Broadway Babylon

“You ask what happened to musicals? Hell, what happened to music?”—SEAN CONNERY, former South Pacific chorus boy in London

“What happened to the good-time musical? I’ll tell you: its promises couldn’t be kept.”—theater historian ETHAN MORDDEN

“The problem with musicals isn’t usually the music or even bad lyrics. It’s the awkward or unbelievable transitions from speaking to singing, and back again. That’s why I like Tommy and Evita. They’re seamless … and don’t cheat your belief, like so many older musicals.”—STEVE REEVES, the movies’ Hercules, who appeared in Carol Channing’s 1955 Broadway flop The Vamp

“What’s wrong with musicals now is all the gifted men who’ve died of AIDS—who would otherwise be here today creating great theater.”—MADELINE KAHN

“We’ve lost a whole generation of stage talent, especially to AIDS, and it will take a generation or more until that void is filled.”—celebrity photographer HERB RITTS, who died of AIDS

“Like the French or Viennese operetta, the Broadway musical, as we know it, is virtually dead. The guts were knocked out of it when Lennon and McCartney chose not to write a musical. Why should they have done a show that closed in Philadelphia when they could do ten pop concerts and make a fortune?”—drama critic CLIVE BARNES

“The one thing the theatre can’t do is be in the vanguard of popular music. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Andrew’s greatest successes have always been great soaring ballads, timeless in their quality. The most obviously pop score, Starlight Express, was the only one that threw up no real hits.”—CAMERON MACKINTOSH, who has produced several Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals

“Sometime in the 1970s the American musical’s golden era ended when rising costs and decreasing talents allowed the producers to take over.… Most of the new material is mediocre, and most of the ‘new’ shows are the old ones because they have brand-name recognition.”—stage composer and TV actor ALBERT HAGUE in 1992

“These days the problem with Broadway musicals is television. Ads, of all things! There’s so little to Pippin (1972), and without Bob Fosse’s inventiveness, even less than that. But now it’s been running about three years, thanks to this new gimmick of TV ads for musicals that actually lures suckers in. What next?”—ROSE MARIE (The Dick Van Dyke Show) … Pippin ran almost five years

“I was [billed] Kay Ballard when I starred in Molly [1973] because a numerologist told me one less letter in my name would bring more success. Wrong!!”—KAYE BALLARD, whose turn as radio and TV star Molly Goldberg was not a hit

“In the sung-through musical … the narrative function has been taken away from the playwright and given to the songwriter. You listen to a song in a completely different way than you listen to a scene. Auden makes the point that rhyme makes any statement acceptable, gives it authority.… Song is not sufficient to establish character; it cannot carry the burden of psychology and situation. You need prose and plot.”—JOHN LAHR, critic, writer, and son of Bert

“Most American musicals were still stuck in the ’60s or before, by the 1980s. Then the British musicals came along.… The sung-through imports are an ingenious updating of the European art form of opera. Yet these new musicals are original, not rehashes, and are marketed brilliantly.”—DUSTY SPRINGFIELD in New York

“The Brits redefined the musical … turned it into a spectacle, an event, with the visuals as important as the music. Musicals were no longer quaint or dated, but cutting edge, with more bang for your buck.”—agent and nightclub owner ROBERT HUSSONG

“Maybe one day we’ll write [a musical with dialogue]. But if they’re going to talk, it’s got to be for a good reason. What I don’t like at all is when you don’t know why they’ve started singing or why they’ve started talking; they can say the same thing talking or singing, it doesn’t seem to make any difference.… The best example of that kind of show is A Chorus Line—there are good reasons for when they sing and when they talk.”—ALAIN BOUBLIL, co-creator of Les Misérables

“There’s all this complaining now about ‘sung-through’ musicals. Many people say they have no book, it’s just songs. But they do have books. It’s just that the words are sung, instead. Why the terrible fuss? The result is everything … I think much of this is just xenophobia, because the English and the French have pioneered these musicals and have been so successful with them. In essence, most Americans would prefer to have a monopoly on success.”—French actor-director JEANNE MOREAU in 2003

“I think it was Richard Rodgers who, when asked which came first, the music or the lyrics, said, ‘The contract.’ Was that the beginning of the great decline? I’m kidding—sort of.”—lyricist CAROLYN LEIGH (Peter Pan, Little Me)

“You have two stages in the declining creativity of Broadway musicals. First, turning nonmusical movies into musicals, which hardly ever works; My Fair Lady’s the big exception, yet they keep doing it, madly panning for gold. And second, not even that—revivals.”—costume maker LEE BREWSTER (The Birdcage, etc.)

