Another Openin' Another Show

Our Spring Concert, 'It's Time Now To Sing Out' is just around the corner. In fact, when this goes live it'll be two weeks away. Tickets are available through our website - and are free! Although we might ask you to pay to get out...

The theme of this concert is a celebration of Musical Theatre. Musical Theatre is the relative new comer in the great pantheon of the theatre, but right now, is the genre that brings in the most people to our theatres.

Musical Theatre started out as plays with songs in them. These songs usually emphasised a particular feeling of a character, much like it's ancestor the aria in opera. These plays with song evolved into early reviews, such as the Ziegfeld Follies, which had a variety of songs from a variety of sources performed alongside dances to entertain the audience. These reviews had now real continuity in them - think of the movie White Christmas and the show that is put on in the barn, they march their way through hugely different numbers such as 'Gee! I wish I was back in the army', to 'Mandy', 'Theatre' and eventually 'White Christmas' itself. These types of reviews were hugely popular and well attended, but it wasn't long before they evolved again...

This time, it was thanks to one man, who is regarded as helping to invent Musicals as we know them today and then later on would change and develop them even further: Oscar Hammerstein II. He is credited as writing the first story musical, along with composer Jerome Kern, and producer Florenz Ziegfeld Jr (of Ziegfeld Follies fame). Show Boat is widely regarded as the first musical to contain a story and have songs that both emphasised and moved the plot. Later on, Oscar Hammerstein II, with his most famous composing partner Richard Rogers, would go on to push the boundaries of what Musicals are with productions such as Oklahoma! Carousel, South Pacific, The King & I and the perennial The Sound of Music.

Fast-forward a couple of decades and what was an American artform suddenly became centred in the West End of London. Yes, Amercian Musicals had played in the West End for years, and British writers had written their own, Salad Days by Dorothy Reynolds and Julian Slade and The Boy Friend by Sandy Wilson. But in the 1980s a British giant hit his stride with hit show after hit show, that in themselves changed the face of Musical Theatre. With shows as different as Cats, Starlight Express and The Phantom of the Opera Andrew Lloyd Webber proved that what the Americans could do, Britain could do better. Musical Theatre had suddenly become a spectacle. An event. Something that had to be seen to be believed: the junk yard of the original production of Cats, the casts whizzing passed you on purpose built track around a theatre in Starlight Express and the awe-inspiring chandelier crash in Phantom. But still, true to their heart, they were story based (with the exception of Cats, that has no story and is a review of the works of TS Eliot).

Musical Theatre changed again as we entered into the new millennium. Story musicals where here to stay, but this time it was the music that changed. The stages of the West End and Broadway were suddenly alive in a new phenomenon: the jukebox musical. Starting in 1999 with, what the critics still think is one of the best jukebox musicals, Mamma Mia! featuring the music of ABBA, we've been treated to We Will Rock You (Queen), Our House (Madness), Jersey Boys (Franki Valli and the Four Seasons), Beautiful: The Carole King Musical (Carole King) and & Juliet (Max Martin). Some more successful than others, but each proving to have an audience as you can't really go wrong if the audience knows the songs before they attend the show!

Musical Theatre will continue to evolve and grow as it races to catch up with its older siblings in the theatrical world, but whoever's bright idea it was to have a 'play where the dialogue stops and the plot is conveyed through song'* was on to a winner.

If you're reading this before March 22 2026, why not come along and hear a potted history of Musical Theatre performed by The Choir of SEMusic with solos from within the choir itself. It promises to be a truly great (Scott!) night!

*Something Rotten, Karey Kirkpatrick and John O'Farrell (2015)