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[0:00] David Armstrong: Hello, this is David Armstrong.

[0:02] David Armstrong: I'm going to be taking the month of January off to work on my upcoming book, but in the meantime, I'll be sharing some of my favorite episodes from the past that you may have missed or may enjoy hearing again.

[0:14] David Armstrong: Thank you so much for listening to Broadway Nation, and I especially want to thank our patron club members, including our newest members, John Schroeder and Alan Brody, whose generous support helps to make this podcast possible.

[0:28] David Armstrong: If you would like to help support the creation of Broadway Nation, I'll have information at the end of the episode about how you too can become a patron.

[0:36] David Armstrong: Now, here's a specially selected Encore episode.

[0:40] David Armstrong: See you in February.

[0:43] David Armstrong: Welcome to the season one finale episode of Broadway Nation, the podcast that tells the remarkable story of how immigrants, Jews, queers, African Americans, and other outcasts invented the Broadway musical and how they changed America in the process.

[0:57] David Armstrong: I'm David Armstrong, and I call this episode Sensory Abundance, or Why We Are Hooked on Musicals.

[1:03] David Armstrong: This podcast is inspired by a course I teach on the history of the Broadway musical at the University of Washington School of Drama.

[1:10] David Armstrong: And it is clear to me from the enrollment and the response to this class that young people today have a strong affinity and affection for musicals.

[1:18] David Armstrong: And this is true of all kinds of young people.

[1:21] David Armstrong: In my most recent class, of the 99 students that were enrolled in the course, only two of them were theater majors.

[1:27] David Armstrong: The other 97 came from all over the campus, with a majority of them majoring in some kind of engineering program.

[1:33] David Armstrong: So to me, it's obvious that this affinity for musicals is as widespread among Generation Z as it is among the Millennials that came before them.

[1:41] David Armstrong: For this, we can largely thank Howard Ashman, Alan Mencken, and the Disney Renaissance.

[1:46] David Armstrong: Both of those generations, the Millennials and the Gen Zs, grew up on those original Disney animated feature films, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Lion King, and all of the imitations and offshoots, including the live stage versions that were inspired by them.

[2:03] David Armstrong: This was important because these movies reintroduced and renormalized the concepts, language, devices, and format of the Broadway musical.

[2:16] David Armstrong: There goes the baker with his trade like always.

[2:20] David Armstrong: The same old bread and rolls to sell.

[2:23] David Armstrong: Every morning, just the same, since the morning that we came to this poor provincial town.

[2:28] David Armstrong: Good morning, pal.

[2:29] David Armstrong: Morning, monsieur.

[2:30] David Armstrong: Where are you off to?

[2:31] David Armstrong: The bookshop.

[2:32] David Armstrong: I just finished the most wonderful story about a beanstalk in an over and Marie!

[2:38] David Armstrong: Rebecca!

[2:39] David Armstrong: Hurry up!

[2:40] David Armstrong: Look, there she goes, the early strange, no question.

[2:44] David Armstrong: Date and distracted, can't you tell?

[2:47] David Armstrong: Nickle Paul's in any crowd was ahead to hold some flower.

[2:55] David Armstrong: For these young generations, the idea that stories would be told through music and dance, and the characters would express their emotions, hopes, and desires through song seemed very natural to them, as it has for most generations throughout history, including baby boomers like Albert Evans and I, as you'll hear in just a few minutes.

[3:13] David Armstrong: Really, I think it's only been the Gen X cohort that has struggled with this.

[3:17] David Armstrong: For a number of reasons, musicals often seemed alien and ridiculous to many people in that generation, although certainly not all of them.

[3:25] David Armstrong: Now, this is something I've never understood.

[3:27] David Armstrong: To my mind, the conceits of musicals are no harder to accept than those of superhero movies or Star Wars or other sci-fi adventures.

[3:36] David Armstrong: But many Gen Xers have had a very strong aversion to the form, and as a result, for a number of years, musicals fell out of fashion and got a bad name with the media and the culture at large.

[3:48] David Armstrong: This shouldn't be too surprising, I guess.

[3:50] David Armstrong: Theater overall has been pronounced dead or at least dying many times over the millennia, but it has always bounced back.

[3:57] David Armstrong: In the 21st century, at least up to the time of the COVID shutdown, musicals have been in what some have called a second golden age or maybe a platinum age.