“In a play, it’s about the relationship between characters. In a musical, it’s about the relationship between performer and audience—that can never have the same depth. Particularly when special effects take the place of talent and charisma.”—playwright WILLIAM INGE

“Superman has always been a hit, right? Our show had everything: Hal Prince directed, music by Charles Strouse [Bye Bye Birdie; Applause; Annie], and on TV Batman was so popular it was airing twice a week … and I was in it. It crashed to earth, dead as a dodo.”—JACK CASSIDY on It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Superman (1966)

“When we took out the music, for starters, it flew.…”—DAVID NEWMAN, who with Robert Benton wrote It’s a Bird … and then the 1978 hit movie Superman (starring Christopher Reeve)

“Musicals derive from professional musical people. Stars, including singers, aren’t necessarily musical experts, and many a meddling star has interfered with the progress of a stage musical.”—producer ROBERT FRYER (Mame, Chicago)

“From her first performance … Streisand stopped the show with her ‘Miss Marmelstein’ number. The number was foolproof. The only time it didn’t stop the show was well into the run, when she begged the musical director, Lehman Engel, to let her do it her own way. She took liberties with the rhythm, and the song got applause but by no means did it stop the show. Streisand immediately went back to doing it the way it was written.”—critic and author HOWARD KISSEL on I Can Get It for You Wholesale

“The problem with most musicals is that the spectator is often impatient. If it’s a good musical, he’s waiting for the next song. Or else he’s waiting for the song to end.”—playwright BOB RANDALL (6 Rms Riv Vu)

“Nobody sings!”—composer RUDOLPH FRIML, “explaining” why he walked out on My Fair Lady

“People expect more from a musical. If a play doesn’t meet their expectations, they sometimes question their own taste. It may have been symbolic or avant-garde, perhaps something escaped them? But with a musical, no such excuses. So you have to try much harder.”—playwright MAXWELL ANDERSON, who did two musicals (book and lyrics), both with Kurt Weill: Knickerbocker Holiday and Lost in the Stars

“It’s better than what most 106-year-old writers are doing.”—GEORGE ABBOTT in 1993 (Broadway’s centenary), when asked about his update of his 1955 hit musical Damn Yankees

“Most of the fellows on Broadway these days are playing at being producer; they sack the assistant choreographer because it’s the sort of thing a producer does.”—British columnist MARK STEYN

“We all wanted to do something again after West Side Story [but] Lenny was hipped on it being important. He kept saying, ‘It’s gotta be important.’ And it just seemed such a truism but I said to him, ‘If it’s good, it’ll be important.’ ”—writer ARTHUR LAURENTS on composer Leonard Bernstein, whose last major musical was West Side Story

“Now, scenery is bigger and stars are smaller. The chandelier in Phantom and the staircase in Sunset Boulevard should get billing.”—BEATRICE ARTHUR

“The day we closed The Fig Leaves Are Falling [1969], the matinee was sold out. After I sang ‘All My Laughter,’ the audience made me do an encore—they kept on clapping, they wouldn’t let the scene go on till I’d sung it again … to show how much they loved my song and the show. It was wonderful, I’ll never forget it. But too late. Once people heard we were closing, then everybody flocked to see it.”—DOROTHY LOUDON (Annie)

“I wish we’d get back to more human values in musicals—caring about what happens to people. I think people want to get involved. They want to laugh, but they also want to cry. I guess it’s not fashionable. I’m afraid audiences today don’t accept the idea of characters bursting into song the way they used to.”—BARBARA COOK

“It’s more business now than it is show. All of that tradition is gone. Everyone just wants to know how much money they’re going to make. That’s why I decided to get out of musical comedy and just be an actor.”—ANITA GILLETTE (Carnival)

“If you’re a singer with a big voice, it works against you now. They mike everybody. So a big voice has to be toned way down. Do you know, Ethel Merman wouldn’t have a chance today.”—CAROL CHANNING

“People aren’t as disciplined as they used to be. Dancers are not trained in period styles. They don’t even get ballet. They come out of the ‘sidewalk’ school of ballet, where they learn things like how to roll around on your navel. There’s no technique to back it up.”—PATTI KARR (performer, Pippin, Seesaw)

