Author Archives
Robert Cooperman
On Conservative Theatre: ‘Something from Nothing’
Ironically, for a man that loves theatre, I am not a huge fan of the Broadway Channel on Sirius XM. Part of it is that I cannot stand most contemporary musicals (it’s only selections from musicals featured on the Broadway Channel) and so I cringe whenever I hear the vapid, pop-culture noise that makes up the score of many of today’s musical theatre offerings. I find myself quickly switching channels to talk radio or a ball game whenever something dumb like the score of Next to Normal comes on. I do find myself, however, listening to any of the wonderful offerings of Frank Loesser, Lerner and Loewe, Kander and Ebb, the Gershwins, Sondheim, and so on. What, I wonder, has happened to our musical theatre heritage that we have gone from “Some enchanted evening/You may see a stranger” to “I’m alive, I’m alive, I am so alive”? I think a lot of it has to do with the cheapening and lack of intellectual rigor in American culture, brought about in no small part by lousy television writing and the desire to keep from thinking critically and for instant gratification.
