Focus: Mamma Mia! Musicals are cooler than they ever were

Published on Tuesday 9 September 2008 21:53

The genre had looked moribund, but a new energy and creativity is sparking a revival, says BRIAN PENDREIGH

IN THESE days of massive worldwide hype and instant gratification, major feature films tend to pack out cinemas on their opening weekends and then very quickly disappear, before re-emerging on DVD a few months later.

The Dark Knight has been called "The Godfather of comic-book movies". It got great reviews. It stars Heath Ledger, who is the new James Dean. And, based on early figures, analysts were suggesting it might even challenge Titantic's titanic box-office record.

But after just six weeks on release it had fallen to No 5 in the UK box-office charts, behind such run-of-the-mill releases as the Will Ferrell comedy Step Brothers and the horror movie The Strangers. Back in the 1990s Four Weddings and a Funeral was No 1 for nine weeks and Pretty Woman for eight.

But here's a very odd thing – Mamma Mia!, the musical with Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan camping it up, singing Abba songs, on a Greek island, was No 1 before The Dark Knight, it went down to 3, and then it moved back up to No 2, where it has been sitting for the last few weeks while chart-toppers come and go.

What is more, it is actually outgrossing the Batman behemoth in the UK, taking around $1 million (565,000) in eight weeks, despite some iffy reviews from the sort of critic with whom you might enjoy spending time if you are a particularly passionate fan of Tarkovsky or Parajnov.

The film is doing extremely well internationally as well. And while it is tempting to dismiss its performance as a quirky one-off, some would say aberration, it actually points up an interesting development in cinema, and that is the revival of the film musical.

As a genre, musicals had seemed largely moribund since the 1960s when West Side Story, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music and Oliver! all won Best Picture Oscars (and all were adapted from stage hits). By the mid-1970s, after the further high-point of Cabaret, film musicals were beginning to seem a little old-fashioned, and by the end of the decade they had become a cinematic by-way, frequented by a few eccentrics and the terminally uncool.

Since the turn of the century, however, there have been a number of isolated hit musicals, beginning with Moulin Rouge!, the highly imaginative Ewan McGregor film that used pop songs in a period Parisian setting, and Chicago, a relatively traditional adaptation from a stage musical, that was an Oscar-winner in 2003.

Film musicals appeared to be picking up momentum even before Mamma Mia!. There is a new energy and creativity in the genre, for which Moulin Rouge! must take at least some of the credit. We have recently had John Travolta playing a woman in Hairspray, the fictionalised biopic of the Supremes that was Dreamgirls, and Johnny Depp as a singing serial killer in Sweeney Todd.

The musical is cool again, possibly cooler than it ever was before. And the list of forthcoming films underlines its rude health and helps explain why.

October brings the latest instalment in a genuine showbiz phenomenon with Disney's release of High School Musical 3. There are plenty of hit film series, or "franchises" as they are called in the industry these days. The charts are full of sequels.

But what is unique about High School Musical 3 is that it is a cinema sequel to a cheap made-for-TV film.

The original premiered on the Disney Channel two years ago, it was a huge hit on DVD and it prompted a concert tour and stage adaptation, underlining the increasingly symbiotic relationship between screen and stage musicals. It used to be pretty much one-way traffic – stage to screen. Now it cuts both ways, with many films being adapted for the stage.

Mary Poppins has been a hit on Broadway and in the West End and will be at the Edinburgh Playhouse from October to early December. Several non-musical films have been turned into stage musicals, including Billy Elliot, The Witches of Eastwick and Hairspray (which went full circle with the film version of the stage musical).

West End musicals are supported largely by tourists, the provincial musical by women in their fifties, sixties, seventies and upwards. Some of those who still have a husband might drag him along. He invariably looks uncomfortable.

There is however also a younger element, particularly girls in their pre-teens, teens and twenties, and High School Musical is very clearly hitting a nerve with this "market segment".

Before High School Musical 3 arrives, we have the 30th anniversary re-release of Grease later this month. It is likely to appeal not only to those who remember the original release, but also with a new, young audience who watched the TV show Grease is the Word, one of a number of programmes to turn the casting process into a competition, with a mix of celebrity judges and a public vote.

Grease is the Word was the UK version of an American show, but the format was pioneered in the UK with the BBC's How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? in 2006. More than two million viewers participated in the final vote that resulted in Connie Fisher being cast in the starring role in a new West End production of The Sound of Music.

These reality shows have introduced a new generation to the classics of musical theatre and film, and they have made them hip again.

A film remake of My Fair Lady is now in development, with Keira Knightly and Daniel Day-Lewis.

So too is a film of Wicked, the hit stage musical which was inspired by the 1939 film classic The Wizard of Oz. It presents the backstory for the Wicked Witch of the West and the Good Witch of the North, revealing a romantic rivalry and explaining their later antipathy towards each other.

What goes around comes around and once more cinemas are alive with the sound of music.

&#149 Grease is re-released on 24 September, High School Musical 3: Senior Year opens on 22 October. Mary Poppins is at the Playhouse, Edinburgh, 1 October– 6 December, followed by The Witches of Eastwick at the same venue 10 December – 3 January.