Where is the Musical Going?
In the last twelve months we’ve looked at music theatre one a number of occasions – theatre spectacle in April, the next step in its development in June, musicals based on pop bands’ work in September, and “the end of music theatre as we know it” in November. ‘Nuff said, you might think, but then I read what Graham Whitlock of Dreamarts Youth Theatre said in his interview with Philip Fisher: “The (non-operatic) musical as a concept is only about 60 years old and still as much developing to do. The key is to start appealing to younger people. We need to have some hip-hop musicals that will appeal to a much younger audience.” Hip-hop musical The Bomb-Itty of Errors arrives at the New Ambassadors in May, after making a bit of a splash in Edinburgh at last year’s Fringe, and just last week we had news that the Theatre Royal Stratford East is to present Da Boyz, a hip-hop version of The Boys from Syracuse, later this year. Is this a way forward for the musical? The apologists for hip-hop wi