[4:07] David Armstrong: And this is in terms of popularity, cultural acceptance, influence, and visibility.

[4:12] David Armstrong: This resurgence has included record breaking attendance of live Broadway musicals in New York, on tour across America, in the West End and around the world, as well as a resurgence in movie musicals, TV musicals, and even most recently TikTok created musicals.

[4:30] David Armstrong: I've spent at least some part of every day since I was about five years old or so thinking about Broadway musicals, including my entire 40-year professional career, which has been entirely focused on performing, staging, producing, writing, shaping, guiding, teaching, and spreading my passion for Broadway musicals.

[4:49] David Armstrong: Now it would not be unreasonable to ask the question why?

[4:53] David Armstrong: Why do musicals matter to the point where you would spend your entire life devoted to them?

[4:58] David Armstrong: What is it about musicals that for me at least makes this a life well spent?

[5:03] David Armstrong: I recently had the opportunity to talk about all of this with my frequent guest and co-host Albert Evans.

[5:09] David Armstrong: Here's some of that conversation.

[5:11] David Armstrong: So hello, Albert.

[5:12] Albert Evans: Hello, David.

[5:13] David Armstrong: So glad we could get together today to sort of sum up this season that we've been through.

[5:18] Albert Evans: Well, I think that's it's sort of valedictory, but there will be another season, so no tears.

[5:18] David Armstrong: There will be.

[5:24] David Armstrong: It's in the works already.

[5:26] Albert Evans: It's absolutely in the works.

[5:27] David Armstrong: Just like me, you've spent most of your career, most of your life really focused on Broadway musicals.

[5:34] Albert Evans: You don't have to tell me.

[5:37] David Armstrong: You think that's a fair way to summarize the life of Albert Evans?

[5:41] Albert Evans: I think it is pretty much everything else has just been window dressing.

[5:45] David Armstrong: And as I, you know, said a few minutes ago, it's reasonable for people to ask why.

[5:50] David Armstrong: Why would you do that?

[5:51] David Armstrong: Why would you spend all that time focused on something that some people would think of as trivial as Broadway musicals?

[5:59] Albert Evans: But I thought let's start at the very beginning, as we've heard someone in the musical theater say before.

[6:05] Albert Evans: And before we get to the why, let's look at the how and the when.

[6:10] Albert Evans: Let's start with you, and then you can turn the tables on me.

[6:13] Albert Evans: How did this come about?

[6:14] Albert Evans: When did you get hooked on musicals and why?

[6:17] Albert Evans: Let's go back to your earliest memories of Broadway music.

[6:22] David Armstrong: Well, I'm an Ohio boy.

[6:24] David Armstrong: I'm from Columbus, Ohio, which is pretty much a musical theater desert.

[6:29] David Armstrong: In fact, it's kind of an arts desert.

[6:31] David Armstrong: There wasn't a lot of interest in the arts.

[6:33] Albert Evans: Which I think is very different now.

[6:35] David Armstrong: Oh, yeah.

[6:35] David Armstrong: Oh, now it's a hotbed of all sorts of chicanery.

[6:39] Albert Evans: But I guess it was from the Ed Sullivan shows.

[6:42] Albert Evans: I grew up in the 50s.

[6:44] Albert Evans: So I would see musicals on the Ed Sullivan shows, and I didn't quite understand what I was looking at.

[6:49] Albert Evans: Like, who are these people and why are they, you know, dressed like they're from medieval times or whatever.

[6:56] Albert Evans: But I got used to that and I really looked forward to whenever they would do it because I could tell they weren't just singing a song.

[7:03] Albert Evans: They were doing something else.

[7:05] Albert Evans: And I guess what it really struck me was I was listening to the radio.

[7:10] Albert Evans: There was a program on WMI every week called The Best of Brothers.

[7:15] Albert Evans: And they would play cast recordings, but the host would also, between the songs, he would read the liner notes that were always, you know, at that time, they were very erudite.

[7:26] Albert Evans: They were written by people who really knew what was going on, like Charles Burr's and M.

[7:31] Albert Evans: I remember wrote a lot of liner notes.

[7:33] Albert Evans: And so I would, you know, listen to those.

[7:35] Albert Evans: And I got hooked on that by accident.

