From Critics at Large: After “Wicked,” What Do We Want from the Musical?
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Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Adam Howard, and we have a special treat for you this week, an episode on movie musicals from our friends at Critics At Large. That's the New Yorker's weekly culture podcast. Please enjoy. I want the note at the end where it's like, you know, like the air note. Oh, oh, oh. Wow. Boom. I knew it would happen. He's defying gravity already. So exciting. Oh, my God.

This is Critics at Large, a podcast from The New Yorker. I'm Nomi Frye. I'm Vincent Cunningham. And I'm Alex Schwartz. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here.

Critics. Yes. Brace yourself. Oh my goodness. We are in the eye of the storm. The holiday movies are coming. I can't even pause for your laughter. It's happening right now. It's happening. Last week we did Gladiator 2. That's right. And this week we are pivoting to a film that simply could not be more different, except that they do both feature kind of deranged leaders, but that's a story for another time. Be Barbie to Gladiator's Oppenheimer, or so we're being told by much marketing. Mm-hmm.

I'm talking, of course, about Wicked. "The best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy." "You're green!" Wicked?

is, of course, the much-anticipated movie adaptation of the Broadway musical. It stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. And we should be quite clear, this movie, which runs to two hours and 40 minutes... Oh, my God.

is only part one of Wicked. How is that possible? Well, in spite of this, audiences are loving it. They are loving Wicked part one, judging by box office numbers and just from the sheer amount of oxygen Wicked is taking up in the culture right now. I feel like I've seen every single interview done by

Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. Like, usually the press junket thing works in the way that it should in that I only really, like, consume one of the interviews. And it's like, all right. Yeah. But I just feel like I've seen them just like every single talk that they've done has made its way to me in a way that is sort of uncanny. Yeah. I mean, there's been a lot of tears on this press run. There's been a lot of tears. There's been a lot of touching. There's been memes posted.

Ariana Grande holding Cynthia Erivo's finger. I might even say gently stroking. Gently stroking her, uh, you know, finger that had these very long nails on, which even made it more kind of distinct that, um, and perhaps even phallic that Ariana Grande was holding this single finger. The, the famous interview where the interviewer was telling these two stars that she is, uh,

seen a lot of people holding space for the lyrics of the number one hit, Defying Gravity, whatever that means. I know. We're in yet a new press cycle about that. I've seen that the latest headlines are about them talking about that. Yeah, we're in Wicked's world and we're trying to live in it. So what I want us to think about is what exactly audiences are responding to in Wicked and what that tells us about the state of musicals more broadly. ♪

You know, looking at the world of musicals now, it does feel to me that the musical as a form is in a bit of an unstable place. You know, over the past few months, we've seen several movie musicals in addition to Wicked, and each takes a wildly different approach to the form. And then on Broadway, home of the musical, we're stuck between jukebox musicals, which bank on audiences' nostalgia for old hits, and on the other hand,

kind of blatant IP grabs in the form of adaptations of beloved movies and things like that. And original ideas and stories are there, but they're getting squeezed. So that's today on Critics at Large. What do we want from the musical? All right. Just to set expectations here, where do each of you fall when it comes to musicals?

I'm going to say that Nomi Frye is not a lover of the musical form. I am historically not a lover of musicals, but I may surprise you today by name-checking a couple of favorites. Okay. Okay. I mean, yeah. I mean, honestly, I don't like musicals, but there are some exceptions. I'll say that. I harbor...

Kind of a soft place in my heart for musicals. In high school, I was in a couple of them. Would you like to tell us about it? Well, okay. I played the voice of the plant in Little Shop of Hearts. No! So I have Audrey, too. That was me. Feed me, Seymour! Up in a high window.

While my friend, Nick Barash, was the body of the plant doing all the ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-da. Oh, wow. What a career. I am very excited to discuss musicals with you guys because I was quite into musicals as a child and in my formative years. I was in musicals in high school. I was in an all-female production of the Rocky Horror Picture Show in college. I played Brad.