“The inability to sing rarely keeps a name performer out of a musical, whether in Los Angeles, New York, London, or your local dinner theatre. Sometimes, though, an imperfect voice conveys the character perfectly, whereas a magnificent voice is all wrong. Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly! illustrates the first premise, Kiri Te Kanawa on a recording of West Side Story the second.”—entertainment writer SAM STAGGS

“They used to have so many big musicals about big, real-life people. Like Gypsy was.… [Artist] Keith Haring was a good friend of mine, and I’m glad they’ve done a ‘musical installation’ about him (Radiant Baby). I don’t know what it’s like yet, but special people with special lives should have more musicals made about them.”—MADONNA in 2003

“I was twenty, I looked forty, I got the job.”—ELAINE STRITCH on her qualifications for understudying Ethel Merman in Call Me Madam

“Ethel Merman sang loud. You appreciated it, all the more if you were way in the back.… In Rent, the cast keeps coming downstage to sing in your face, trying to force your emotion. I don’t appreciate that.”—KATHLEEN FREEMAN, 2001 Tony nominee for The Big Monty

“It’s Hairspray meets Rent … I always think, Go big or go home.”—ROSIE O’DONNELL, producer and sole investor in the $10 million Boy George musical Taboo (2003) (about two male Londoners in the ’80s, and criticized for its $100-a-seat prices)

“Broadway producers and directors today are featuring music by the inept to be enjoyed by the untutored.”—record and revue producer BEN BAGLEY, in the ’80s

“As recently as the ’70s or ’80s, you still had a fairly large assortment of people making musicals. Today it’s just a handful, so no wonder musicals tend to look, sound, and feel the same.”—CHER

“An idea can be ahead of its time, as happened with Kwamina [1961]. It was a love story with me and a black man, and so … we couldn’t even touch. Regardless, enough Americans became incensed that I couldn’t open my mail after receiving death threats and used toilet paper. Once, in Boston, [leading man] Terry Carter had a gold bangle he slid up my arm—and when he went past my elbow, I heard people in the audience gasp, and several walked out. But I’m still very proud I did that show,” which played thirty-two performances on Broadway—British singer-actress SALLY ANN HOWES, best known for the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

“Amazing, some of the things that get staged.… At first, people went to see the new Jule Styne musical, his first in a while. That’s how it was advertised, and people expected another Gypsy or Funny Girl.… But One Night Stand [1980] was about a composer who invites an audience to hear his songs before he commits suicide in front of them. Any surprise that it closed after eight previews? The real surprise is how it got on.”—LEONARD BERNSTEIN

“I hear The Lion King is better than the movie. That’s a switch, if true. But I’m not enticed, because that movie is one of the most anti-gay, as well as sexist—just analyze it, it’s pretty clear, with the gay villain and stereotypes.… Theatre still has homophobia, both in too many depictions and too many real-life closetings.”—Grammy-nominated conductor PHILIP BRETT

“A rose by any other name.… A musical, if it’s crappy, is crappy by any other title. I remember when the Uris Theatre was to open [in 1974] and Mr. Jimmy Nederlander booked in an awful musical. The title was Up. How would that look on the marquee: Up Uris. So they renamed it Via Galactica, and it was still awfully crappy.”—actor CHRISTOPHER HEWETT (The Unsinkable Molly Brown)

“When my partner Norman Lear told me there was a new hit musical in London called Cats, and we should bring it to Broadway, my first thought was, oh, no, not a show about Joel Grey’s father!”—producer STUART OSTROW (Joel’s father, Mickey Katz, was a successful comedian who sometimes worked with his son)

“I could write better lyrics than some of the Broadway pro’s. Music’s another matter, but lyrics … for Bye, Bye, Birdie, this fella [Lee Adams] did the words to a rather putrid song called ‘Spanish Rose.’ The words were embarrassing even then [in 1960]. If I said them now, I could probably be sued. I didn’t personally object to the discrimination so much as the rotten lyrics.”—PAUL LYNDE, who costarred in the Broadway and film version (which dropped the song)

“It’s better than Hollywood, but I think even in the theatre they could benefit from more imaginative casting. I was Conrad Birdie when I toured in Bye, Bye, Birdie, and there was this grumbling along the way; I overheard a lot of it: Who is this Latin guy playing an Elvis type? And Elvis wasn’t even yet sacred then. But I couldn’t have been Birdie on Broadway, let alone Hollywood. Back then, they probably wouldn’t have cast a Hispanic as Ritchie Valens—who was born Valenzuela.”—actor RAUL JULIA

