by Scott Baldinger In 1966, when asked what he thought of the music of the Beatles, Richard Rodgers churlishly replied, “I find it monotonous…I don’t think there’s anything creative or original about it. Their music won’t last.” When told about this, Paul McCartney responded that he pretty much felt the same way about the music of Richard Rodgers. They weren't just sniping at each other, of course, but at the different popular music genres they each exemplified at the time. Well, 45 years later, it turns out that they were both wrong, as a recent excursion to two terrific venues at either end of the culturally blessed RI universe proved. At one, Vassar’s College Powerhouse Theatre in Poughkeepsie, there was a workshop production of Spring Awakening-composer Duncan Sheik’s new musical The Nightingale, the score of which was a constant source of goosebumps. At the other, in Pittsfield’s Colonial Theatre, was the Berkshire Theatre Festival's all- out production of The Who’s Tommy, the musical theatre version of their 1969 rock opera first brought to theatrical life 15 years ago by Des McAnuff and Pete Townshend. While The Nightingale is quite obviously still in its early gestation, and this particular staging of
Tommy was understandably more modest than the McAnuff production, they were both exciting, sometimes thrilling, opportunities to hear how well strong theatre voices can serve a contemporary pop score. Contrary to Mssrs Rodgers', left, and McCartney’s early prognostications, both musical theater and rock—at least the kind created by talents such as Sheik or The Who—have so much in common, it’s hard to believe that people once thought that one would be the death knell of the other. From the vantage point of nearly half a century of punk, garage, metal, hip hop and all other sorts of other head banging rock, one could easily say that Townshend, Sheik and McCartney himself—if he ever decided to throw himself into the musical theater ring—are the true keepers of Rodger's warmly melodic flame. (A little
piece of coincidental theatre intelligence: Michael Cerveris, right, who played the lead in The Nightingale, was also the memorable Tommy/narrator of the 1993 Broadway production. It was a pleasure to see him give a great performance one night and fondly recall another of his the next.) Today's musicial is a living, breathing, thoroughly contemporary popular art form, dealing with gritty reality (psychological trauma, child abuse in Tommy) and profound emotions (the closing of the heart in The Nightingale) even as it entertains. This is something that audiences in Poughkeepsie and Pittsfield were obviously as thrilled to experience as I was. The buzz is still within me today, and no doubt within them as well—whatever Richard Rodgers and Paul McCartney may have once thought about the incompatibility of rock 'n' roll and the musical.