You know, I had some people really, really into Brad. I'll just say that much. I had some admirers. Anyway, the height of this. Just let it go, Naomi. Okay, okay. Maybe off mic. Off mic. We'll come back. You know. Okay. Let's turn to Wicked part one. Okay. We're at Wicked. Wicked is directed by John M. Chu, who has directed a number of movie musicals in the Heights. Yeah.

He did Step Up 3D. And also the Bieber performance movie, Never Say Never. Oh, that's right. One of the great musicals of our time. Which is actually great. Okay. This is an excellent point. So Wicked stars Ariana Grande as Glinda slash Glinda and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba. I actually never saw Wicked in theaters. I don't know if you guys did. On Broadway, I did not. On Broadway, you did. I did not. So Vincent did. No mean I did not. So what did you guys think?

Okay, so I'm gonna start. I should say that Nomi is in full Alpha B-Green right now. I just want to say that she came ready to do this. What if I'm wearing a witch's hat? You know, that pointy hat. Comes in with a big gnarled broom. Sorry. Okay, go ahead. I'm sorry. Okay. I am in two minds about this movie. Okay. I was trying to come to this open and be like...

What if I suddenly like it? You know, especially since people, a lot of people I like, you know, people whose opinions I admire were like, this is amazing, you know. And obviously each person has his or her own story, own history with musicals. But I was open. I didn't love it. I can't emphasize enough how long it is. Like it was unreal long. Like there really is, I think even beyond putting aside my feelings about

I think it's just like objectively way too long. Like 40 minutes could have lopped off and no miss. But I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. First of all, at the performances. You know, I'd never seen... I mean, I know like Ariana Grande's music, but I haven't seen her like act in anything. And also Cynthia Erivo, I wasn't familiar with her. And I thought they both delivered...

pretty sensitive performances, I thought, which I was surprised about. I felt like it was kind of a gentle movie, which I liked. My favorite character was the talking goat, Dr. Dillamond, and who had like glasses and there's a moment where there's the whole subplot.

Oz is kind of turning fascist. You know, there's a kind of like a fascist strain that is with like the animal, the talking animals kind of being targeted. Yeah.

And Dr. Dillamond, the talking goat professor at Chiz University, not Chiz University, but yes, it's called Chiz University where Alphaba and Glenda are students, is the victim, one of the victims of this kind of fascism. And there's a part where like his little like –

like fall off his like snout. And I was like, I literally gasped. I was like, it just seemed like. She wasn't expecting that. That just took it too far. Those things were perched. They were really perched precariously on that. Is it a snout for a goat? What is it? A muzzle? A muzzle? I don't know.

I don't know. But anyway, I have to say that these touches, like, you know, it's obviously it's a big movie. It's a big movie with grand gestures. But even but within that, I felt a beating heart, which I was surprised about.

Wow. That said, way too long. Lots of boring parts. Vincent, I want to hear what you think because I already know Nomi has given us much to think about and discuss. So much. Especially the glasses. Yeah. Especially the glasses. I should say that like Nomi's focus on Dr. Dillamond is very much on brand. This week you just published a whole piece about the animals of the year, Mudang, et cetera. Yeah, it's true. I do love the animal world. All the monkeys from Gladiator. But Dr. D didn't make it. Exactly. So, Dillamond.

Dillman, he came too late. He was a late-breaking animal. Yeah, I was actually closing the piece as I was watching. I had to text my editor in the mall and say, like, I'm sorry, I can't look at fact-checking yet. I'm actually LOL at Wicked. I'm looking at this goat. So anyway, thank you for that. I really liked it. I really liked it.

I like long movies. I like the epic. And I just thought that it captured what's good about movie musicals, which is taking the logic, the psychological logic of musical theater, which is actually we can tell a story but have no – we can explode the subtext and make all the subtext into songs.

like the sort of I want song that like sort of starts to define a character. What Chu does so skillfully, I think is, and I think this accounts for the length as well, sort of turn that into landscape and turn that into image where, so she's singing the song about, I want to meet the wizard. Oh my God, people are finally going to like look at me as something else. Did that really just happen? Have I actually understood this weird quirk I've tried to suppress or hide?