[7:37] Albert Evans: Just one day I was turning on the radio and I heard this fascinating music.

[7:42] Albert Evans: It sounded like classical music, but yet I could tell that they were that it was supposed to be funny, that they were mocking what they were saying, or they were mocking the characters that they were playing.

[7:53] Albert Evans: And it turned out to be the Ascot Gavotte from My Fair Lady.

[7:58] Albert Evans: Every two months young.

[8:02] Albert Evans: Everyone who should be what a smashing, positively dashing, spectacle the scope and day.

[8:14] Albert Evans: At the gate are all horses waiting for the cube to fly away.

[8:22] Albert Evans: What a great thing, absolutely ringing scope and day.

[8:29] David Armstrong: And how old are you at this point, do you think?

[8:32] Albert Evans: I was probably maybe nine or ten, but I really didn't know what was going on until they finally said that was My Fair Lady, direct from Broadway.

[8:41] Albert Evans: Then I put it together with the Ed Sullivan show.

[8:44] Albert Evans: Oh, that's what I've been seeing.

[8:46] Albert Evans: And the other main influence was my fifth grade teacher, Miss Schultz.

[8:51] Albert Evans: And looking back on it now, I think she must have been an aspiring musical theater actress.

[8:56] Albert Evans: She was probably in her early 20s, you know, just out of college, and she probably did shows in college.

[9:01] Albert Evans: But I didn't know.

[9:02] Albert Evans: I thought she was a grown-up who, for some reason, she had the cast album of The Music Man.

[9:09] Albert Evans: And every day, if we were good, she would play a cut from The Music Man, and then she would read the scene because she has the script too.

[9:09] Albert Evans: Then she would read the scene, playing all of the characters.

[9:22] Albert Evans: I guess she would do that before the song.

[9:24] Albert Evans: She would lead into a song.

[9:26] Albert Evans: Oh, you will spy my people.

[9:47] Albert Evans: And then that's enough for today.

[9:50] Albert Evans: And so it was like, you know, a cliffhanger.

[9:53] Albert Evans: So then I just nagged my parents to get me The Music Man cast recording, and they did.

[9:58] Albert Evans: And then I began to get some other cast recordings on my own.

[10:02] Albert Evans: I just knew I wanted more and more of it.

[10:04] Albert Evans: Songs that told a story and had characters and weren't just pop songs.

[10:09] Albert Evans: So what about you, David?

[10:10] David Armstrong: I know you lived in Cincinnati, where there was a lot of theater.

[10:15] David Armstrong: It was popular, and you got you actually got touring shows and stuff.

[10:19] David Armstrong: So what was your introduction?

[10:21] David Armstrong: So for me, the legend, the family lore, and I've tried to figure out how much of this is true.

[10:27] David Armstrong: But the story is that my mother was taking myself and one of her friends and their kids to see Dumbo.

[10:34] David Armstrong: And they went to the wrong movie theater, and we ended up seeing Gypsy instead.

[10:39] David Armstrong: Here she is, boys.

[10:43] David Armstrong: Here she is, world.

[10:47] David Armstrong: Here's Rose.

[10:50] David Armstrong: The movie of Gypsy with Rosalind Russell, which is not quite the same.

[10:54] David Armstrong: Kurt.

[10:56] David Armstrong: And I've tried to figure this out.

[10:58] David Armstrong: The movie Gypsy came out in 1962.

[11:01] David Armstrong: Now I don't think we went to see it.

[11:03] David Armstrong: We didn't go downtown, so I don't think we saw it the first run.

[11:05] David Armstrong: And of course, movies played for long periods of time back then.

[11:09] David Armstrong: But the fact is, I ended up seeing Gypsy, the movie of Gypsy, when I was about four or five years old, and became completely obsessed with it.

[11:17] David Armstrong: And was like you, I insisted on having the cast album of Gypsy.

[11:21] David Armstrong: I remember that album so specifically, it is emblazoned in my head.

[11:25] David Armstrong: It was my, of course, my first exposure to that show, my first exposure to practically any show.

[11:30] David Armstrong: And of course, the attraction for me is there were kids in it.

[11:33] David Armstrong: It was kids in show business movie as far as a five-year-old is concerned.

[11:38] Albert Evans: Absolutely.