“I applauded Bea Arthur’s first starring role in a musical.… But even with songs, it’s not easy to make a castrating mother that lovable, and the ladies in musicals, like the ladies on TV, have to be lovable.”—GARY MORTON, husband and business partner of Lucille Ball, who starred with Arthur in the film Mame, on Arthur’s post-Mame Broadway flop A Mother’s Kisses

“Who kills a show? The fate of a musical can be affected by anything as arbitrary as the wrong choice of theatre, or an inexperienced producer, or the competition from across the street.”—authors DENNIS MCGOVERN and DEBORAH GRACE WINER in Sing Out, Louise!

“The trouble with lots of break-through musicals, before they get a chance, is the naysayers who reject all but the tried and true, no matter how tired and through. Happily, they don’t always have the last word. For instance William Paley, head of CBS, which used to invest heavily in musicals. He was a closet Jew who insisted Fiddler on the Roof was ‘too Jewish’ … [and] passed it up. No vision there, and not a lot of pride either.”—choreographer BILLY WILSON

“What can happen is a musical becomes over-identified with one performer. This hurts in the long run. Have you seen Funny Girl revived since Miss Streisand, my favorite octopus, left the show and Broadway forever to do the movie of it?”—Funny Girl’s Broadway director GARSON KANIN

“They don’t learn, do they? Does the greed blind them? Here we are, four years into the so-called New Millennium, and it happens again: they made a dud musical out of Saturday Night Fever, so what do they do? Another mediocre [John] Travolta movie gets the Broadway-melody treatment: Urban Cowboy. Get set for a cheesy musical of every movie that made money in the last 30 or 40 years.”—MICHAEL JETER (Grand Hotel, based on the 1932 classic that won the Best Picture Oscar)

“Very few people would presume to think they could write a drama on the order of Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller. Yet I’m frequently, and confidently too, advised by people like my mail man and a delivery boy I know that they’re working on a terrific new musical.”—stage and screen star GEORGE C. SCOTT

“With the obvious exceptions of Hair and Tommy, when Broadway tries to speak in the voice of genuine rock and roll, the show is almost always a flop. The reason is that in rock the most important element is the beat. The melody, the chords, and the lyrics are often very repetitive, and they all serve the beat—the emotion and energy matter, not the intellectual content. But in theater music, the lyrics are the most important element. The lyrics not only have to be heard and understood, they also have to tell the story, to advance plot and character … to convey a lot of information in very few words; repetition is a luxury modern theater composers and lyricists can’t afford.”—SCOTT MILLER, author, playwright, and artistic director of New Line Theatre in St. Louis

“The problem with musicals now is the same as the problem with plays: size. Economics now favor only the big. Fluff with a corporation behind it will thrive, but something small, that takes time to find an audience, to build word of mouth, that does not have millions to spend on TV advertising, scarcely has a chance … it takes business away from the smaller, more experimental, more daring, or simply better show.”—GREGORY HINES (Jelly’s Last Jam)

“On Broadway, the most significant development of the ’90s has been the emergence of Disney as legit producer with Beauty and the Beast. The audience goes into the Palace Theatre for no other reason than to see the movie reproduced as exactly as possible. It’s worked so well that Disney is now planning to do the same all over the world with the rest of its catalogue: legitimate theater as merchandizing.”—MARK STEYN

“It is such a pity when a musically, comedically, entirely talented star from another medium or country fails to land in a successful show. Patricia Routledge and I did a musical, Darling of the Day [1968], in which she was superlative. The critics all thought so too. Yet somehow it became the most expensive show ever to go down on Broadway. It broke my heart—for Patricia’s sake, my sake, the show’s sake, and the audiences’ sake.”—VINCENT PRICE (Englishwoman Patricia Routledge was very positively reviewed in four musical flops that ran a combined 38 performances on Broadway; she achieved international fame in the TV Britcom Keeping Up Appearances as Hyacinth Bucket—pronounced “bouquet”)

“Some people find musicals too long. Especially husbands.… Today, everyone remembers Camelot with fondness and even reverence. At the time, though, this was not so. The production’s expense and its running time were often and adversely remarked on in print and in person.”—RODDY MCDOWALL, who costarred in Camelot (1960) on Broadway but not on screen