And then, weirdly, she's like in Chiz as this is happening. She's in the university setting as this happens. Suddenly she goes outside and starts running around and all of a sudden she's just like on the sheer edge of some cliff. I'm like, what is the geography here? It's by the white cliffs of Dover. That's basically where it is. But she's out on a cliff edge all of a sudden talking about what she wants. And that like...

emotional topography is now all of a sudden like written on the landscape. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like imprinted on all of these like big dramatic images. It made me think of like the sound of music.

Like just like those hillsides and all these things that just like so deeply echo the sort of emotional atmospherics. Well, there's if I may just insert myself for a second here. I want to get in it. I want to tell you guys what I thought. But I also just want to set the listeners up. Please. So Wicked takes place. Wicked opens with the death of the Wicked Witch of the West. Fellow Ozians, the Wicked Witch of the West is dead.

We see a kind of melting hiss of a candle having just been snuffed out. And shortly thereafter, all of Oz is in great celebration. They're celebrating that a tyrant... Ding-dong, the witch is dead. Yeah, a tyrant is gone. So there's a lot of singing about this. Glinda arrives. Glinda is sort of asked, weren't you friends with the Wicked Witch once? Yes. I mean, I did know her. That is, our paths did cross. Yes.

That's cool. And here we go into the backstory. Shiz University, a truly insane name choice. Yeah, I don't get it. That has to be said with a straight face by everyone in this film at least 500 times. Yeah. And Glinda, who at that time is called Glinda, is the popular girl who arrives at school. They have to room together. A rivalry breaks out. And through interpretive dance, at a moment of gloominess,

great shame and distress for Elphaba, they are brought together and end up forming an unlikely friendship and going off to Oz. Vincent. Yes. I'm so glad that you love this movie, and I'm not kidding, because so many people are loving this movie, and I want to, like, deeply relate to them, and I know that you can help me. Am I the wicked liker in the room? Oh, I love it when this happens. I really didn't like Wicked. Okay. I didn't like Wicked, and... Ooh.

Wow. How not? Anyway. Okay. I liked that scene. Vincent is, of course, singing the final beautiful notes with his gorgeous voice of defying gravity. And yes, I am. Well, one reason is that scene takes 14 minutes. And as Nomi says, this movie is too long. And I just want to say something about musicals in general, which is the show has got to work. We have to have a crest, a peak, a fall, another crest. Now we have two shows, basically. Two different movies, two different shows. And what this means is

is that we are all absolutely stranded at the least interesting place on earth, Hogwarts Light, Shiz University. I'm sitting in Shiz, desperate to drop out. So much Shiz. Desperate. Just when are they going to let me out of this horrible place?

We're supposed to be in Oz, the miraculous, wonderful place that most of us know from the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz. You might know it from L. Frank Baum's books. Why are we stuck at Shiz? This has to be the stupidest place in all of Oz. Those feelings notwithstanding, people are loving Wicked. They're on Team Vincent, or Vincent is on Team Them. Why? America, I am on your team. Oh.

What a hero. That's right after the break on Critics at Large from The New Yorker.

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So I will just say, I'm not coming out here proudly waving my hate flag. And I didn't hate it. I just found it dull. You're a bit of a bad girl. I'm a bit of a bad girl. I mean, I agree with you, Nomi. I totally agree. I thought the performances were very, very good, very strong. The singing was super strong. Ariana Grande was funny, which I appreciated. She was really funny. She's really funny. She's really funny. But such a great performance. Yeah. Her Galinda is self-absorbed.

Kind of a mean girl, but also just kind of a Tracy flick. All of these internal contradictions, which are really like, it's a really well-written character, and she does it really well. Erivo is just so good at singing. She's great at singing. Yeah. I just was totally into that. So just the two of them, what they did together was not really explored in the production that I saw, which is...

The totally homoerotic nature of the relationship between these two women is so apparent in every beat of their relationship. In the musical? No, in the movie that we all watched. Oh, you think so? When they're like, I'm getting this feeling when I see you, I don't know what it is. And then they go into the low thing.

