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[0:11] David Armstrong: Welcome to another episode of Broadway Nation, the podcast that tells the extraordinary story of how immigrants, Jews, queers, African Americans, and other outcasts invented the Broadway musical and how they changed America in the process.

[0:25] David Armstrong: I'm David Armstrong, and I call this episode Cameron Mackintosh and the British Invasion, or Sondheim versus the Poperetta.

[0:34] David Armstrong: As I shared in the last episode, the AIDS crisis had a devastating effect on Broadway.

[0:39] David Armstrong: The disease killed off or sidelined practically an entire generation of creative and performing talent, many of them at their prime.

[0:47] David Armstrong: During the same period, the midtown theater district was hitting rock bottom, in part as a result of the severe financial crisis that had hit New York in the mid-1970s and lingered into the 80s.

[0:58] David Armstrong: The streets around Times Square were run down, dirty, and sometimes dangerous.

[1:03] David Armstrong: Rolling Stone Magazine called West 42nd Street the sleaziest block in America.

[1:08] David Armstrong: Many out-of-town tourists and even many New Yorkers did not feel safe walking in the area after dark.

[1:14] David Armstrong: I know it's hard to imagine today when prior to the shutdown, the thronging crowds made it feel almost impossible to get from dinner to the show you were seeing on time.

[1:23] David Armstrong: But back then the streets were mostly empty in large part because there were so few shows playing at any one time, and as a result, many Broadway theaters sat dark for months.

[1:33] David Armstrong: A phenomenal hit like A Chorus Line would still bring in the crowds, and every season a show or two of note could persuade audiences to venture into Times Square.

[1:42] David Armstrong: But overall it was not a healthy situation, and it was made even worse by the incredible power of the main critic of the New York Times who could make or break a show.

[1:51] David Armstrong: This, in tandem with some very out of date methods of producing and marketing shows, proved to be disastrous.

[1:57] David Armstrong: Every season, several musicals would open, receive a negative review from the Times, and then quickly close after only a few performances, losing their entire investment in the process.

[2:07] David Armstrong: All of this together opened the door for what is now called the British Invasion, a 10-year period when it seemed that shows, writers, directors, designers, producers, and even performers from the United Kingdom had sailed in and taken over Broadway and commandeered America's signature art form.

[2:32] David Armstrong: Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats is often categorized as the first of the British mega musicals, but it's really a 1970s style concept musical.

[2:41] David Armstrong: In fact, when you break it down, Cats is a total paraphrase of A Chorus Line.

[2:46] David Armstrong: Using a review-like format, a stage full of dancers, this time pretending to be cats, tell their individual stories to a powerful authority figure as they compete to be chosen and rewarded by him with a chance to move on to the next phase.

[3:00] David Armstrong: In A Chorus Line, that means getting this job dancing on Broadway, and in Cats, it means ascending into the heavy side layer, whatever that is.

[3:09] David Armstrong: However, the enormous popularity of Cats in 1978 had demonstrated that Andrew Lloyd Webber was a theatrical force to be reckoned with, even without his former partner Tim Rice.

[3:20] David Armstrong: And in fact, their already strained relationship came to an end when Tim Rice was asked to create a lyric for one song in Cats, the song that eventually became "Memory," and then had that lyric rejected in favor of one written by the show's director, Trevor Nunn.

[3:34] David Armstrong: Cats also introduced several elements that would become hallmarks of the British invasion.

[3:39] David Armstrong: It featured remarkable cutting-edge technical elements, including innovative scenic, lighting, costume, and sound design, all of which came together to create a memorable signature gasp-inducing stage effect, in this case the giant tire that shoots Grizabella into the heavens.

[3:56] David Armstrong: And it featured a centerpiece ballad with a lush, grand, expansive, classically inspired, sweeping melody for the leading lady to belt into the stratosphere.

[4:06] David Armstrong: Perhaps most importantly, Cats demonstrated the effect that modern global brand marketing could have on the sales and longevity of a Broadway musical.

[4:18] David Armstrong: All of those elements would be carried into the trio of spectacular, bombastic Brit hits that dominated Broadway during the 1990s.

[4:18] David Armstrong: Les Misérables, Phantom of the Opera, and Miss Saigon.

