Raymond Knapp > Quotes

“Moreover, Berlin’s songs, in some important respects, stand apart from the show, often exhibiting a sophistication foreign to the characters who sing them—a criticism especially applicable to many of Annie’s songs.”
― Raymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity

“The musical and the production embraced cheap bohemianism, and a clever, similarly minded marketing campaign sold cheap tickets to anyone who wanted to camp out on the street outside the run-down Nederlander Theater, which is right up the street from the gritty Port Authority Bus Terminal and was frequently populated by homeless people at the time. An astonishing number of young audience members enthusiastically took up the challenge, often sleeping on the street all night, and often for a remarkable number of repeat visits. According to Elizabeth Wollman, the marketing campaigns for rock musicals often have to be particularly innovative because of the difficulties of selling this kind of musical, and Rent was no exception.8 But the invitation to join the onstage community of Rent—the invitation for the audience to imagine themselves as the offstage counterparts to the characters—was an easy leap. That invitation is built into the story, the lyrics, and the performance style of the songs in the show, which were sung either directly to the audience, at standing microphones set downstage left and right, or into the obvious radio microphones the actors wore on their heads, with the accompaniment of an onstage rock band.”
― Raymond Knapp, Media and Performance in the Musical: An Oxford Handbook of the American Musical, Volume 2

“Rent creates new possibilities for characters’ sexualities in musicals by representing multiple gay and lesbian characters with frank and casual openness. Rent is peopled with a gay male couple (Angel and Collins) and a lesbian couple (Maureen and Joanne) and it takes those sexualities for granted in the musical’s world of NYC’s East Village circa 1990. Rent’s structure—a single protagonist, Mark, surrounded by a close-knit community—borrows formal conventions of ensemble musicals of the late 1960s and 1970s, including Hair, Company, Godspell, and A Chorus Line. This structure enables the musical to nod to nonheterosexual identities and relationships, an ideological gesture that speaks to its (successful) intention to address musical theater’s wide range of spectators and even make them feel politically progressive. This device of including a few gay characters in a community-based story is repeated with the gay male couples in Avenue Q and Spring Awakening, and perhaps foretells a musical theater future with a more consistent nod to gay people (or gay men, at least).”
― Raymond Knapp, Identities and Audiences in the Musical: An Oxford Handbook of the American Musical, Volume 3

“Rent answers the question of how people come together this way: through shared hardship, a message of the story that was readily adopted by the show’s most dedicated audiences. All theater brings people together in a room, but musical theater regularly brings people together to contemplate the spectacle of people coming together, in book, song, and dance. Musical theater also encourages and relies on the audience’s desire to perform the songs that they have heard performed, and to form communities based on that desire. In its examination and staging of the problems and pleasures of community on stage to a group of people offstage, live musical theater offers an experience unlike anything else.”
― Raymond Knapp, Media and Performance in the Musical: An Oxford Handbook of the American Musical, Volume 2

“Despite frequent interpretive assumptions to the contrary,68 there is little in the script (or in performances I’ve seen, which have in some ways deviated from the script) that confirms that Hedwig’s Hansel is in fact gay, although he does seem confused regarding his sexual orientation. As Hedwig makes very explicit, Hansel allows himself to be seduced by Sgt. Robinson specifically because of the taste of power that it gives him, and his agreeing to the unsuccessful sex-change operation is not driven by his sense of being a woman trapped within a man’s body but by political necessity, since it appears to be the only way that he can use Sgt. Robinson as a ticket to the West. Many transsexuals have understandably felt betrayed by Hedwig because it problematizes Hedwig’s sexual identity in any number of ways without providing any perspective whatever on how or why someone in a position to choose freely might decide to change her or his gender. But the show’s fundamental frame of reference, politically, is not sexual politics in the United States but rather postmodern global politics, enacted in sexualized terms; from Hedwig’s perspective, it is thus crucial that Hansel’s decisions and their consequences reflect basic truths about the chaotic, postmodern, and soon-to-be post-Soviet world he inhabits, in which promised freedoms prove elusive, choices are often few and onerous, and most attempts to improve things seem to make them worse.”
― Raymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity

“The female megastar from the silent era, Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen), with her doubled initials in imitation of countless “sex symbol” stars, is shadowed throughout the film by Zelda Zanders, the “It Girl” played by Rita Moreno, referred to in the film as “the well-known ‘Zip Girl’” (thus putting a more graphic spin on the already sexually charged “It Girl”).”
― Raymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity

“Still, both Rent and Spring Awakening ultimately use gay characters to bolster heteronormativity. Angel serves as the emotional touchstone of Rent, endlessly generous and hopeful, caring and sensitive. All mourn his death, which compels the other characters to look at their lives and choices. That Angel’s death enables the other characters to learn about themselves replicates a typical (tired) trope in which an Other (usually a person of color or a person with a disability) aids in the self-actualization of the principal character. Also, Collins and Angel have the most loving and healthy relationship, which the musical needs to eliminate so as not to valorize the gay male couple above all else. In addition, Joanne and Maureen sing a lively number, “Take Me or Leave Me,” but the musical doesn’t take their relationship seriously. Maureen is presented as a fickle, emotionally abusive, yet irresistible lover (Joanne and Mark’s duet, “The Tango Maureen”) and a less-than-accomplished artist (her “The Cow Jumped over the Moon” is a parody of performance art).15 In contrast, Mimi and Roger’s relationship lasts through the end of the musical, since Mimi comes back to life. This choice, one of the few that differs from Puccini’s La Bohème (which provides the primary situational basis for Rent), shows how beholden twentieth-century musicals—even tragedies—are to the convention of a heterosexually happy ending.”
― Raymond Knapp, Identities and Audiences in the Musical: An Oxford Handbook of the American Musical, Volume 3

“Perhaps also, delineating conflict and its romantic resolution along gendered lines has an inherent appeal for musical drama, because of the resulting mixture of vocal types. (This argument applies less convincingly to dramatic types outside a musical context, which are often no more than stereotypes, based less in nature than in conventional modes of presentation.)”
― Raymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity

“In the development of its love story, Singin’ in the Rain follows a particular plotline that came to have a great deal of currency in Hollywood films, especially in “buddy” films (and most especially those directed by Howard Hawks), involving a kind of “love triangle” in which the long-standing friendship of two men (often a hero and his sidekick) is threatened by the attraction of one of them to a woman introduced early on (the ingénue, although often not exactly an innocent).26 Generally, this plot situation may be taken to carry homosexual overtones, so that the story becomes a parable about embracing heterosexual love. This interpretation is, of course, quite easily avoided, since most sidekicks have next to no discernible sex drive, at least during the film’s story,27 but it is surely significant that, in more recent times, the asexual sidekick is often replaced by a homosexual friend. And even the latter development may be explained away, given the utility of the sidekick plot situation and recent shifts in what audiences might accept as either “natural” or interesting wrinkles on the device. Nevertheless, the homoerotic tension in some of these relationships is significant enough to lay the entire tradition open to this interpretive avenue.”
― Raymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity

“In Singin’ in the Rain, Lina Lamont provides both an effective “beard” for Don and Cosmo and a foil, representing both the reason for Don’s “unattached” state and the basis for their mutual contempt for women. Yet the signs are all there to be read for those interested in reading them: Cosmo and Don performing as a burlesque team, in which they sit on each other’s laps and play each other’s violins; Cosmo’s comment to Lina after the premiere of The Royal Rascal, “Yeah, Lina, you looked pretty good for a girl”;30 and their bullying, in “Moses Supposes,” of the fogyish diction coach, figuratively drawn out of his closet only to be ridiculed as an asexual “pansy” who can’t sing and dance (thus both confirming and denying homosexuality at the same time).31 On a broader scale, Kelly’s career as a dancer, offering a more masculinized style of athletic dance (in opposition especially to the stylized grace of Fred Astaire), represented a similar balancing act between, in this case, the feminized occupation of balletic dance and a strong claim of heterosexual masculinity. Significantly, the process of exclusion they use with the diction coach is precisely what Cosmo proposes they apply to Lina in converting The Dueling Cavalier into a musical: “It’s easy to work the numbers. All you have to do is dance around Lina and teach her how to take a bow.” But they also apply the strategy to Kathy, who is only just learning to “dance” in this sense (conveniently so, since Debbie Reynolds had had but little dance training, as noted).32 Early on, we see her dance competently in “All I Do Is Dream of You,” but she then seems extremely tentative in “You Were Meant for Me,” immobile for much of the number, not joining in the singing, and dancing only as Don draws her in (which is, of course, consistent with her character’s development at this point). With “Good Mornin’,” though, she seems to “arrive” as part of the Don-Cosmo team, even though for part of the number she serves as a kind of mannequin—much like the voice teacher in “Moses Supposes,” except that she sings the song proper while Don and Cosmo “improvise” tongue-twisting elaborations between the lines. As the number evolves, their emerging positions within the group become clear. Thus, during their solo clownish dance bits, using their raincoats as props, Kathy and Don present themselves as fetishized love objects, Kathy as an “Island girl” and Don as a matador, while Cosmo dances with a “dummy,” recalling his earlier solo turn in “Make ’em Laugh.”
― Raymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity

“Theater TAMSEN WOLFF”
― Raymond Knapp, Media and Performance in the Musical: An Oxford Handbook of the American Musical, Volume 2

“At the end of the scene, when Kathy kisses Don, Cosmo objects, thereby provoking Kathy to kiss him as well, to which he responds with girlish abashment (the exchange replays the part of “Good Mornin’” when Kathy sits first on Don’s knee, then on Cosmo’s). 2.5 2.6 2.7 Yet Don and Kathy do not yet engage fully as romantic partners, which becomes clear during the following number, Kelly’s famous solo rendition of the title song, “Singin’ in the Rain,” introduced by his deliberately isolating himself (kissing Kathy good night and then waving off the cab driver). Alone on the rain-drenched sound stage (assuming we have learned to recognize it as such from “You Were Meant for Me”), he clarifies the MERM-related function of such effects, which seem in themselves to demand that he sing. The coordination of MERM and Hollywood-style special effects is particularly close in this number, as he soon leaves the song behind, first to explore the sets and props conveniently at his disposal, and then to match the music’s crescendo with an expansive embrace of the larger space. Here, the camera cranes outward, and Kelly breaks through into a moment of “dancing-sublime,” when his dancing seems either to revert or to come full circle, returning to the primitive urge that gave it birth (thus his stomping and jumping in the puddle like an adolescent boy).34 But the number, through its supreme narcissism, actually does more to inhibit than to advance the plot.”
― Raymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity

“There were a number of ways in which the homosexual dimension of these stories could be disguised or seemingly eliminated. For example, the obstacle to the heterosexual romance might be presented not as the love between the two men but as a shared attitude toward women, whether as contempt (often disguised as womanizing), distrust, or some other aversive reaction. In musicals, where double readings are nearly always possible, these kinds of “disguises” will seem either fully effective (from resolutely “straight” perspectives) or sure signs of a hidden subtext (for those inclined and equipped to read them).28 In Singin’ in the Rain, the male friendship between Don Lockwood and Cosmo Brown may well have been patterned on An American in Paris (although potential models are legion), with Donald O’Connor’s dancing adding a spirited physical dimension to the cynical, wisecracking, piano-playing sidekick of Oscar Levant in the earlier film. The homoerotic overtones are somewhat more overt in the earlier film, especially given Levant’s narcissism and insinuating delivery, which always seems to hint at unspoken meanings.”
― Raymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity

“Moreover, makers of musicals and their critics do not generally put forward the integrated musical as a polemical ideal but as a potentially profitable as well as an artistic approach (as Kern emphasizes) to a varied popular entertainment genre competing alongside a newer popular entertainment, the motion picture.”
― Raymond Knapp, Histories of the Musical: An Oxford Handbook of the American Musical, Volume 1