What is this feeling so sudden and new? I felt the moment I laid eyes on you. My pulse is rushing. My head is reeling. Well, my face is flushing. What is this feeling? Flame, does it have a name? Yeah.

Loathing. Unadulterated loathing. It's just a love song. These girls are hot for each other and they don't understand. Oh, interesting. That's what it seems. I don't know. That was my reading of this movie so strongly that I was like, they have incredible chemistry. Together, they are a great comedy team, I thought. Okay, this is very interesting. I have to make a confession.

It's a weird confession to make. Last night, when I was looking around for reviews of Wicked, for some reason, I ended up watching Ben Shapiro's 24-minute-long review of Wicked.

I'm talking about conservative culture commentator Ben Shapiro, with whom I agree on absolutely nothing. But I was like, oh, wow, he's just giving a straight review. Was it direct to camera? Oh, of course. Of course. So I know the question you're asking. Am I going to burn Barbies? Am I going to set Wicked Dolls on fire? Am I going to take some sort of bulldozer and run it directly through a model of Oz? Who knows? Actually, here's the thing. The movie's good. The movie's actually quite good. So.

I just found it fascinating. I was like, oh my God, am I going to end up red-pilled and loving Wicked? Is that what's going to happen to me if I watch Ben Trafira talk about his own love for Wicked? Well, it's one or the other. You come in here and you're just fucking like Laura Loomer. Wait, wait, wait. He loved it? He really, really liked it. What? Yes, he really liked it. But I bring it up because this point that Vincent is making about the homoerotic energy. The most irritating and stupid thing about the press rollout for this film was Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo suggesting that there was a sexual undertone to the friendship between Glinda...

and Elphaba, which by the way defeats the entire purpose of the musical in about eight different ways. They're fighting over a boy in the musical. They're literally fighting over a boy in the musical. And the whole point is that they're friends. If there's something sexual, none of it works. I don't know when it became a thing in Hollywood that people aren't allowed to be friends. If two dudes are friends, they must be gay. Ben Shriver is like, isn't it possible for people just to go to school together anymore and just be friends? So, um...

Yeah. I just, I don't even know what to make of the fact that I dabbled in that, but I found it absolutely fascinating. I love it. Yeah. I mean, I think, Vincent, this is definitely getting into why people are liking Wicked. I mean, it's, it's, why do you guys think it's such a hit? I just think it is, it's big emotion. It's, it, it, it's like, it's about friendship and love.

Being misunderstood. It is definitely... I think it gives a lot. I don't know. There are people crying to Defying Gravity in my theater. I just think it's like a very... I don't think any of the songs are true bangers. Defying Gravity is very memorable, but...

There's not it's not a banger banger, but there are great emotional moments in almost every one of the songs. It is there to cause feelings, big feelings. You know what it reminded me of in this in this sense, I think, and in the kind of like story of a relationship between two women, it kind of reminded me of Frozen. My daughter, who's now 13, was like,

you know, a toddler, I guess, you know, when Frozen came out about a decade ago. And so I watched it with her and I watched it a million times as one does when you have a child who likes something. And I think similarly to what you were saying, Vincent, about the sort of emotionality, you know, the songs, the relationship, the strength of emotion and the kind of like ability to

to follow the course of a relationship between two very different women. Well, I mean, it's interesting that you mentioned Disney because, like, I feel like the height of sort of recent love of musicals is the Disney run that coincided with at least my childhood, you know, Aladdin and –

The Lion King, these things that were so well in every one of those, you know, I just can't wait to be king, et cetera, et cetera. These strong early songs of like, I want, I want, I want this thing that I think is

today struggle with so much, which is like identity formation. How do you deal with desire and how do you express it in a way that like makes, I don't know, society come into accord with your wishes. It's so strong in those Disney things. And I think that's totally right. Like that, not only the sound, but the,

the structure of feeling as we keep on talking about this emotion thing. I think that's totally, totally right. Yeah, absolutely. The classic obstacle to the real desire and the quest of the film or of the musical

being to kind of overcome the obstacle and overcome the foe to get to that desire. And of course, Wicked does make it a bit more interesting by having these two protagonists who are at cross purposes. So this point about Disneyfication of Wicked is very interesting because it stands in total contrast to another very, very buzzy movie musical that's out right now, Emilia Perez. Vincent and I both watched this film. Vincent, will you tell us what it's about? Emilia Perez is about...

