The Lord of the Rings - The Musical

Paul switches into Geek mode: Since 26 April 1996, 22 book musicals (not counting dance musicals, revues and revivals) opened on Broadway and ran more than a year. Their PRIMARY source materials have been: Film: 9 (The Lion King, The Producers, Hairspray, Thoroughly Modern Millie, The Full Monty, Footloose, Saturday Night Fever, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels & Spamalot) Novel: 5 (Jekyll & Hyde, Wicked, Ragtime, The Light in the Piazza & The Scarlet Pimpernel) Opera: 2 (Rent & Aida) Play: 1 (…Spelling Bee) Historical Events: 1 (Titanic) TV show (unofficialy, but obviously): 1 (Avenue Q) Popular Music: 1 (Mamma Mia!) This leaves only two original Musicals: Urinetown & The Life BUT The combination of music and drama has ALWAYS been an adaptive art form. The first operas written about 400 years ago were all based on Mythology or Ancient History. Even if you combine opera, operetta and musicals you would be hard pressed to find many truly original works, but this doesn’t lessen the worth of the others. The truly great works transcend their source. Is Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro a lesser work because it is based on a play? In fact the only composer I can think of whose majority of theatrical work is original is Sir Arthur Sullivan. In recent years there has been a shift in that films are becoming more and more popular as a primary source, but this is only because film is still relatively new, and these things takes time. Is a musical based on a film any less of a musical than that based on a novel? Is Dialogues of the Carmelites a lesser opera than The Turn of the Screw? The most succesful totally original musicals are, without a doubt, Grease and A Chorus Line Are they truly greater than Oklahoma!; Fiddler; Show Boat; Les Miz; The Sound of Music; et al.? We are already starting to see TV make its appearance as a primary source (Jerry Springer, Avenue Q) but it will take a while before that really takes off. In fact one of the most exciting new musicals of the last ten years WAS a TV show (Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More With Feeling) “…the musical is dying because it cannot support an original Idea.” If this were true then the form has been dying ever since it was born 409 years ago, and it still ain’t dead!!!