Covering Theatre Artists Efforts in New Genres

Brad Hathaway*

Abstract

A veteran theatre critic reviewed the premiere of a symphony by a prominent theatre composer only to find that few of his theatre critic colleagues reviewed the event. When a practitioner of theatrical arts branches into other genres it is an event that should be covered. A review can be positive or negative, but it is always a report — a theatre critic is a theatre journalist and journalists should report!

Keywords: theatre composer, Frank Wildhorn, cross genre, Odessa Symphonie, Donau Symphonie, Wiener Symphoniker

I recently found myself in a puzzling minority — I was one of the few critics to cover a new work by a major practitioner of the musical theatre art. When a composer with nearly fifty produced musicals around the world, half a dozen of which have had at least one production on Broadway, has a new work not only performed but released in a commercial recording, the critical community should take notice and alert their readers to the development. My colleagues might well have a wide range of opinions on the worth of the work but we all should inform our readers while expressing our own aesthetic judgement. A review can be an alert or a warning, but it is always a report and a journalist should report.

So what was the work? It was a symphony! Not many composers of musical theatre have crossed over the barrier between the theatrical and the classical concert music worlds. Some, of course, crossed that line in the opposite direction: Leonard Bernstein was a star of the concert hall before his first notes were heard in a Broadway theatre.

Leonard Bernstein was a star of the concert hall before his first notes were heard in a Broadway theatre. Photo: Jack Mitchell. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.

Perhaps the most famous and most successful composer to have great success in the theatre and also the classical concert hall was George Gershwin. Others have moved from traditional book musical scores to the non-verbal theatrical storytelling of ballet as Claude-Michel Schönberg has done twice with Wuthering Heights and Cleopatra. Something of a hybrid was Jason Robert Brown’s symphonic-style score with a verbal narration for what he called The Trumpet of the Swan: A Novel Symphony for Actor and Orchestra.

George Gershwin stands out as one of the few composers to achieve remarkable success in both musical theatre and the classical concert hall. Photo: Web/Public domain

But the leap from stage to concert hall which I reviewed this summer was that of Frank Wildhorn whose six Broadway musicals — Jekyll & Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Civil War, Dracula, Bonnie and Clyde and Wonderland — represent only about 10% of his produced shows. The other 40 or so have found the stages of theatres overseas including much of Europe, Japan, Korea and China.

The recording of Frank Wildhorn’s *Danube Symphony*

Back in 2020, when the COVID pandemic shut everyone in, Wildhorn took the opportunity presented by the quarantine to spend time trying his hand at a new art — one that wasn’t a collaboration with lyricists and book writers. At the suggestion of a good friend and producer, Walter Feucht, he began to sketch out a symphony inspired by the Danube River. His Donau Symphonie, as orchestrated by Kim Scharnberg, was of such quality that the venerable Vienna Symphony (or Viener Symphoniker) gave it its world premiere in the historic Golden Hall of Vienna’s Musicverein — a hall that had housed the world premieres of symphonies by Mahler, Brahms and Bruckner.

The historic Golden Hall of Vienna’s Musicverein where Wildhorn’s *Donau Symphonie*, orchestrated by Kim Scharnberg, had its world premiere. Photo: Web/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license

This year that same orchestra premiered a second Wildhorn symphony, the Odessa Symphonie. It was that premiere that I covered.

Once my review was published (it is here) I looked to see what other reviewers said of the work. I was astonished to find almost nothing but silence, at least online. I turned to the AI feature of Google’s Gemini and it was only able to find two full reviews of the work … mine and one other!

The recording of Frank Wildhorn’s *Odessa Symphony*

Just why the critical community covering either theatre or music should all but ignore cross development is, as Oscar Hammerstein II said “a puzzlement!” Perhaps the classical music critics failed to recognize the importance because they weren’t interested in the work of a “mere” theatre composer. But we of the International Association of Theatre Critics know of Mr. Wildhorn’s work even as there is a wide range of opinions on it. Why would my theatre critic colleagues not have covered his excursion into a new genre?

The Wiener Symphoniker which performed the world premieres of both of Frank Wildhorn’s symphonies. Photo: Peter Regaud, courtesy of the Wiener Symphoniker

Many of us take great pride in the things we bring to our craft: academic credentials in the history of the art form or substantial experience either on the boards or behind the scenes. Others have long experience in journalism or can lay claim to long years of study and application in the fields of literature and criticism itself. So, perhaps there is a sense of confidence when assessing theatrical events. That sense of confidence might not be as easy to obtain when branching out of the narrow confines of theatre to deal with offerings in other genres. After all, just because you can knowledgeably comment on the strengths and weaknesses of yet another staging of a Shakespeare play, it doesn’t follow that you can be as confident assessing the strengths of a sculpture, a portrait or a symphony. I would argue, however, that when a significant practitioner of “our art” branches out to a new field, it is news that the followers of theatre need to know about and would be interested in learning how successful the effort is.

The recording of Jason Robert Brown’s novel symphony for actors and orchestra

In my own case, my theatre critic reputation is based on reviews of literally thousands of shows, additional thousands of articles about developments in the theatre communities I covered over nearly two decades and a collection of features taking a broader view of theatrical subjects. I have no such reputation as a music critic. I suspect most of you, my colleagues in IATC have earned your own reputation in the field be it through your years in academia, media or practice in the art form itself. But, like me, have no such claim in other art forms. So how can we have anything to say about a new symphony, statue or painting that anyone should care to read?

I maintain that each of us, with the skills that have made us successful in our branch of criticism, can and should produce reviews that describe a work with all the attention to detail and quality even without a mastery of the elements. We may not have a solid foundation in sonata form, key structures and tonics but we can certainly recognize beauty, excitement, emotion, romanticism and pacing. It has been our practice over our careers to describe events with enough color and detail to give our readers a sense of the quality of the art we are reviewing. We can, and we should, do the same when one of the practitioners of “our” art form takes up a new one.

Not only is it news which as theatre journalists we should cover, it is art about which as critics we should spread the word!

*Brad Hathaway retired to live with his wife on a houseboat in Sausalito, California, after nearly two decades covering theatre in Washington, DC, on Broadway, and nationwide. He is both a former vice chair of the American Theatre Critics Association and the former editor of that association’s newsletter.

This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution International License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

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