The leader of a Mexican cartel based in Mexico City has reached a tipping point.

And has decided to undergo gender transition. And conscripts a sort of unappreciated lawyer to broker the transition surgery and fake a death and therefore emerge as the titular character, Amelia Perez. Yeah, the lawyer is played by Zoe Saldana. And...

Carla Sofia Gascon plays Emilia Perez and also her pre-transition self. That's right. Selena Gomez plays the wife of the drug lord. This deals with some really serious stuff. It deals with cartels. It deals with gender transition. And the film is, interestingly to me, directed by the French artist

The love.

Vincent, what did you think about the use of music, the musical element? Well,

This is a long-running discourse, I guess, in the history of musicals, whose great exclamation point is Stephen Sondheim, the question of the singability of songs. And I find there to be not very many singable songs, and there's nothing really stuck with me, except for an early song that is based on the true diegetic music of the—

of Mexico City. If you've ever been to Mexico City, there are these trucks that go around and they're selling things, you know, microwaves. Microondas, da-da-da-da. Almendras. I always remember that they're selling almonds from the back of these things through these loudspeakers. And that is sort of harmonized into an early song. I'm going to buy a car. I'm going to buy

I always like it when musicals do that, that sort of take the everyday music of life and turn it and formalize it. That's, to me, one of the great reasons for musicals to exist, like this transit between everyday life, like musicalizing the sounds that we all know or whatever. I did not love the music, but I kind of like the movie on some level. And I'm not just saying this because it's in a Spanish language language.

but it did have the sort of

melodramatic structure of the telenovela, like just the dramatic swings and mood and tone and lighting is very good in this movie. There's a moment where the Zoe Zaldana figure is at a dinner party and does not recognize Amelia Perez post-transition years later. And the moment of realization comes with a dramatic darkening of the rest of the scene and it's just like they're both kind of spotlit. The sort of

melodrama of it all really was fun. Yeah, I think for me the telenovela is the key reference that you bring up, Vincent. It really is, I think the point of music in Amelia Perez is to totally heighten the experience. And one thing that musicals do is

is depart the realist world and give emotion and articulation to emotion that does exist in the real world, that we all feel and live with and handle on a daily basis, usually not in song. Usually. Usually, not always. And puts it into song. I mean, many different kinds of music do the same thing, but I think that with the musical, it's often people who don't like musicals will often criticize its artificiality

And I like a musical that puts the artificiality front and center. And what you're getting at, I think, with the lighting choices, with the kind of over-the-topness of this, is some things in life are so heightened, are so unrealistic, are so – and yet they're part of the real, that why not put them to music and have singing be part of it?

Nomi, you have volunteered as tribute, in a way, to see a film that I think the three of us were slightly reluctant to see, which is Joker Folie a Deux. Joker Folie a Deux, starring Stephanie Germanotta, Lady Gaga, and Joaquin Phoenix. This movie was the follow-up.

to Joker, the Todd Phillips absolute blockbuster film, and this film did not succeed, and it's a musical. Please report back from your journey to Joker. It's inexplicably a musical. In fact, it was not marketed as a musical. I feel like

The studio probably, I mean, this is all guesswork. I don't know what happened behind the scenes, but probably sort of knew that it had a stinker on their hands and were sort of trying to hide it, you know, to sort of like push it as like a more logical continuation of the first Joker, which I have to say, you can say a lot of things about the first Joker. I actually kind of enjoyed it. It had a sort of like,

I mean, I had a kind of problem with it, kind of like a fascistic quality it had. But if nothing else, it was energetic as fuck, you know? It was like... And stylish. And stylish. And it was a movie that felt kind of propulsive. And this, the sequel, despite and perhaps even because of the addition of the songs, which are mostly covers, it's mostly like Rogers and Hart, you know, like...

or like Get Happy, you know, songs like that felt very unenergetic. When you're smiling When I smile with you When you're laughing

I think Manuela Dargis maybe called it a slog, and I felt that when I watched it. There was something very joyless about it. It's basically story-wise, plot-wise, you know, Joaquin Phoenix's character, you know, Arthur Fleck, the Joker, is in an institution and is waiting for his trial and then goes on trial for the crimes he committed in the first—murders he committed in the first movie. And so it's a courtroom drama, right?

