NY Public Library for the Performing Arts Curator Doug Reside on Spoilers!

BroadwayWorld.com continues our exclusive content series, in collaboration with The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which delves into the library's unparalleled archives, and resources. Below, check out a piece by Doug Reside (Lewis and Dorothy Cullman Curator for the Billy Rose Theatre Division) on spoilers:

I haven't yet been able to see Lin Manuel Miranda's musical, Hamilton, at the Public Theater, but even so, I'm pretty sure the titular character gets shot. I'd preface that statement with the increasingly obligatory "spoiler alert," but like Titanic or Jesus Christ Superstar, the major plot points are probably familiar to anyone with even a passing knowledge of history. It has been so with popular plays for millennia. The Greek playwrights and Shakespeare presented stories familiar to their audiences. Likewise, the American Musical, since the days of Show Boat, has largely been a theater of adaptation. Very few musicals have come to the stage without standing on the shoulders of some artistic or historical source material.

Although some have lately criticized this lack of originality, novelty may, in fact, work against audiences. When one's attention is diverted to consider a complicated melody, an important plot point may be missed. There is no going back to reread a passage or replay a moment. The costs associated with live theater make rewatching a piece a more expensive proposition than it is for audiences of film, and the variable nature of live performance means that there is no guarantee that the work will be the same on the second viewing.

Scholars of oral tradition, most prominently Walter Ong, have noted that oral poetry tends to be aesthetically conservative--that is, there is a marked preference for familiar formulas, repeated themes, and plots that rehearse stories well-known to audiences. This aesthetic may be found in many popular musicals as well. Characters are frequently linked to repeating musical or lyrical themes. The melody follows a familiar pattern, and songs are often reprised throughout the piece. As the producer in Merrily We Roll Along suggests, many audiences want a tune that goes "Bum, bum, bum, de, bum" because simple, hummable music allows new audiences to look past form into meaning. Sondheim has hypothesized that the relative popularity of the score of A Little Night Music is due, in part, to the musical and lyrical repetition in songs like "A Weekend in the Country."

Sometimes a story is so familiar that novelty presents less of a challenge. Widespread familiarity with Grimm's fairy tales may be one reason why Into the Woods has generally been considered one of Sondheim's most accessible musicals. More often, though, Broadway audiences are most comfortable with forms and music they already know. Jukebox musicals allow audiences, especially those new to the conventions of theater, to enjoy the familiarity of the music while experiencing the novelty of the production and performances (and, for some, the experience of live theater itself).

In previous decades, it was possible that audiences might have heard bits of a new score even before they entered the theater. Louis Armstrong made the title song of "Hello Dolly!" a hit before the show came to Broadway, and Frank Sinatra regularly recorded and promoted numbers from Broadway shows before they opened. More recently, rock musicals such as Jesus Christ Superstar, Tommy, Evita, Chess, and Jekyll and Hyde have released "concept albums" years before they were staged, and have thus managed to get at least a song or two into the public consciousness even in eras when musical theater didn't tend to top the pop charts.

Today, cast albums are generally released months after a production opens. This, of course, allows the creative team to modify a score in previews and record the "definitive" version, but as a result many complex, new scores are only heard as the action unfolds on stage. Perhaps this partially explains why the complex scores of composers like Stephen Sondheim have tended to be more successful in revivals and in regional productions than in their initial runs--audiences have had more time to digest the music after repeated listening. Producers and publicists of new musical theater may do well to release at least a portion of the cast album before the first day of previews. Spoilers, for theater, may be the key to commercial success.