[4:31] David Armstrong: They were all produced first on London's West End before coming to Broadway as much-anticipated pre-sold hits.

[4:37] David Armstrong: They all went on to become worldwide sensations, and perhaps most unexpectedly, together they brought the operetta back to Broadway.

[4:46] David Armstrong: I guess eventually everything old is new again.

[4:49] David Armstrong: The 70s brought back the review and tap dancing, and the late 1980s revived the long-dormant operetta.

[4:56] David Armstrong: Let me be your shelter.

[5:00] David Armstrong: Let me be your light, your single.

[5:20] David Armstrong: Always beside me to hold me and to hide me.

[5:27] David Armstrong: Then say you said one love, one lifetime.

[5:48] David Armstrong: It's it won me.

[5:53] David Armstrong: Say you love me.

[6:02] David Armstrong: Love me.

[6:11] David Armstrong: Although these British invasion musicals included some elements of pop rock flavoring to keep up with the times, their love duets such as "Hearts Full of Love" from Les Misérables, "Sun and Moon" from Miss Saigon, or "This One" from Phantom, are virtually indistinguishable from "Indian Love Call," or "Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life" from Rose Marie and Naughty Marietta.

[6:11] David Armstrong: And Les Misérables' "Drink With Me" could have been lifted right out of the student prince.

[7:06] David Armstrong: Producer Cameron Mackintosh.

[7:09] David Armstrong: He was born in London in 1946.

[7:11] David Armstrong: He started out as a stagehand and a stage manager.

[7:14] David Armstrong: Then he produced a series of moderately successful shows before he took a chance on a show called Cats.

[7:20] David Armstrong: This, of course, became a massive hit and led to a string of successes.

[7:24] David Armstrong: And at the height of his success in 1990, he was described by the New York Times as being the most successful, influential, and powerful theatrical producer in the world.

[7:34] David Armstrong: Mackintosh is most notable as a producer for his transformation of the musical into a true global brand.

[7:40] David Armstrong: In 1983, a friend gave him a tape of a concert of a musical version of the Victor Hugo novel Les Misérables by writers Boublil and Schönberg.

[7:50] David Armstrong: The show's lyricist and book writer Alain Boublil was born in Tunisia to a Jewish family.

[7:55] David Armstrong: He moved to France at age 18 to work in the pop music industry.

[7:59] David Armstrong: But then, after seeing Jesus Christ Superstar in New York in 1973, he was inspired to create the first French rock opera, Les Révolution Francaise.

[8:09] David Armstrong: The composer for the piece was Claude-Michel Schönberg.

[8:12] David Armstrong: He was born in France to Hungarian Jewish parents.

[8:16] David Armstrong: His father was an organ repairer and his mother was a piano tuner.

[8:19] David Armstrong: After this initial moderately successful show, the team moved on to write about a different French Revolution.

[8:25] David Armstrong: The show was first produced as a concept album and then in concert in a large arena, and that's the tape of the show that Mackintosh fell in love with in 1983 and decided to produce after only hearing four of the songs.

[8:38] David Armstrong: But Mackintosh understood that much work had to be done.

[8:41] David Armstrong: The book of the show was very sketchy and in French.

[8:44] David Armstrong: It took years of development and the contributions of other writers to fill out the show.

[8:44] David Armstrong: Les Misérables opened in London in 1985 to blisteringly bad reviews.

[8:54] David Armstrong: The critics called it witless and synthetic entertainment and said it was the reduction of the literary mountain into a dramatic molehill.

[9:02] David Armstrong: But the next day, ticket buyers overwhelmed the box office.

[9:05] David Armstrong: The people loved the show from the very beginning.

[9:39] David Armstrong: 11 million dollars, double that of Cats.

[9:47] David Armstrong: Cameron Mackintosh's follow-up show, Phantom of the Opera, also got bad reviews.

[9:59] David Armstrong: Phantom of the Opera opened in London in 1986 and then on Broadway in 1988, and was still running in both cities up to the time of the shutdown.

[10:08] David Armstrong: Phantom was composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, with lyrics by Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe, and it was directed by Harold Prince.