And also he and Lady Gaga, who is also kind of they developed this romance. They have this sort of like Mickey and Mallory from like Natural Born Killers, kind of like outlaw romance, Bonnie and Clyde, like in the institution. They kind of inexplicably break into song, you know, kind of like.

Sonny and Cher type lounge act suddenly. I almost, I really wanted to like it. I was like, okay, this is, I could feel that it was trying to do something interesting. From what you're describing, it sounds like an anti-musical musical. It was an anti-musical musical, but there really was no good reason for it. In a minute, what do we actually want from our musicals? Critics at Large from The New Yorker will be right back. ♪

So, critics. Yes. If you were at Chiz and you had a magic wand. Were you at Chiz? Were you to have the honor of enrolling at Chiz and to have a magic wand? Our noble alma mater, yes. Yes. And you could magically make appear before you the perfect musical. What would that perfect musical be? I think when I wave my wand or just when I close my eyes and think platonically about

Capital M musical. What comes into my mind is the sound of music. It's got everything. And part of the remit of the musical is to have everything. It's got to be what the Germans call a Gesamtkunstwerk.

Something that contains all, many of the arts within itself. You know, the dancing, the singing, the acting, all of it working together in like this unbelievable harmony. It's got great songs. It's got great dances. It's amazing. What would you say if I told you that Pauline Kael one time sang

long time movie reviewer, the New Yorker, called The Sound of Music the single most repressive influence on artistic freedom in movies. Wow. I would argue with my esteemed colleague. That's it. What was the argument?

Well, it's just— Repressive. Do you know how big and open and beautiful and fluid that musical is? I think it just—I think the argument was schmaltz on schmaltz, basically. That this is, you know, if the singing nuns don't get you, the stomping Nazis will. That's basically the thought. I mean— But, Vincent, you're talking about bigness, grandness, lushness. Yes. That, to me, is the point of it, to make every—

scene, frame, moment charged with what you feel inside. That to me requires a kind of maximalism. For me, I feel like heightened realism is kind of like a good formula. Like I'm thinking if I, you know, just to sort of like reverse engineer, like thinking about musicals that I do actually like. For instance, the musical Hair. Mm-hmm.

which I actually have never seen on stage, but I've watched the movie a million times. The 1979 Milos Forman movie. Yes, the 1979 Milos Forman movie starring the, you know, recently departed Treat Williams as Berger. So this is a movie about a particular moment in time, you know, the kind of like the hippie, you know, the anti-Vietnam hippie movement.

Any person who alters, forges, knowingly destroys, knowingly mutilates, or in any manner changes this certificate may be fined not to exceed $10,000 or imprisoned for not more than five years.

But of course, it's fantastical as well, right? It's like heightened to such an extent that them breaking out in songs and dancing on the table and like swinging from the chandelier and, you know, whipping their hair back and forth reads as completely in tune. And, you know, thinking about all the musicals that I do like, it strikes me that all of them have some kind of

I have a theory about your theory, Nomi. Okay. I have a theory to build on top of your theory. Yes, please. And here's what it is. Maybe the reason why you feel that way about the particular musicals you do is because think of what the musical actually allows us to do.

the songs put you directly inside a character. And so the musicals you're describing are all worlds that you're interested in living in. And so when you walk around and you can sing the songs from here, those feelings come out through you. And that is the technology of the musical that I think is so still exciting. And it is exciting when people use it in different ways. I mean, that's why, like, I had asked at the top of the show, and I want to ask this again from you guys, what we want from the musical. Like, I'm just thinking...

if I may for a minute, about the history of American musicals. Because I think they may help us answer this question a bit, thinking about what people want and have wanted. You know, basically at the beginning of the 20th century, you had really review-style musicals. You had musicals that had no plot to them, that were just about having songs transmitted. A glimpse of shocking was a little thought of something shocking But now God knows anything goes

It didn't matter what the, you know, what Anything Goes was about. No one really remembers. But you remember the song Anything Goes. This changes for the first time in the late 20s when the Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein musical Showboat is premiered. I think it's 1927. Suddenly the musical has a story. There's an old man called a Mississippi. That's the night I'd like to be.

