lori is too frightened to
reject judd so they go to the box social
there's a scuffle between farmers and
cowman and some comedy subplot stuff
judd and curly fight over lori and curly
sells all of his things
to win her heart judd confesses his
feelings laurie rejects him
and then fires him curly and lori are
married but drunk judd shows up
and tries to kill curly which is not
good wedding etiquette
they tussle and judd falls on his own
knife
and curly and lori get to go off on
their honeymoon a happy ending
except for the dead guy thanks that
bubble it's hard to get across
how innovative oklahoma a musical that
includes a number like the farmer and
the cow man
actually is roger's melodies had a
distinctly american sound
and hammerstein wrote the lyrics first
which meant that the songs were way more
integral to the story
and were written in the voices of the
characters even more than showboat
every song had a purpose and so did
every dance number
agnes de mill's dream ballet took the
musical to a daring
expressionist place the story was
allowed to exist with a level of tonal
and character complexity that no one
thought a musical
could handle but the musical could
handle it it's so good as we're filming
this in late 2018 a number of american
theaters have recently staged oklahoma
interrogating its depictions of
sexuality violence
conflict and community these are
radically different interpretations but
maybe that's one of the signs of a great
work of art that it can stand up to all
kinds of interpretations and still
tell us something truthful with a fringe
on top oh and
this was also the show that pioneered
the original cast recording which is not
a small deal
so you're welcome all you hamilton fans
out there after oklahoma
the golden age continued until the early
1960s
maybe there were no other great musicals
named after states or territories but
rogers and hammerstein followed oklahoma
up with carousel
south pacific the sound of music and the
king and i
shall we dance oh good yule brenner
impression at the same time allen j
lerner and frederick lowe wrote
brigadoon and my fair lady and also
let's not forget guys and dolls on the
town
wonderful town kiss me kate damn yankees
west side story
because somewhere there's a place for us
and gypsy there is
so much more that we could talk about
the counterculture musical the mega
musical the concept musical sondheim
there is so much to say about sondheim
yorick loves sondheim
i'm lukewarm myself but no shade well
except maybe literal shade because it's
time for our curtain call
this is our final episode of crash
course theater and yet we have
40 or 50 years of theater history and
contemporary performance still to go
maybe we'll meet again for a reprise
down the road still we wanted to leave
you with the book musical not just
because it's a hugely popular and
influential theatrical form but also
because it's how a lot of us who make
crash course theater got
hooked in the first place we saw a
musical or a movie musical when we were
kids and
it just knocked us out that's right
musicals are
the gateway drug first guys and dolls
and then arto
book musicals are sometimes sexist and
sometimes racist sometimes really dumb
but they're also virtuosic and hopeful
and big-hearted
like many of the things in life we love
they're big and they're complicated
speaking of love we can't actually see
or hear you but you've been a great
audience
thank you for staying in your seats
while we explored more than 2 000
years of people trying to put their
world on stage we wish we could sign at
the stage door but you may have to
settle for
like vidcon or twitter i guess we've
seen
sad theater funny theater dangerous
theater avalanche theater theater that
wants to burn it all down
and theory that wants to build a new and
better world so
give yourselves a hand take a bow yorick
that's right cue ball
you earned it
and for now for the last time
curtain
[Music]
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