“Someone like Ray Bolger, very much of a star in musical comedy, would never think of missing a performance. A lot of today’s young people will miss a performance if they’re breaking in a new pair of shoes.”—KAYE BALLARD, stage (The Golden Apple), screen (The Ritz) and TV (The Mothers-in-Law) actress

“It’s not easy to get shows on. There aren’t many of us doing them now. Michael Bennett is dead. Bob Fosse is dead. Joe Layton is dead. Gower Champion is dead. The director-choreographer is dead. And the writers are all in California making lots of money on sitcoms and movies.”—TOMMY TUNE

“Three things you can say about [Susan] Stroman’s success. She’s earned it. As a woman, she’ll probably survive longer than a man counterpart.… And since’s she not a gay man, her career won’t be cut short by AIDS.”—IRENE WORTH, who won three Tonys for her performances in plays by Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and Neil Simon

“The Broadway musical will never die. But it’s slowly bleeding to death.”—NANETTE FABRAY (Let’s Face It)

“I blame it all on the guitar. With pianos, you made music. What else could you do? With guitars, which became the ‘in’ thing with all the kids, they went into telling stories—mostly ones that nobody else would want to hear. It was part of the new narcissism: kids in love with the sound of, not music, but their own voices. And if I were young, I might be too.”—GEORGE BURNS

“Miss Saigon? I miss speaking, period. I have a decent singing voice, but after three Webber musicals, I’d like the chance to talk, to say lines.… I mean, suppose actors like Robert De Niro and Anthony Hopkins or Meryl Streep were hired only to sing. They’d never make it! Well, Streep could … women are more comfortable singing, and maybe do it better. They always had more women stars in musicals, you know. Now, with singing-only shows, dramatically speaking, it’s gotten out of hand.”—ANONYMOUS MID-TWENTIES ACTOR

“Now that you have musicals lasting longer than ever … longer than our pets live, to me it means I can wait that much longer to see a given show that doesn’t immediately attract me. I just keep postponing it indefinitely.”—MARY TYLER MOORE (Broadway’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s)

“I have a practical proposal, in view of how Broadway has changed. To be honest, and more descriptive, let’s switch the word order and call it business show. We’ll get used to the sound of it; we’ve already gotten used to the reality of it.”—theatrical executive DWIGHT FRYE JR. (whose father played Renfield in the film Dracula)

“What happened to musicals is too many dancers are getting into it not for love of the dance, but to become choreographers, and from there choreographer-directors. It’s veered from an artistic choice to a career move.”—GWEN VERDON (Chicago)

“The only things wrong with musicals today [the 1960s] is they cost too much to produce and therefore to see, and they need to reinstate the dance as the core of musical theatre. We need to encourage dancing on every level … (because) when you’re dancing, you can’t do drugs and you can’t make war.”—Oklahoma! choreographer AGNES DE MILLE

“I mistrust people who categorically hate musicals. Musicals aren’t supposed to be realistic. Is fiction always realistic?… There have always been good musicals and bad musicals—always will be. [There are] musicals for every taste. So just stay home and watch your evening news! Enjoy all the dismal reality, and leave the musicals to people who can still dream.”—KATHARINE HEPBURN (COCO)

“Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.”—VOLTAIRE

“Remember that song [from Paint Your Wagon] where it says, ‘Hell is in hello’? Well, for me, hell is in Hello, Dolly! revivals.”—MICHAEL JETER (Grand Hotel Tony winner)

“I heard this foul rumor that Ray Stark, who produced The Way We Were, asked Arthur Laurents, who wrote the movie, to turn it into a Broadway musical starring Kathie Lee Gifford. I couldn’t believe it, would not believe it. But years later I read it in Laurents’s own book. Talk about horror.”—EILEEN HECKART, who received a Tony for lifetime achievement in the theater

“I really oughtn’t to say so, but outside of a few superior ones, I’m not much for musicals. They can get very boring. I personally prefer a thumping good mystery or some old-fashioned English music hall. That’s entertainment!”—ROBERT COOTE of My Fair Lady (Col. Pickering) and Camelot (King Pellinore)

“I hate doing anything musical in the States. They reserve the position that Englishmen have no right to sing on, off or anywhere near Broadway.”—British movie actor LAURENCE HARVEY, who performed in Camelot in London in 1964