[11:39] Albert Evans: Extra!

[11:40] Albert Evans: Extra!

[11:40] David Armstrong: Hey, look at the headline historical news is being made.

[11:51] David Armstrong: A barrel of charge, a fabulous drill, the biggest little headline of all of them.

[11:58] David Armstrong: Three zing!

[12:00] David Armstrong: In version, that three foot three battle of dynamite!

[12:05] David Armstrong: Baby June!

[12:15] David Armstrong: Hello, everybody!

[12:17] David Armstrong: My name is June.

[12:19] David Armstrong: What's yours?

[12:21] David Armstrong: Yes.

[12:23] David Armstrong: Once we got to, you know, the last 20 minutes or half an hour of the story, I'm sure I was much less interested in what was going on once it got to the adults.

[12:32] David Armstrong: But it completely sucked me in.

[12:35] David Armstrong: And you know, to this day, it has remained one of my favorite musicals.

[12:39] David Armstrong: And if you're gonna expose a kid to a musical, you know, granted the subject matter might be a little problematic for some people, but the quality of that material, which I'm sure I didn't appreciate on any level at the moment, but it's, you know, it's all subliminal.

[12:54] David Armstrong: We absorb these things.

[12:55] Albert Evans: Children will listen, as is a good example of both you and I.

[12:59] David Armstrong: So from that point on, I was, and I, it may have been I was already in, I was probably interested in this already, especially from movies on TV.

[13:08] David Armstrong: When I was a little older, I would play that game of the TV guide would show up and you would sit and go through every page to see what movies were gonna be on that week and circle them and make sure you got to watch, you know, Singing in the Rain, because it wasn't gonna be on for another year if you didn't see it that time that it came around.

[13:26] David Armstrong: And sometimes it would be like 3:30 in the morning, you'd have to get up and see it.

[13:30] Albert Evans: Yeah, I wasn't allowed to do that when I was 10, but when I got into high school, yes, I would stay up till and watch it at two in the morning on the late late show or something.

[13:38] David Armstrong: So I think the same kind of thing, the same idea of telling stories through music captivated me from the very, very beginning and has not let go of me yet.

[13:48] David Armstrong: You talked about Cincinnati and that was a big city, we had roadshows, and a couple very influential things for me when I was a kid, maybe I was like nine or ten, I don't really remember.

[13:58] David Armstrong: The national tour of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown came to town.

[14:29] David Armstrong: I remember exactly what it looked like. I remember the view from my seat to the stage.

[14:45] Albert Evans: You're the kind of reminder we need. You have humility, nobility, and the same rare indeed. Boom! You're a good man, Charlie Brown. And we know you will go very far. Yes, it's hard to believe. Almost waiting to conceive what a good man you are.

[15:09] David Armstrong: And you know, it's one of the things I talk about a lot is this, um, the memories that musicals create. Musicals create memories that I think linger in our brain much longer than almost anything that ever happens to us. I know people who are in their 80s now and they saw the original production of You Name It, My Fair Lady or whatever, and they can remember, they have the visceral memory, not only in their mind but in their bodies, of what the show was like, and what else do they remember from that year? Similarly, like You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, whatever year that was, that is emblazoned in my, you know, it's part of me. It's become, I've absorbed that and it's become part of me. And so why is that?

Why is it specifically musicals that have this effect on us, on people like us? I'm gonna talk about that a little later in my sort of wrap-up. Okay, but just as a preview of it, I think it's because the musicals hit us on so many different levels at the same time. I think that's it. There's such a sensory assault. So much is going on. There's music and dancing and singing and set changes. I mean, it's just this kaleidoscope, you know, you can't take it all in, especially when you're a kid.

[16:27] Albert Evans: That's exactly right. I do think it's the sensory, not overload, but, uh, abundance.

[16:33] David Armstrong: That's a great way of saying it. The sensory abundance of a musical impacts us in so many different ways and so many different levels that if it really works, we can't forget it.

[16:42] Albert Evans: Right. I also say that's why it's so hard to sit through a bad show, because our whole physicality is participating in the show. And if the show flies, we fly with it and we feel really good. If the show is just inert, we get exhausted by the end of the show because we've been physically willing it to be good. We've been trying to help.

