Al goes through some tunes from some favourite musicals, as well as discussing the genres of musical theatre in general! Included within are Hamilton, The Blues Brothers, Book of Mormon, Mulan, Les Miserables, and more! Want the rest of this episode? Head to https://patreon.com/OnBrand
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Music is nice And in this case, more specifically, musicals is nice. | |
| Because that's right, I'm going to be looking at some musical theatre with you all. | |
| I've been to a couple of musicals lately, which I'll be playing a couple of songs from Book of Mormon and Dear Evan Hansen, namely. | |
| And we'll also be looking at Les Mis, The Producers, The Blues Brothers, Mulan and Hamilton, which if you're a patron, you can also go and watch my video about like the... | |
| In particular, taking cues from Black and Native American activists and what they have to say about it. | |
| Like, don't worry, you can still be a fan, you can still enjoy it, but there is some shit you ought to know, and like, keep in mind. | |
| As well as my having seen more musicals than usual lately, I wanted to discuss musicals from like a perspective of class as well. | |
| Because musicals are, for the most part, what we would call a A Marmite subject, um, is how we would call them in the UK. | |
| Like, as in either you love them or you hate them. | |
| And, I can pretty safely say that Andrew Lloyd Webber is responsible for most of those, because his particular brand of overly cheesy, campy, and saccharine productions to this day make me violently uncomfortable. | |
| Phantom of the Opera is the only one I can come even close to. | |
| Otherwise, like, Cats? | |
| I don't think so. | |
| I was once taken to see Starlight Express, somewhat against my will. | |
| People on roller skates pretending to be trains while singing the cheesiest of rock songs? | |
| Absolutely fucking not. | |
| Cannot stand it. | |
| No. | |
| And, like, those musicals achieve such success that, like, you could be forgiven for thinking that that's all that musical theatre is. | |
| It was only when I went to study performing arts, before I went to... | |
| Good lord. | |
| And from a class perspective, well, like, musicals come from and are made for the working class fundamentally, right? | |
| They come from pageant wagons and bards way back when, and later, like, from musicals and vaudeville and pantomime, which is not to say, like, the era. | |
| Aristocracy uniformly hated the stuff, but pretty generally, if you were a person of class, you'd be attending the opera or a play instead. | |
| Yeah, yeah, it's those commoners going to see their vaudeville, yeah. | |
| You know, right? | |
| Essentially, it's very easy to look down your nose at musicals as a genre, and very, very easy to get all elitist about it. | |
| From both directions, because particularly when you look at the fact that over the last, like, half century or more, because of the advent of television and cinema, theater prices for plays and musicals have continued to ascend, and more recently have fucking skyrocketed, which in our recent history puts musicals as being out of reach. | |
| Of most of the working class, most of the time. | |
| And so, like, there's this fascinating switch that's been happening, where those who are invested in musical theatre are actually now from middle or upper class backgrounds, and the working class will have to watch the televised version if they're lucky enough to get one. | |
| Or possibly a local amateur production that... | |
| And also many, many musicals will not allow amateur licensing for their shows, including some that I'm going to play today. | |
| Like, that, combined with the near purge of working-class actors from the industry in general in the UK, like, there is quite an issue on our hands. | |
| Nonetheless, musical theatre is from the working class and should be reclaimed wherever possible. | |
| And we're going to look at some videos today, some studio recorded and some live from some great musicals that have had quite the effect on me. | |
| And if you're hesitant about musical theatre, I beg you to stick with me here. | |
| I'm gonna be coming at this from a somewhat unconventional direction, avoiding a lot of the great legends of musical theatre, right? | |
| We're going to start with the way most people, I think, are introduced to musicals in the year 2025, from when you were just a kid. | |
| We're going to be looking at a Disney number is what we're going to look at because like most Disney films are of course musicals with the song supporting the story and being written for that story specifically, etc. | |
| Right. | |
| And. | |
| And the song, of course, is I'll Make a Man Out of You. | |
| Alright, I'm going to finish now because I'm hungry and I want to eat something. |