Hey Hubbie what's happening, I'm good,  I am just waiting on new glasses so I can get back to work, makin' bears and paintin' ponies. But really I am doing some important work, helping to create nicknames.

OH I forgot to say, I am glad you aren't as busy Tom, we've missed you!

Thanks, everybody -- I've missed being around!  Last week, our Middle School did a production of HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL -- err, wait, better make that official... DISNEY'S HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL. Perhaps the most painful theatrical experience of my life. 

Not just that it was being performed by largely untalented middle school students, but what a horrible piece of shit it is as a show.  Funny, a high school group from Minnesota performed it at the Edinburgh Festival this summer (imagine 80 kids on stage and not a bit of diversity anywhere, all whitebread!).  They were very proud of themselves and their fancy jackets and their big, sold-out audiences* -- they lorded it around with a "biggest is best" attitude.

Well, because I hated the show so much, I didn't realize how hard those kids from Minnesota were actually working!  It was REALLY DIFFICULT music, and took quite a bit of effort. 

Worse, Disney wouldn't allow us to change keys, etc, we couldn't even make cuts without their approval.  We offered to score them a "Junior" version, but they flatly refused us (unlike MTI, Music Theatre International, for whom we've done several pieces). 

SO glad that's over!  I actually looked forward to going home to report cards...

Anyway, the lesson?  Don't do, go, see, or support HSM if humanly possible.  Let's make it stop before it becomes more than an after-school tv special.  God forbid it hits the big screen...  oh, wait...

*AESOP -- better make that official, TOM FRENCH'S AESOP sold very well, thank you, but hardly sell-out crowds like HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL brought in.

Gosh, 164 pages and this gay will never catch up.

What's the topic now? 

I was wondering about DHSM, Tom. On the one hand I saw a few minutes of it, and heard a few of the songs and came to the conclusion that (to my ears) it sucked buckets. On the other hand I choose not to rain on other's parades and I did think of a good thing that could come out of the phenomenon: The ending of excuses for the musical parts in musicals when it is translated to the screen.

I thought Chicago (the movie) was okay, but everytime they felt the need to grease the audience into accepting the songs by saying it was all in a character's head I got extremely annoyed. It's a musical! They can sing in Musicals. Why? 'Cause it's a musical! But apparently the filmmakers were worried that the audience would be dumbfounded when the characters just burst into song.

Perhaps there was too large a time difference between musicals on screen and they felt the conventions needed updating but still, it was sold as a musical, it was billed as a musical and one of the main selling points was Catherine Zeta Jones singing All that Jazz as a single to help sell the movie. And they still had to explain it was a musical?

I think DHSM at least shows that it isn't a tricky concept and that audiences can readily accept the conceit of the form. Also, this phenomenon could spur those kids into finding the good stuff, or better yet - in ten years down the road coming up with new and original musicals because they were innundated with the concept when they were young.

But viewing it as a piece of work? Yeah, it's pretty much shit.

I think DHSM at least shows that it isn't a tricky concept and that audiences can readily accept the conceit of the form.

I'll grant you this point... sort of.  I, too, think the audience accepts the genre of the piece they're seeing and allows the conceits of that form.  (In a musical, people burst into song.)

But I also think some clarification is in order.  WHY do people sing in musicals?  Quick history: in the three major epochs of "the musical," the First Generation were mostly variety show-like, vaudeville, where there was rarely a plot at all.  Songs were random entertainments between scenes.

The Second Generation Musical -- perhaps the most well-known --  (Rogers and Hammerstein, etc)  where the action of the plot STOPS for the inclusion of a song.  A song usually described the situation, the inner feelings of the singer to the moment, but did not advance the plot.

Third-Generation Musicals use the music to advance the plot of the show.  (Sondheim, Lloyed Webber, etc)  Most modern shows are third generation, or a mix of second and third generation (shows like "Spamelot" "Avenue Q") where there's a nostalgia evident for the 2nd gen, but the show is clearly modern. 

Disney's HSM is stuck in this place.  The songs do little for the forward motion of the show -- and when they do ("Bop to the Top"), the action isn't conveyed in the song, but the song is used to create a montage of action that DOES advance plot.

Worse, for DHSM wasn't written by one writer (usually the lyricist, too) and one composer.  It was written by a TEAM of people, a different set for each song.  Because of that, there's no through-line or arc of music, just scattered unrelated musical "events."

DHSM, like the bubble-gum that inspires it, tastes great and sugary at first, but the more you chew it, the more it tastes like rubber.  And if you swallow it, it stays in your system for seven years where it rots.