“Am I the only one who thinks music should be heard and not seen? I love all types of music, but most musicals … they’re so trying! As if designed for childish adults or romantically deprived housewives. Or even masochistic gay men so they can tell their friends about all the musicals they’ve sat through. Not me. When it comes to musicals, give my regrets to Broadway!”—SAM JAFFE, talent agent and producer of Born Free, whose title song won an Academy Award

“The last scene of Carousel is an impertinence. I refuse to be lectured by a musical comedy scriptwriter on the education of children, the nature of the good life, and the contribution of the American small town to the salvation of souls.”—ERIC BENTLEY, drama critic of The New Republic

“I have a wonderful singing voice, vastly underused.… One would think the perfect venue for me would be the musical stage. In fact, I loathe musicals.… Too many songs in far too many tedious musicals have absolutely nothing to do with the plot, such as it is.”—GEORGE SANDERS, Oscar winner for All About Eve who starred in Sherry!, a 1967 flop musicalization of The Man Who Came to Dinner

“Recently I caught a Susan Hayward movie on TV: I’ll Cry Tomorrow. I wish someone would do a musical titled I’ll Sing Tomorrow, and keep their word.”—WILLIAM HICKEY, stage (Small Craft Warnings) and screen (Prizzi’s Honor) actor

“Dumb lyrics, you always had—some. They were more than compensated for by great music … a melody that you left the theater humming. What’s unforgivable in a musical is music without melody or that’s altogether unmemorable. Or is closer to noise than music!”—SUSAN STRASBERG (The Diary of Anne Frank)

“We unrealistically romanticize musicals, whether Broadway or Hollywood. We remember the special song or two, or the terrific film clip. Thing is, those are just minutes from a movie or show—most of which, when you sit through the whole thing, is dull or silly. The plots are better now. They are. But the music’s worse.”—film critic GENE SISKEL

“I find that those musicals which have entertained me and held my interest were the ones that would also have been interesting without songs. Like Cabaret. There’s a story there. A setting, an era, a moral, and a central relationship. Without music, it would be fine. With music, great. But strip most musicals of their music, and you have … startlingly little.”—JACK GILFORD of Broadway’s Cabaret

“Broadway doesn’t grow stars for musicals any more. They just bring in some movie star for the box office who doesn’t sing too good. ‘Cause the ones who do sing good are either dead, retired, lost their voices [Julie Andrews?] or they’re talented kids without names or individual personalities.”—BUDDY HACKETT, who did one Broadway musical (I Had a Ball, 1964)

“… now, you go to the theatre, and forgive me, but what you see is a great makeup job; you have to listen to lip-synching and prerecorded music. I resent that. The Phantom is onstage for 20 minutes, and a lot of that is prerecorded. That’s not Broadway.”—actor PATRICK JUDE (Marlowe, Jesus Christ Superstar)

“They booted Milli Vanilli out of the music business for lip-synching after they won a Grammy. But now Broadway does the same thing! You all pay so much money and, like, it’s supposed to be theatre and live and all, but … it’s more like a fraud.”—JANET JACKSON (Milli Vanilli had not themselves recorded what they lip-synched)

“I don’t mind avant-garde material, like in Urinetown. A musical doesn’t have to be fantasy … or Brigadoon. But I sorely miss the sheer beauty you typically found in musicals, either in the impossibly romantic love story, or the leading lady, or the incredible music—Lerner and Loewe, Rodgers and Hammerstein, etc. Something in a musical should be wondrous and beautiful, should transport you.… Musicals aren’t supposed to be completely down to earth.”—KIM HUNTER (A Streetcar Named Desire)

“You didn’t just go to see musicals. Sometimes you went despite that. You went to see great musical stars—performers that were larger and more exciting than everyday life or your neighbors.”—stage director JOSE QUINTERO (Long Day’s Journey into Night)

“I hate musicals that think dance is expendable,… that it’s unquestionably better to have two actors sing at each other. Dance is what musicals were originally about, and why musicals came into being.”—legendary choreographer JACK COLE

“These two enormous, too-big hits, The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables, they actually have no dancing in them! How could it be, someone forgot? They have much music, yes, but are they really musicals?”—ballet dancer NATALIA MAKAROVA

“The increasing corporate influence detracts in small ways from the experience of theatergoing. Shows are much larger, more difficult to manage, especially in the old facilities. Amenities are lost; the public is not treated as well.”—JOSEPH TRAINA, house manager of the Belasco Theatre

“What’s moving in today’s bloated musicals isn’t the music or performances, but the rotating sets.”—ROBIN WILLIAMS