It's a real, like, American issue story. It's about the American South and race and the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and all of these things, you know, wrestling with this in musical form. Yes. He must know something. Like, let's get serious, but sing about it. And then, in 1943, you get Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma. Oh, what a beautiful morning.

And suddenly you have a sung through musical and this is kind of where the dam breaks. Right. For

For the first time, songs really replace a large part of the dialogue, but also the songs become crucial to character, to character development, to plot development, but show you, give you some deeper insight into what is happening. And the stories, South Pacific, The King and I, you know, these memorable people and characters to go with the songs that you sing.

And later, when you get into the kind of disillusion of the ideals, the 70s, you get two of the greats, Fosse and Sondheim. You get darkness, sex, competition, and real complexity. First on the ground, you women air, send in the clowns.

When you now look at Broadway, given that history, where do you think we are now?

Yeah. When I look at Broadway now, you know, we got jukebox musicals, songs, music that you want to re-inhabit, and you want to see them, crucially, I think, performed live. That's really fun. Also, you get these adaptation musicals like Mean Girls, which started as a movie, was made into a musical, and then was made into a musical movie. And then, like, every so often, cropping up is a really interesting independent idea. ♪

And here I got him out a little defensive Hamilton, which has been through so many, you know, pro and con cycles.

As like a representation of the liberal American dream, we can absolutely mock it and laugh at it and criticize it. But as like a musical innovation, what I will tell you about seeing Hamilton was when I got to that theater, it was like being at a Beatles concert in 1964. The youth around me already knowing the songs and singing them. Yeah. Hamilton, I can see you're waiting.

Weeping, hyped up beyond belief. Something was getting transmitted. Yeah. Yeah. Directly like shot into the veins of that audience that hasn't been the same since. Yeah. Where's Wicked for you in relation to this story?

Matrix, you just... I think Wicked is a bit of a, like... I mean, to me, Wicked kind of harkens back to the, like, real power musicals of the 80s a bit. Like Weber? Yeah, like Andrew Lloyd Webber. What do you think? That makes sense. It is, but it is an example, though, musically...

And I think this also includes Hamilton. Kind of, to me, a strange homogenization of the songs. There is kind of – there has emerged a kind of musical ease. Not musical space E-A-S-E, but musical ease, E-S-E. Yeah.

This kind of very, it's hard. So it's like R&B style vocals, very slick harmonization that like, you know, I love the musical figure that does run through. We could have to say the one that is always punctuating. They're like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

It's like it pulls out these weird this like one emotional string that unfortunately mine, whatever heart chord that is, mine is always available to be plucked in this way. I'm so happy to hear that. I know it's not good, but I'm like, but I feel it. I don't know. I feel like the sound of musicals, I can't even describe it. The only thing I can think of as a corollary is like a cheesy arena, Christian contemporary music. Yeah.

Musicals have a sound right now that I think is maybe inaugurated by Wicked. I'm not sure. But it's about acrobatics in singing, maybe a little bit preferred over the storytelling function. There is a kind of, yeah, power. I mean, it kind of came out around the same time as American Idol, you know, which is kind of like.

similar style sort of feats of amazing vocal ability you know hitting those notes yeah you guys are more obviously you were both theater critics and so you saw a lot like is there a place where you see the musical going next are there any examples that you could recent examples you can think of that might point towards where we're going well I think that