[10:15] David Armstrong: Stilgoe and Lloyd Webber collaborated on writing the book.

[10:18] David Armstrong: Phantom is based on the 1925 silent movie and the 1910 French novel by Gaston Leroux.

[10:25] David Armstrong: This was the first of several Beauty in the Beast themed stories that have been adapted into musicals, such as Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Shrek, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and King Kong.

[10:36] David Armstrong: The Phantom of the Opera is the longest-running show in Broadway history with over 13,000 performances.

[10:43] David Armstrong: And the live stage production of Phantom of the Opera has grossed over six billion dollars through its productions all over the world.

[10:51] David Armstrong: However, recently, The Lion King passed Phantom success with international box office receipts of over 6.2 billion.

[10:58] David Armstrong: This makes these two live theater productions the highest grossing entertainment products of all time.

[11:04] David Armstrong: The third highest entertainment product of all time is the movie Avatar at 2.8 billion.

[11:10] David Armstrong: That puts every other film, TV, or video game below Phantom of the Opera and The Lion King.

[11:16] David Armstrong: Lloyd Webber's power and significance was made even more abundantly clear when he became the first composer since his idol Richard Rogers to have three shows running on Broadway at the same time: Phantom, Cats, and his other paraphrase of a chorus line, this time with dancers pretending to be trains, Starlight Express, which is sometimes referred to as Cats on Skates.

[11:38] David Armstrong: Like the operettas of the past, the Brit hits all feature romantic, melodramatic, often tragic storylines and offer very little in the way of comic relief or jokes.

[11:48] David Armstrong: And like their predecessors, even the comedy that is included is often not very funny.

[11:53] David Armstrong: I agree with our friend Albert Evans when he says that Le Miz's Master of the House is the least funny comedy song of all time.

[12:00] David Armstrong: The shows of this era took themselves very seriously, and because of that, they became prime targets for ridicule, especially from the long running off-Broadway musical review Forbidden Broadway.

[12:12] David Armstrong: At the end of the play, the audience smolder.

[12:15] David Armstrong: Sitting flat on their butts for three hours or more.

[12:19] David Armstrong: They can't wait to get back home and to read the libretto in bed to decipher whatever went on.

[12:24] David Armstrong: And what we said.

[12:27] David Armstrong: Better reach a synopsis.

[12:30] David Armstrong: At the end of the play.

[12:33] David Armstrong: Just as the Weber and Fields burlesque shows had done eighty years earlier, Forbidden Broadway's inspired creator Gerard Alessandrini took the biggest hits of the day and made fun of their grandiose and pretentious aspects unmercifully.

[12:47] David Armstrong: There was a time when shows were fun, and they used bright lighting, and the shows weren't so long, and the songs weren't so biting.

[13:57] David Armstrong: So constipated.

[14:01] David Armstrong: But now that miseries in style, it's artistic if you suffer.

[14:14] David Armstrong: So they tore my dress up home.

[14:20] David Armstrong: And the chorus girls walk away.

[14:32] David Armstrong: Come watch us brothel in the death.

[14:38] David Armstrong: Then buy a souvenir and dawn.

[14:44] David Armstrong: Rich folks pay twenty bucks a shit that has a starving pauper on it.

[15:05] David Armstrong: Where all the sets weren't piles of rubble.

[15:09] David Armstrong: I didn't have to belt.

[15:50] David Armstrong: In nineteen ninety-one, Bo Bill Schoenberg and Macintosh were back on Broadway with another direct from London hit, Miss Saigon.

[16:10] David Armstrong: This time they took the basic storyline of the classic opera Madame Butterfly, which itself had been based on a hit play, and they transposed it into the Vietnam War era.

[16:24] David Armstrong: They were inspired by a photo they had seen in a French news magazine that showed a Vietnamese woman bidding a tearful goodbye to her young daughter at an airport during the fall of Saigon.

[16:35] David Armstrong: Schoenberg later wrote, There was no way I could predict the impact of this photograph.

[16:40] David Armstrong: The little Vietnamese girl was about to board a plane for the United States where her father, an ex-GI she had never met, was waiting for her.

[16:48] David Armstrong: Her mother would never see her again.

