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- Volume 2, Issue 3, 2008
Studies in Musical Theatre - Volume 2, Issue 3, 2008
Volume 2, Issue 3, 2008
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Carmen Jones: a Carmen la Afro-American
More LessThis study intends to examine the unconscious desires and the phantasmatic substratum lying at the core of two adaptations of Georges Bizet's Carmen: the musical Carmen Jones by Oscar Hammerstein II (1943) and Otto Preminger's film Carmen Jones (1954). After analysing the differences from the original story by Prosper Mrime and the changes operated by Bizet's librettists which led to the creation of the myth of Carmen, the study focuses on Hammerstein's own justification of his choice of the African-American community to replace the gypsy one. The close examination of Hammerstein's use of words then reveals the fantasy which produced the transference leading to the transformation of Carmen into Carmen Jones. By resorting to various psychoanalytical theories and concepts, it is made clear that Hammerstein's choice originated in some kind of projected fantasy. Otto Preminger's film adaptation of Hammerstein's musical bears the mark of the same fantasy and participates in the construction of a blackness which is but a white construct. This was even strengthened by the decision to dub the leading role by a white singer, obviously raising the problem of the unconscious nature of the voice.
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Eliza, where the devil are my songs?: negotiating voice, text and performance analysis in Rex Harrison's Henry Higgins
More LessThis article seeks to address differing perspectives on text, performance and voice in musical theatre, examining in particular the potential advantages and capacity for realism in performance by non-singing actors in demanding vocal roles. This analysis takes the form of a case study focussing on Rex Harrison's portrayal of Professor Henry Higgins in Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady (1956). A classically trained actor, Harrison's interpretation of Loewe's score was spoken on pitch. In this paper I will examine the effect this technique had on the realism of his character, informing this with a psychoanalytical reading of his relationship with the antagonist Eliza Doolittle, focussing on the process of transformative identification (after Freud and Lacan). I will assess two specific moments in Harrison's portrayal of Henry Higgins against theories of dramatic structure and performance, in order to comment on how interdisciplinary assessment of literary text and embodied performer may contribute to a fuller understanding of the potentials of the musical stage.
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The Story of Oh: the aesthetics and rhetoric of a common vowel sound
More LessThis article investigates the use of the word Oh in a variety of different performance idioms. Despite its lack of meaning, the sound is used in both conversation and poetic discourse, and I discuss how it operates communicatively and expressively through contextual resonances, aesthetic manipulation and rhetorical signification. The article first considers the aesthetically modernist work of Cathy Berberian in Bussotti's La Passion Selon Sade: then it considers the rhetorically inflected use of Oh to construct social resonance in popular song; finally, it discusses two important uses of the sound Oh which bookend the Broadway musical Oklahoma!, serving to consolidate the allegorical and musico-dramatic narrative of the show.
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Drawing attention to the significant: exploring the functions of music in The Overcoat (1998)
More LessThe Overcoat (1998) is a music theatre piece created by The Clod Ensemble and based on a short story by Nikolai Gogol. Peter Brooks refers to Gogol as one of a group of social melodramatists whose works include a dual engagement with the representation of man's social existence, the way he lives in the ordinary, and with the moral drama implicated by and in his existence (Brooks 1976: 22). Brooks speaks of encounters that matter and drawing attention to the significant. This article explores how music is used to draw attention to the significant in this work in order to highlight some of the functions of music in a work of music theatre. The aim of the authors of The Overcoat was to create a piece in which music and drama are integrated. This can be seen in the atmospheric creation of mood, the pacing of scenes, the depiction of characters through thematic development and culturally recognizable musical signifiers and genres. The effect of all these is that characterizations created visually are fleshed out through illustrative music, actions are supported by programmatic music. However, it is the presentation of contrapuntal imagery that allows narrative voices to be read; the moments of unexpected dissonance or counterpoint between image and sound, or of intra-textual reference, create moments of black comedy and the moments of greatest significance that are most open to interpretation.
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Integration and performance: the usefulness of books in musical theatre training
By Kate NapierIn the field of musical theatre, and its training, integration is a much-discussed topic. The ability of performers to be, and to be trained to be, proficient in acting, singing and dance each of which have their own separate and often conflicting demands is treated as a basic criterion for judging competency of both individual performers and the programmes which seek to train them. In the light of the publication this year of three books which offer students and teachers the tools needed to acquire this kind of proficiency, this article considers the extent to which book-learning can contribute to professional training.
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Reviews
Authors: Trevor Herbert, Ruth Doughty and Barbara Poston-AndersonSigmund Romberg, William A. Everett (2007) Yale Broadway Masters Series, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 362 pp., ISBN 978030011835 (hardback), 30.00
Jerome Kern, Stephen Banfield (2006) Yale Broadway Masters Series, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 375 pp., ISBN 9780300110470 (hardback), 20.00
The Gendered Score: Music in 1940s Melodrama and the Woman's Film, Heather Laing (2007) Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series, Aldershot: Ashgate, 196 pp., ISBN 9780754651000 (Hardback), 52.25
The Theater Will Rock: A History of the Rock Musical, from Hair to Hedwig, Elizabeth L. Wollman (2006) Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 271 pp., ISBN: 9780472115761 (Hardback), 25.50
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