What makes for a good musical comedy score? I feel like too often musical comedies work on a funny book and lyrics, and miss the possibility of using musical arrangement to augment humour. Something Rotten! (with exclamation point), the new musical that has taken the musical theatre world hostage, has had me asking the question more than usual.
Something Rotten! famously skipped its pre-Broadway Seattle tryout to open on Broadway in time for the Tony Awards, a seemingly successful gamble – the show earned ten Tony nominations and every other person is praising its inventiveness. Effective comedy in musicals has gotten too rare, Something Rotten!’s hook of happening during the Elizabethan era with William Shakespeare as the villain of the piece had me intrigued but the incessant (reported) inventiveness of this new musical (this Very New Musical as its excellent ad campaign insists) does not translate as well to its score.
And, it feels like a special kind of churlish to not be completely entranced by the high comedy of Something Rotten! but for all its earnestness and chutzpah the well-produced, well-sung cast recording does not seem as thrilling as it ought to be. Which, in fairness is a high bar, Something Rotten! is a curio as a score. In typical fashion for Ghostlight Records it’s an excellently produced album with fine orchestrations and excellent sound. It features fine thespians like Brian d’Arcy James, Christian Borle and Brad Oscar, but despite this trio of Tony nominated stars at the helm, my favourite aspects of Something Rotten! end up being more peripheral.
For me, the recording’s apex comes not with the much loved “A Musical” (which I’m curious if the love for it comes from the song's own merit or its staging) but the sliver of a song which begins the Bottom brothers' first attempt a musical – the outrageous “The Black Death”. It’s a toe-tapping choral piece about the eponymous plague which killed millions. The song's jauntiness is immediately ridiculous and wrongheaded and features, most likely, my favourite melody of the score. This is what makes it such a delight. The two minute number on “The Black Death” (using the plague as a musical subject is immediately dropped) seems not enough for such an interesting melody. The tune is reused later in Act Two for the actual musical the brothers put on called Omelette. The successor to "The Black Death", "It's Eggs" lyrically makes a much less impressive use of the melody but it’s hard to deny how well the tune works for an ensemble number. And clearly the show's writers/composers are aware of it as it’s used for a third time as it wraps up the story in the "Finale".
The way that “The Black Death” pops on the recording is indicative of a constant with the entire cast recording for me which has less to do with performance and more to do with the roots of the score. New writers, the brotherly duo of Wayne Kirkpatrick and Karey Kirkpatrick are much more impressive when writing ensemble choral numbers than character-driven solos. For example, the opening number (the sly "Welcome to the Renaissance") never reaches earworm status for me, but its inspired hook moves from entertaining to toe-tapping impressiveness when it turns into an ensemble piece mid-way through a minute in.
To be fair, the score is never bad, in fact the odd appeal of the show is how it manages to be mildly raucously funny while going down so easy. Which is a bit of a problem, it never seems original enough to risk being offensive to anyone. I’m not sure if it’s an inherent aspect of the show’s theatre jesting roots that every number feels like a wink and a nod to a previous musical, d’Arcy James’ first solo (“I Hate Shakespeare” in addition to featuring my least favourite rhyme of the show sounds like a lesser version of a Shrek number. And I wasn’t a fan of Shrek to begin with...) Call it the bias of a former English Lit major but too often the would-be smartness of the show becomes compromised by forced rhymes which are overzealous but kill the potential for humour (there’s nothing as funny as a well executed complete rhyme, just ask A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder’s team from last year)
More successful of the story driven numbers is the duet “I Love the Way” with John Cariani, the lesser Bottom sibling and his love interest played by Kate Reinders. The song has, arguably, the show’s deftest rhymes and gives me memories of "Follow Your Heart" from Urinetown (again, not certain if this intentional). I liked “Right Hand Man” which employs simple rhymes and a simple but effective melody coupled with an earnest delivery by Heidi Blickenstaff, who I’d single out for MVP on the recording. She gets only one real solo but wins my attention for letting the comedy come naturally from her instead of pushing forward too brashly with it.
I have no doubt that in performance Something Rotten! makes for a giddy romp of a night at the theatre but beauty and crutch of the cast recording is that when preserved for multiple listens, all scores do not hold up as strong. Something Rotten! is well produced and orchestrated, and with all the tongue twisting nods within the score much kudos to the cast for impressive diction (it’s hard to criticise accents which are deliberately overblown for effect, it’s more impressive to point out that even with deliberately fudged accent the listener is rarely left questioning what word is which on the recording).
Is it pure musical theatre snobbery that makes me think I’d be unlikely to pick it up for a random listen, though? I’d think not. I’m curious to see what the Kirkpatricks do next, though. Despite my issues with it Something Rotten’s score signals a duo with potential to do some interesting things. It’s odd, though, even as I’m not particularly beholden to the cast recording I suspect in its own way the cast recording of Something Rotten! gets the job done. Because when the album is over and after reading the raves for the show, you might probably be thinking – maybe I should see it live to really get it...