[16:50] David Armstrong: Was that not the most moving, the most staggering example of the ultimate sacrifice as undergone by the title character in Madame Butterfly, giving up her life for her child.

[17:01] David Armstrong: You didn't ask me to be born.

[17:33] David Armstrong: The subject matter was completely unexpected, he later said.

[17:37] David Armstrong: It was contemporary, and contemporary musicals don't usually work.

[17:41] David Armstrong: And it was on a topic that had brought America to the brink.

[17:44] David Armstrong: I had to think about it.

[17:45] David Armstrong: Ultimately, he decided to produce the show, he said, despite and perhaps because of the extraordinary challenge that it represented.

[17:53] David Armstrong: He suggested that they partner with lyricist Richard Maltby to create the English lyrics.

[17:58] David Armstrong: Miss Saigon opened in London in 1989, where it became an enormous hit and where it ultimately ran more than 10 years.

[18:20] David Armstrong: As long as you can have your chat.

[18:59] David Armstrong: Price was the white British actor who played a mixed-race, half French, half Vietnamese character called The Engineer, but Actors' Equity Association, the Union for Professional Actors in America, declared that the role should be played by an Asian American actor and threatened to deny permission for Jonathan Price to work on Broadway.

[19:17] David Armstrong: McIntosh was furious and threatened to cancel the entire New York production and all of the jobs that went along with it.

[19:24] David Armstrong: After much controversy, Price was allowed to open the show amid protests, and he received the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

[19:32] David Armstrong: However, every actor who followed him in that role during Miss Saigon's nearly 10-year run on Broadway, as well as in its many national and international tours and revivals, has been of Asian heritage.

[19:44] David Armstrong: Most importantly, that controversy jumpstarted some very necessary and important debates and conversations in regard to racial equity and culturally conscious casting on Broadway and in the theater at large that we are still grappling with today.

[20:02] David Armstrong: As I mentioned earlier, Hal Prince was the director of Phantom of the Opera.

[20:07] David Armstrong: And there was one other American still standing and still making a mark during the years of the British invasion, and that was Stephen Sondheim.

[20:14] David Armstrong: Strangely, Sondheim shares a birthday with Andrew Lloyd Webber, but in great contrast to Lloyd Webber's bombastic mega musicals, during this period, Sondheim focused on small-scale artsy concept musicals in collaboration with a new partner, playwright and director James Lapine.

[20:31] David Armstrong: These shows felt very sophisticated and modern, even though they employed the traditional Broadway approach of having spoken dialogue book scenes between the songs, and this was in great contrast to the sung-through, continuous music international style structure of the British shows.

[20:48] David Armstrong: The Sondheim-Lapine musical *Sunday in the Park with George* was inspired by the French pointillist painter Georges Seurat's painting, *A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte*. The story of the first act is set in 1884 and revolves around a fictionalized version of the painter Georges Seurat, who is obsessed with completing his painting, as well as his relationship with his model and lover, Dot. The second act is set 100 years later, and their great-grandson, also named George, is a contemporary conceptual artist struggling to find inspiration for his next work. The Broadway production opened in 1984 and received that year's Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

[22:01] David Armstrong: *Into the Woods*, with music and lyrics by Sondheim and a book by Lapine, intertwines the plots of several classic fairy tales as they were told in early, sometimes gruesome versions by the Brothers Grimm. *Into the Woods* opened on Broadway in 1987 and won Tony Awards for Best Score and Best Book in the same season that *Phantom of the Opera* swept most of the other awards, including Best Musical. *Into the Woods* has been revived on Broadway three times and was adapted into a hit film in 2014, and it's one of the most frequently produced shows by high school theater programs. Sondheim and Lapine's final show, *Passion*, was adapted from an Italian film *Passione d'Amore* and a novel called *Fosca*.

This show is set in 19th century Italy, and the plot concerns a young, handsome soldier named Giorgio and Fosca, his commander's unattractive, sickly cousin, who falls fiercely, passionately, and obsessively in love with him and pursues him relentlessly. In spite of receiving very mixed audience and critical response, *Passion* won the 1994 Tony Awards for Best Score, Best Book, and Best Musical.