“The 2017-18 Broadway season offered a perfect example of the difference between the performative and psychological styles of acting in musicals. At the Shubert Theatre, veteran singer and comedienne Bette Midler returned to Broadway in a revival of Hello, Dolly!, a musical that demands above all star presence. To the delight of her fans, Midler played Bette Midler as Dolly. No one in the audience wanted her to be anyone else and the part didn’t demand the plumbing of psychological depth. A block away, young Ben Platt offered a powerful example of how a talented acting singer can create a believable character through speech and song in a musical. Platt’s performance in Dear Evan Hansen (Book, Steven Levenson; Music and lyrics, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul), has made him a star but Platt never breaks character, never acknowledges the audience. Ben Platt convincingly becomes Evan Hansen in both dialogue and song. Dear Evan Hansen is a post-Sondheim musical that demands intense acting as well as singing; Hello, Dolly! demands personality.”
― Raymond Knapp, Media and Performance in the Musical: An Oxford Handbook of the American Musical, Volume 2

“Rent creates new possibilities for characters’ sexualities in musicals by representing multiple gay and lesbian characters with frank and casual openness. Rent is peopled with a gay male couple (Angel and Collins) and a lesbian couple (Maureen and Joanne) and it takes those sexualities for granted in the musical’s world of NYC’s East Village circa 1990. Rent’s structure—a single protagonist, Mark, surrounded by a close-knit community—borrows formal conventions of ensemble musicals of the late 1960s and 1970s, including Hair, Company, Godspell, and A Chorus Line. This structure enables the musical to nod to nonheterosexual identities and relationships, an ideological gesture that speaks to its (successful) intention to address musical theater’s wide range of spectators and even make them feel politically progressive. This device of including a few gay characters in a community-based story is repeated with the gay male couples in Avenue Q and Spring Awakening, and perhaps foretells a musical theater future with a more consistent nod to gay people (or gay men, at least).14 Still, both Rent and Spring Awakening ultimately use gay characters to bolster heteronormativity. Angel serves as the emotional touchstone of Rent, endlessly generous and hopeful, caring and sensitive. All mourn his death, which compels the other characters to look at their lives and choices. That Angel’s death enables the other characters to learn about themselves replicates a typical (tired) trope in which an Other (usually a person of color or a person with a disability) aids in the self-actualization of the principal character. Also, Collins and Angel have the most loving and healthy relationship, which the musical needs to eliminate so as not to valorize the gay male couple above all else. In addition, Joanne and Maureen sing a lively number, “Take Me or Leave Me,” but the musical doesn’t take their relationship seriously. Maureen is presented as a fickle, emotionally abusive, yet irresistible lover (Joanne and Mark’s duet, “The Tango Maureen”) and a less-than-accomplished artist (her “The Cow Jumped over the Moon” is a parody of performance art).15 In contrast, Mimi”
― Raymond Knapp, Identities and Audiences in the Musical: An Oxford Handbook of the American Musical, Volume 3

“The dramatic strategy of the show provides a simple and effective means to blend melodrama with farce (which Sondheim claims as his “two favorite forms of theatre because … they are obverse sides of the same coin”).37 Starkly put, the show develops a pattern of first scaring the hell out of its audience and then rescuing the situation through humor, each time by introducing Mrs. Lovett into a situation saturated with Sweeney Todd’s wrenching angst. This scare-rescue pattern happens twice to great effect, at the beginning and end of Act I, but its real payoff is the devastating conclusion, where there is no comic rescue. The denial of this previous pattern greatly intensifies the darkness of the supremely bleak ending, making the show’s musical profile seem operatic to Broadway audiences even though, ironically in this respect, the denouement unfolds with only intermittent singing.38 But the musical dimension of the show is also deliberately operatic, as it interweaves, Wagner-like, a host of recurring motives, mostly related to each other through a common origin in the Dies Irae, from the Catholic requiem mass. The Dies Irae (literally, “Day of Wrath”; see example 7.1) was taken up as a symbol of death and retribution in music throughout the nineteenth century and continuing into the twentieth (the most important early such use was by Berlioz in his 1830 Symphonie fantastique). Most scene changes bring back “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd,” which includes both fast and slow versions of the Dies Irae (example 7.1) and builds up to a frenetic, obsessive chorus of “Sweeney, Sweeney.”
― Raymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity