Bowery Boys; an example of the elusiveness of the musical dream

By Chris Jones December 26, 2008

What's the hardest thing to do in the theater? For my money, it's create a new musical from scratch.

Consider "Shrek," which I saw on Broadway a couple of weeks ago. The producers had one of the funniest family movies ever made as their source, spent some $25 million and hired a slew of the biggest talents in the theater business. The result wasn't awful, but it was hardly transcendent. On the way out of the theater, I was shaking my head thinking about all that work for a goal that remained so stubbornly elusive, despite the best efforts of so many fine artists.

New musicals are tough. Really tough. I'll take that a step further. New musicals that don't poke fun at themselves are toughest of all.

There's a reason we've seen so many spoof shows—"Spamalot," "Urinetown," "Young Frankenstein," even most of "Shrek"—in recent seasons. They're easier to write. Musicals that actually tell a straight-up, irony-free story—without spurious narrators and self-referential gags—are so hard to get right, they're virtually an endangered species.

Especially if they're big and expensive.

All of that was in my mind when I headed out to the Marriott Theatre last week to see "The Bowery Boys," director David Bell's big, new musical based on the characters of novelist Horatio Alger and using a score influenced by the melodies of George M. Cohan. The attempt in the piece—which combines characters and archetypes to create a melodramatic mystery—is to forge a kind of American version of "Oliver Twist," based on the immigrant shoeshine boys of Manhattan, fighting off poverty and the intrusions of the heavies of Tammany Hall.

It's an honest and honorable attempt to forge a new American musical based on the classic themes of optimism, resilience and big dreams. But it's not in "Chris Jones Recommends."

Here's why. I gave the show two-and-a-half stars. It has its moments—including a killer lead performance and some terrific production numbers—but it needs a lot of work. Both the book and the score, I thought, fall between several stylistic worlds. It is an evening that some folks will enjoy, but at this juncture I can't recommend the show.

That did not sit well with at least one frustrated reader, who claimed that I've not much liked any of the new musicals at the Marriott in recent years.

How can I claim to be supportive of new musicals at the Marriott in general, she wrote, if I don't like any of them in particular? She has a point. A dramaturgical mess, I wrote of "Once Upon a Time in New Jersey," a miscast mob-themed musical, in 2006. A year or so later, I said that the creators of "Married Alive!" should excise "the obvious and the predictable. At the same time, I've been going on and on about how Marriott—which has 35,000 subscribers and national reputation—should be producing new musicals.

Here's my defense.

The Marriott should be doing new musicals. It is one of the very few theaters that can put a show in front of a big, supportive audience that knows musical theater. It has a moral obligation to further the form. And, since this is a commercial operation, I'd also argue that premieres are also good for business. This hugely successful theater can't continue to thrive without decent products. It needs to create some of its own. And just as major corporations understand that every product launch won't result in massive profits, so the Marriott's paymasters must understand the same. But that doesn't mean critics are going to like all those shows. These aren't workshops—they're full productions and folks deserve an honest assessment of the show before they plunk down their money. To support new musicals in principal is not to like all new musicals. They have to be good. To those who take these risks—huge, gut-churning risks—this must look like an unreasonable paradox.

If you have sympathy with that view, why not go and see "The Bowery Boys"? New musicals deserve support—we'll all agree on that. And perhaps you'll like it more than I did.

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