[23:07] David Armstrong: One thing that the Sondheim musicals and the Brit hits had in common was the near-total absence of dancing. Except for *Miss Saigon*, none of these shows featured significant choreography, and only rarely did they use dance as a storytelling tool. In the mega-musicals, it was the scenery that moved in spectacular ways and assisted in telling the story. This was partly because, as we've discussed, nearly all of the great director-choreographers—Champion, Fosse, Bennett, Joe Layton, Ron Field, and others—had been swept away suddenly by a series of early deaths from AIDS and other causes during the 1980s. This left only Tommy Tune to demonstrate the kinetic power and energy that inspired direction and choreography could instill in a musical.

[23:48] David Armstrong: We'll take a glass together. In celebration of our meeting. In celebration! Friendly, civilized, members of the race I'll bring to you. No, I to you'll drink the first time. He demonstrated this vividly through his Tony Award-winning stagings of the musicals *Nine* in 1982, *Grand Hotel* in 1989, and *The Will Rogers Follies* in 1991. We'll take a glass together. And we will lift it up to the good one! And as we're lifting it, we will most sincerely say "cheers." If you've never seen this number, I encourage you to Google "We'll Take a Glass Together" from *Grand Hotel*'s performance on the 1990 Tony Awards.

[24:50] David Armstrong: There was one American composer who achieved a measure of success by adopting the British Poperetta model, and that was Frank Wlidhorn. Born to Jewish parents in New York City in 1959, Wildhorn spent his early childhood in Harlem, the Bronx, and Queens before his family moved to Hollywood, Florida when he was 14. As a teen, he played in and wrote music for several bands that ranged from rock and roll to R&B to jazz. And he continued to write in a wide variety of musical styles throughout his career. He told a reporter, "I just love music."

[26:21] David Armstrong: This adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's famous Gothic horror novel ran four years on Broadway and featured several international style songs that have been widely performed. Wildhorn followed that up with the era's only comic Poperetta, *The Scarlet Pimpernel*, based on another classic novel. And when his song cycle review-like musical *The Civil War* opened in 1998, he became the next composer to have three musicals running on Broadway simultaneously, at least for a brief time.

[27:44] David Armstrong: But these and a number of other musicals he has written have proven to be very popular in Asia and in Europe. On the next episode of *Broadway Nation*, my guest will be author Michael Riedel, whose new book *Singular Sensation: The Triumph of Broadway* tells the story of Broadway during the 1990s, including the sudden surprise retreat of the British invasion, the rebirth of the musical comedy, and Broadway's dramatic comeback following the tragedy of 9/11. Till next time, here's one more number from *Forbidden Broadway*.

[28:40] David Armstrong: I'm Cameron Mackintosh, the Emperor of Broadway, but there's something you ought to know. Though I came, I saw, I conquered with my show business finesse. And my casting of *Miss Saigon* puts the union in distress. It's my marketing of souvenirs that's more of a success.

[29:05] David Armstrong: *Broadway Nation* is written and produced by me, David Armstrong. If you enjoy these podcasts, you would do me a big favor by subscribing to the show wherever you listen. And if you listen on Apple Podcasts, please give the show a five-star rating and write a brief review. This will really help to get the show in front of other Broadway fans that might be interested. I also invite you to follow *Broadway Nation* on Twitter, Instagram, and our Facebook page, where I often post photos, video, and additional information about the musicals that are profiled in each episode. Special thanks to KVSH 101.9, the voice of beautiful Vashon Island, Washington, and blankets and mittens, whiskers and cat ears and little stuffed kittens, old lame bodices held up by strings. These are a few of my souvenir things.

[29:59] David Armstrong: Records and CDs and vocal selections. Cat gloves and cattails from cat vivisections. Lloyd Webber dolls and Comb Wilkinson rings. These are a few of my souvenir things. When the show flops, when the gross drops, when a week is slow. I market and merchandise souvenir things. And grosses don't seem so low. Keychains and wallets and chandelier crystals. Coffee cups, playing cards, Jean Valjean pistols, toy helicopters and turntable springs. These are a few of my souvenir things. Lame is chocolates, shaped like orphans, patches for your sleeve. It costs one hundred dollars to come see the show. And one hundred more to...