[17:04] David Armstrong: We've been doing our part to participate, which doesn't happen with television or a movie. If it's bad, it's just bad, and we just sit there and go, "Oh, this is boring." But it doesn't affect us on a physical level.

[17:15] Albert Evans: No. And I think that's maybe why people who don't like going to the theater don't like going to the theater because they've never been to anything good. They didn't go to things that really gave them the—they had to work too hard to, uh, at something that wasn't effective and wasn't being done well.

[17:29] David Armstrong: Right.

[17:30] Albert Evans: Oh, wait, don't go away. Broadway Nation will be back with more sensory abundance right after this short break.

[17:46] David Armstrong: If only you weren't so wishy-washy. Let's get to the why a little bit more, the why. Why do we love this art form so much? What is it about the Broadway musical, musical theater that keeps you fascinated for, you know, a lifetime?

[18:08] Albert Evans: I think it's, I mean, I'm a musician, I'm a composer, I've always been involved in music, but I think it's the music. And it's the way music is used. It's not like there's a band on stage and they're all playing their instruments and they're being themselves. In musical theater, the music is either actually invisible, they're down in a pit, or it's conceptually invisible. If they're on stage, they're not really there.

[18:38] David Armstrong: And it's one thing to do a soliloquy and reveal your anger or your love or your some private thought. It's quite another to sing those things because the music, the instrumental music, it seeps into your brain. You can't exclude it. You can't say, "Go away, music." You can close your eyes, but it's there and it gives the illusion of being inside you.

[19:03] Albert Evans: So you're not looking at someone on stage making music. You yourself, your own body is producing the music to some extent. And I think that's why, unless you just hate the music, it's irresistible because you can't shut your ears to it. You can't close your eyes to it. And it's telling you something. Music is great at expressing emotions.

[19:26] David Armstrong: And sometimes the music contradicts what the people are saying, or sometimes it just tells us, like when Eliza sings, "I could have danced all night." Without the music, if she just sang the melody, it would be just this lovely long line, "I could have danced all night." These long notes, very pretty, but it would sound very reflective. But what the orchestra is doing is underneath that.

[19:55] Albert Evans: I could have slept.

[19:56] David Armstrong: And that is what expresses the state of her mind. That's why she can't go to sleep. Not because she's, "I could have danced all night, and now I'll go to bed." You can't go to bed when the orchestra is going.

[20:11] Albert Evans: And that's part of her. How would you do that in a straight play without music? She just said, "I shouldn't have had that cup of coffee," or "I'm too jittery to go to bed," but that doesn't make us feel it the way that does.

[20:24] David Armstrong: In the most recent episode before this, I argue that musicals are realer than real, realer than a play, realer than a movie.

[20:32] Albert Evans: Yeah.

[20:33] David Armstrong: Because it can tell you all this information on different levels.

[20:35] Albert Evans: That's a great example of it right there.

[20:37] David Armstrong: So I actually think it's more representative of real life than other kinds of narrative are.

[20:43] Albert Evans: Absolutely.

[20:44] David Armstrong: So I think it was Yaparberg that said, "Words make you think a thought, music makes you feel a feeling, and a song makes you feel a thought." And I think that that is a pretty good formulation of what happens in musicals.

[21:23] Albert Evans: Absolutely. And I think for both of us this interest in watching this form develop, which is what this season definitely has been about, this evolution of this initial idea, and it's still the same thing, which I think is so interesting. If we go back to the very first musicals, we looked at, you know, Little Johnny Jones as an example.

[21:45] David Armstrong: It is recognizably the same thing as Hamilton today. Even though you couldn't have two shows that are completely different, and look at the hundred and twenty years that's happened in between them, and every aspect of the musical that's changed, it's still recognizably they're both Broadway musicals.

[22:01] Albert Evans: Yeah.

[22:02] David Armstrong: And one commonality is that in Little Johnny Jones or in Hamilton, they're singing the songs to tell the story. They're singing, you know, Johnny Jones, whether we remember it or not, is singing "Give My Regards to Broadway" because his friends are getting on a ship from England, and he has to stay there, and he's telling them.

[22:22] Albert Evans: When you get back to New York, tell everybody I know that I remember them.

[22:26] David Armstrong: And I'm thinking about that. I'm in kind of a pickle here in London, but I haven't forgotten.

[22:31] Albert Evans: I don't know how to thank you, Flo.