There is – and maybe this kind of goes to what we've been talking about vis-a-vis on the one hand a sort of Disney-fied thing and on the other a kind of not a realism but a deeper engagement with realism. I'm thinking about Michael R. Jackson, the musical theater artist. He did a production called A Strange Loop about a young –

aspiring musical theater writer who works as an usher at Lion King. So it's also very, very sort of like meta musical theatrical. It's very much about musicals in a certain way. Young black gay man who's sort of figuring out his life in very like weirdly like explicit ways. There's a scene of him, you know, um,

a very graphic sex scene in it and stuff like that. And he did a musical recently that I really liked actually called Teeth, adapted from the horror film of the same name of 2007, where it's like a young evangelical woman grows like a vagina dentata. ♪ My panties are wet but it's not blood or sweat ♪

And it's Toby's doing He's pure and he's sweet But I still feel the heat The heat of temptation Cause he's so freaking hot And I wish I did not Feel desire brewing But when desire burns That's when shame returns And I seek its painful salvation I need the sting of shame in my body I need it to whip me again

It sort of becomes like a revenge thriller of the vagina against these predatory men. And so I think there's some of that coming on the horizon, like the R-rated musical, the musical that is not only like an issue musical but is trying to be –

of like a cultural vanguard or something like that. It's not your grandchild's musical. It's not your grandchild's musical. No, no, no, no. It's like Anora, the musical, is what I'm imagining next. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a great example. I mean, first of all, I kind of want to just say like musicals do what you're doing. Like I wouldn't want to scale too strongly one way or another because I feel a little bit like

My heart not singing to Wicked really does make me feel totally out of step with the culture. Like, I'm happy for the people who love Wicked. I want them to have that. I want to have it for me. I wish I could have gone to Shiz, you know, and left with those feelings.

But a musical I did really enjoy, and I saw it when it was not yet on Broadway, and it did go to Broadway. It's closed now. It's called Kimberly Akimbo. It's about a 16-year-old girl who has a genetic condition that makes her age super rapidly. So in the musical, she's actually played by a woman in her 60s because that's how she appears. But she is a teenager, and she has problems with her family, and she has a crush at school, and she has all kinds of, you know— It's like Jerry Blank, the musical. Yeah. So like—

You get it. Yeah. So there was just something about the kind of mix of sweet and sour that I think can work really well for a musical. And that Sondheim did better than anyone. And that's why we are always talking about Sondheim, that sweet and sour element, the heart soaring and at the same, you know, maybe five minutes later, sinking. It did it in a lower key way. And I appreciated that. Last question, guys. Ooh.

A show tune that you sing in the shower. Where do you go? Vincent, are you just belting out at Wicked at all times? Are you defying gravity when you're alone? Between yesterday and today, I will admit I've been O-O-O-O-ing a lot. I've been doing a lot of O-O-O-O. For me, it would probably be something from here. Do you want to give us any notes?

This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius. The age of Aquarius. Glorious. My eyes are closed, by the way, listeners. They were. So good. They were screwed shut. You know, I like singing Good Morning Starshine to my young son. I love Good Morning Starshine. And then you get to just be like, doobie doobie da da, glebe da da da da. Glebe, glebe, glebe, glebe, glebe.

Glooby. A glooby-gooby. Exactly. Saba-si-bi-saba-nooby-ba-da-ba-dee-dee-do-do. This has been Critics at Large. Our senior producer is Rhiannon Corby, and Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Conde Nast's head of global audio is Chris Bannon. Alexis Quadrato composed our theme music, and we had engineering help today from James Yost with mixing by Mike Kutchman.

You can find every episode of Critics at Large at newyorker.com slash critics. Next week, we are going to be taking stock of the entire year in a special live taping. We're talking about 2024, the year of the flop. See you then. That was the New Yorker's Critics at Large, which you can find wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.

This week on Critics At Large, we're talking about Gladiator 2 and the fantasy of ancient Rome that has such a strong hold over our entertainment and over the culture more broadly. What is very popular is this macho idea. And that's actually what I see in Gladiator 2 as well. Maybe that's the appeal of the classics to try to keep returning and re-understanding, even as we can't help holding them up as a mirror.

I'm Vincent Cunningham. Join me and my co-hosts on Critics At Large for new episodes every Thursday. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.