“What I hate about employment in these mega-musicals is they make unheard-of profits for a few billionaires and corporations, but not being personality driven, they can recast with no effect on the box office. The show’s the thing—good, lousy, or indifferent. And most of us in it are more interchangeable than ever, just cogs in a wheel. The producers and owners have more power and control than ever. Performers have less than ever; we’re units now, not members of a theatrical ensemble or family. The atmosphere gets colder and colder.”—ANONYMOUS “THIRTYISH” ACTOR

• Widow Valerie Eliot gave composer Andrew Lloyd Webber an unpublished eight-line fragment about Grizabella the Glamour Cat that T.S. had omitted from his Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats as being too grim for children.

• Eliot had declined Walt Disney’s request to turn his cat poems into an animated feature; the poet insisted his felines were “hard-scrabble alleycats, not cute little anthropomorphs.”

• Cats’ title was never translated into another language; the musical has been translated into ten languages.

• During Cats’ run at New York’s Winter Garden Theatre, maintenance workers removed 237 pounds of chewing gum from underneath theatre seats.

• Cats opened in London’s West End on May 11, 1981; on January 21, 1996, its 6, 141st performance made it London’s longest-running musical ever; in April, ‘99, the production’s gross box office topped the equivalent of $184 million.

• Cats opened on Broadway October 7, 1982, playing until September 10, 2000 (in 1997 it became Broadway’s longest-running musical), for a total of 7,485 performances and a gross of over $400 million. (American ticket prices were higher.)

• Over 150 singers have recorded the song “Memory” (Barry Manilow—meow—publicly disparaged Barbra Streisand’s less Muzak-y rendition); the Broadway cast recording sold over two million copies.

• 59,705 condoms were employed to protect singing cast members’ body mikes from makeup and perspiration.

• Some of the show’s more memorable cat names included Bombalurina, Rum Tum Tugger, Rumpleteazer, Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat, Macavity the Mystery Cat, Jennyanydots the Gumbie Cat, and Etcetera.

“You’d think Cats was the very first of its kind. It isn’t. In the 1950s Eartha Kitt and I did a Broadway musical, Shinbone Alley, about Archy the cockroach and Mehitabel the alleycat—very famous characters, and much loved.… We had good music, plenty of dance, and there were cats.… Many people liked it, and those who have compared it with Cats prefer our show. However, expensive musicals will pretend they’re the first of their kind.”—stage (The Gay Divorce) and film (Top Hat) actor ERIK RHODES

“I hated Cats from when I first heard about jellicle cats and pollicle dogs and the words were treated like some secret or sacrosanct language. Then I find out all it meant was T.S. Eliot as a child misunderstood a relative who was saying ‘dear little cats’ and ‘poor little dogs.’ Too, too pretentious for words.”—UK stage and TV (Sherlock Holmes) actor JEREMY BRETT

“I hate it when they turn animals into humans, with the sexist, mostly male voices.… The cats in Cats look so weird. I love cats, but not Cats. When it finally shuts down, I’ll probably celebrate.”—NELL CARTER (Ain’t Misbehavin’)

“I haven’t seen Cats. I resent that they have to tear theatres apart for these shows. I wonder if the Winter Garden will ever be the same. I hope they have to return the theatre to pristine condition after it closes. If it ever closes.”—BARNARD HUGHES (Da)

“I hate to go to the theatre anymore.… How can Cats still be running? It’s terrible. And the microphones. My God, people are miked all over—I can’t believe it!”—MARIA KARNILOVA (Fiddler on the Roof)

“If you’re paying $60, you want a lot for your money. And whether you approve or not, Cats at least gives you a lot of cats.”—composer CHARLES STROUSE (Annie)

“You could throw away every song except ‘Memory’ and it wouldn’t make any difference.”—composer JULE STYNE (Bells Are Ringing)

“Most musicals get advertised with a line from a good review or something that makes sense. Cats just ignored the critics’ opinions—like, no wonder—and used its own line: ‘Now and Forever.’ Which to me sounds more like a threat.”—actress ROSEANNE BARR (The Wizard of Oz at Madison Square Garden)

“The logo-slogan ‘Now and Forever’ on the Cats poster proved to be prophetic [though] one critic said [the show] made him feel like something was peeing on his leg for two hours.”—producer STUART OSTROW (M. Butterfly)

10

THE PROBLEM WITH MUSICALS

I Hate Musicals!

Drat! The Cats