[22:33] David Armstrong: Anything for you, Jonesy.

[22:35] Albert Evans: Then Flo. Would you do me one more favor?

[22:38] David Armstrong: Sure, kid.

[22:39] Albert Evans: What is it?

[22:41] David Armstrong: Give my regards to Broadway.

[22:47] Albert Evans: Remember me to Harold Square.

[22:57] David Armstrong: That it, you know, there is a story content to it. That is not really a salute to Broadway. It's a salute to the people who hang around Broadway. And it has emotional content because of that. It has story content and emotional content.

[23:08] Albert Evans: Right.

[23:09] David Armstrong: Whisper of how I'm here to mingle with the old time through.

[23:23] Albert Evans: Give my regards to Broadway and say that I'll be there long.

[23:37] David Armstrong: Well, thank you, Albert.

[23:38] Albert Evans: Thank you so much.

[23:39] David Armstrong: Thank you, Dave. And we'll pick this up in just a very short time with season two.

[23:43] Albert Evans: I look forward to it.

[23:44] David Armstrong: Before we wrap this up, I just want to return for a moment to that idea of sensory abundance that Albert and I discussed earlier. As we've seen, musicals are experiences that get embedded in our psyches. We remember them forever, vividly and often in great and specific detail, and they get embedded in our emotional and physical memory as well. Our bodies and nervous systems recall how we felt when we experienced them even lifetimes later. Why does this happen? Because musicals work on so many levels at once, we use all of our senses except maybe smell to experience them.

[24:38] Albert Evans: First of all, the events, meaning, themes, text, and subtext of the story, including both the surface and hidden motivations of the characters.

[24:47] David Armstrong: Then add to that the puzzles of the lyrics. And it's no coincidence that most good lyricists are also expert and enthusiastic crossword puzzle fans. We are captivated by the lyrics in a show because even as we're hearing them for the first time, our brains are tracking and admiring the rhyme schemes, alliteration, and other poetic devices, as well as the references, illusions, and metaphors.

[25:10] Albert Evans: Now add the music to the mix.

[25:13] David Armstrong: As we listen, even if we know nothing about music theory, we are still on some level analyzing the form, structure, rhythmic patterns, and harmonics of the music. And then there are the visual clues, the meanings and metaphors of the stage pictures, the dance, the movement, the set, costume, and lighting design.

[25:32] Albert Evans: And throughout the entire performance, we are constantly gauging our intellectual and emotional response to the show and how our response relates to the rest of the audience and to the entire experience.

[25:43] David Armstrong: Our whole being is fully engaged in trying to figure out what it all means, and perhaps most importantly, what effect it will have on us. What will be the takeaways? What will we learn from this event? This is why I believe musicals are the most engaging and involving form of art and entertainment. Musicals are a total full body experience. They are total theater.

[26:08] Albert Evans: As we stumble along on life's funny journey.

[26:15] David Armstrong: As we stumble along into the blue. We look here and we look there. Seeking answers anywhere. Never sure of where to turn or what to do.

[26:37] David Armstrong: I'm planning to return with season two of Broadway Nation during the first week of May. In the meantime, I invite you to catch up on any episodes that you may have missed and to follow the show on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where there's a lively community of Broadway fans and friends of the pod.

[26:53] David Armstrong: Broadway Nation is written and produced by me, David Armstrong. Special thanks to today's guest, Albert Evans, KVSH 101.9, the voice of beautiful Vashon Island, Washington, and to the entire team at the Broadway Podcast Network.

[27:09] David Armstrong: As we stumble along, still we bumble through life's crazy labyrinth.

[28:03] David Armstrong: Now here's the information about how you too can become a patron of Broadway Nation. A donation of just $7 a month will not only keep Broadway Nation rolling along, it will also provide you with exclusive access to the complete unedited versions of many of the interviews that you hear on this podcast. And all patrons will receive special shout outs and acknowledgments of your vital support for Broadway Nation.

[28:29] David Armstrong: To join, simply go to BroadwayNationPodcast.tech. That's BroadwayNationPodcast.tech. Or click the link in the show notes to this episode. Broadway Nation is written and produced by me, David Armstrong. Special thanks to Pals Mox for his help with editing this episode and to the entire team at the Broadway Podcast Network.