Non-linear Musicals?

Dec 19, 2018 13:14:57 GMT TallPaul said:

Cardinal Pirelli is the Board's non-linear expert.

Well, I mentioned it once.....

As has been said, with shows like Follies and Company, remembering is the simplest way to use non-linearity. In my work with students I introduce it via the idea of a 'memory play' as, given that our minds are not bound by chronology, it's fairly easy to replicate that in storytelling. More complex structures can create different meanings such as the backwards/forwards The Last Five Years and its holding on/moving on or the backwards Merrily We Roll Along showing the uninevitability of cynicism replacing idealism. Sondheim, as you can see, figures large and Company really was a game changer, albeit trailing behind playwriting by a considerable time.

Early examples of flashbacks go back to operetta, the idea of 'looking back' being very conducive to that form. A later example being Bitter Sweet (Noel Coward) from 1929 and, of course, much later, taking its cue from operetta, Phantom of the Opera.

Not necessarily based on chronology but other ways of disrupting linearity can be seen in the idea of dreams (Peggy Ann or A Connecticut Yankee (both with Rodgers and Hart scores and books by Herbert Fields), Dubarry Was a Lady (Cole Porter, book again by Fields with Buddy DeSylva) or Lady in the Dark (Weill and Moss Hart)). Weill also, with Alan Jay Lerner, writing Love Life which is less dream more fantasy eschewing realism quite comprehensively as time moves on yet characters move on a different timescale. These are all from the twenties to the forties.

Later on the idea of a story being told, shifting between storyteller and story allowed for early/mid sixties shows such as Man of La Mancha and Zorba. A similar element of a more revue like structure of separate scenes permeates shows like Stop the World I want to Get Off, Oh, What a Lovely War, Hair or You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown from the early to late sixties, this at a time when revues were also making a comeback. Godspell, Chorus Line and Pacific Overtures in the seventies cover both the storytelling aspect and the revue-like structure, arguably Chicago as well.

One of the most successful musicals building on the Sondheim shows that really started to play around with form is 'Nine' (1982), a brilliant piece of storytelling and score. Sondheim's own Assassins (1990) is also as non-linear as anyone could expect.

Since then we seem to have regressed a bit, Our House had a really nice dual-linear story with If/Then on a similar (dual) path, these followed by Groundhog Day with its variations on a day. Otherwise it's been, ironically, variations on what has come before.