Category:The Musical: Difference between revisions

"I dunno. I think they probably will."|''[[Phineas and Ferb (Animation)|Phineas and Ferb]]'', "[[Title: the Adaptation|Rollercoaster The Musical]]"}}

A distinction is made between "book musicals", in which songs are interspersed between chunks of spoken dialogue and action (the spoken dialogue being referred to as the "book"), and musicals that are "sung through" like an [[Opera]], i.e. every word is sung from curtain-up to curtain-down.<ref>Note that this is not actually true of Opera to begin with; some of Mozart's most celebrated operas have spoken dialogue, for example (like ''[[The Magic Flute (Theatre)|The Magic Flute]]'').</ref> ''[[Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Theatretheatre)|Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street]]'' and ''[[Guys and Dolls]]'' are examples of book musicals; ''[[Cats]]'' and ''[[Les Misérables (Theatretheatre)|Les Misérables]]'' are sung through. Each variety has its advantages and disadvantages: with a sung through musical, there's the danger of having too much utterly mundane dialogue set to music in a way that draws the audience's attention to the blatant artificiality of the concept; with a book musical, the transitions from musical scenes to spoken dialogue and vice versa can be awkward and forced if they're not handled carefully.

The movie/musical adaptation cycle goes both ways, with many Broadway musicals nowadays being based on films -- the reasoning being that if it's already been a success in one medium, it's less of a risk -- and the musical versions of the films then being adapted and returning to celluloid again (e.g. ''[[The Producers]]'', ''Hairspray'', ''[[Little Shop of Horrors (Theatre)|Little Shop of Horrors]]'').

There's also a new trend of the [[Jukebox Musical]]; adapting a musical play or film from the existing catalog of a musical artist, when the songs therein might not have anything to do with each other. ''[[Mamma Mia]]'' adapted from [[ABBA (Music)|ABBA]], ''[[Movin' Out]]'' adapted from [[Billy Joel (Music)|Billy Joel]], and ''[[Across the Universe (Filmfilm)|Across the Universe]]'' adapted from [[The Beatles (Musicband)|The Beatles]] are just a few examples. ''[[Moulin Rouge]]'', which didn't stick to one artist but repurposed a few decades of pop music, was the likely trend-setter here. Of course, this technique [[Older Than They Think|goes back a ways]]--''[[Singin' in Thethe Rain (Film)|Singin in The Rain]]'' reused older songs--and prolific composers would often take songs from their less-successful shows and reuse them in new productions. (For example, [[Gilbert and Sullivan]] took the song "Climbing Over Rocky Mountain" from their early failure ''Thespis'' and dropped it in ''[[The Pirates of Penzance]]''.)

When this is incorporated into a TV show, see [[Musical Episode]]. A frequent sufferer of [[Title: the Adaptation|Title: The Adaptation]], probably because [[All Musicals Are Adaptations]].