The Happiest Corpse I've Ever Seen: The Last Twenty-Five Years of the Broadway Musical [Hardcover]

Ethan Mordden had been attending Broadway shows since the mid 1950s. He has been writing intelligently about musical theatre ever since his first book on the subject, BETTER FOOT FORWARD, in 1977.

His recent series covering the musicals decade by decade comes to a fitting close with the aptly named THE HAPPIEST CORPSE I'VE EVER SEEN.

Mordden is not a writer for people looking for an introduction or overview. He demands that his readers have good familiarity with the shows he is talking about, as well as a decent grasp of the English language. (This appears to have frustrated some readers who have given the book less than favorable reviews here.) if you don't know teh shows he is talking about, get to your library and check out the cast album and the script.

The period covered is 1980 to the present. No one will ever mistake this time as Broadway's golden years. Intelligent, richly textured shows endure limited runs while the public flocks to see (multiple times, it appears) CATS (a musical that won a Tony for "best book" even though it has no book!)

The author takes us through the few good shows (GRAND HOTEL, TITANIC, THE WILD PARTY, SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, AMOR)plus a handful of other notable shows (SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, PASSION, STEEL PIER, A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE, RAGTIME) along with some that while not great were at least entertaining (LA CAGE AUX FOLLES, WOMAN OF THE YEAR, THE PRODUCERS, CRAZY FOR YOU.) But he spends a good deal of time blasting what he calls "the new stupidity." Stupid shows (AIN'T BROADWAY GRAND), Stupid awards (like naming CONTACT the year's Best Musical when CONTACT is a dance show set to pre-recorded songs and not in any way shape or form a 'musical') and stupid audiences flocking to see stage adaptations of familiar movies (FOOTLOOSE), pop song catalogues recycled (MAMMA MIA), badly done revivals (take your choice), and empty specatcles (CATS.)

You may not always agree wth his opinions, and that is fine. good writing should challange you. And very few Broadway shows do that anymore.

For over a decade, Ethan Mordden has been chronicling the American Musical decade by decade-one book per each(although not necessarily writing them in chronological order) so that, with one notable exception discussed below, he has created nothing less than the definitive history of an American Art Form. Always opinionated, endlessly entertaining, the books have been about joy and they have spread it. Until now. Mordden sees the last quarter century of musicals as nothing less than a betrayal of all that has gone before... and he just may be right! To be sure, he finds some bright spots along the way. These, however, appear more and more to be like the stopped clock that is right twice a day! He, and I think most afficienados would agree, feels that the American Musical today is in the hands of hacks and it ain't gonna get better. The why, you may well ask, read this? Because it is so damned much fun! Wit and intelligence bounce from every page so that we realize that, in the proper hands, even a diatribe can be immensly entertaing! Books in the series published thus far cover the 20's, 40's, 50' 60's, 70's and this latest. Mordden WILL be covering the 30's in his final volume. One gets the impression that he held off so that his final work could return to his feeling of love for the art.

Fortunately, there is one more book forthcoming in Ethan Mordden's invaluable decade-by-decade chronicle of The Broadway Musical (the 1930's book will be out in '05). Fortunate because the current volume is a huge let-down in comparison to the earlier books. It had seemed, prior to this book, that Mordden's over-arching theory about the end of The Golden Age of Broadway Musicals in the late 1970s was part of a larger deep encompassing theory about Broadway's relevance to popular culture. Now, he reveals that his theory is simply that what he calls the "New Stupidity" was enough to kill Broadway. In his opinion, people have now become too uncultured and simple for the sophisticated pleasures of Broadway. He goes on for pages illustrating this "New Stupidity," evidenced by such things as a copy editor refusing to fix a mistakenly identified song title because everyone will know what he means (that's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" instead of "Over the Rainbow.") Meanwhile, the book itself, like the other books in the series is sadly full of its own mistakes (example: he describes Arthur Freed's talent as a composer as "unenterprisingly tuneful in tonic-dominant harmony," on pg 38; Freed, however, as a friend of mine pointed out, was a lyricist). This simply disproves his own point about the New Stupidity. It's not that we're stupider now--everyone, even the most knowledgeable of us, makes mistakes. The problem is that Broadway became irrelevant to the literate and sophisticated folks too. They still exist, but they're staying home to watch Six Feet Under instead of slapping down $300 for two tickets to Dance of the Vampires.

The fact is, it is always tempting to say that a time in the past was smarter, more virtuous, etc., but it's almost always disproved by time. Even in the beloved Golden Age, a great deal of what might easily be called dreck held national attention.

Mordden also allows his right-wing politics to sloppily spill into his discussions of several shows, getting somewhat fanatical in chastising Ragtime for its support of terrorism. Yes, terrorism. Well, maybe it's not the worst point in the world, but it's a little fanatical. As is much of the book.

He also says Marie Christine's score is on a par with Company's and that the NY Philharmonic concert of Sweeney Todd may qualify as the best revival of a show in history. Many of us will disagree. And isn't it a little disproportionate to chastise Ragtime's support of terrorism but reserve no similar judgment for Sweeney's turning of his razor on the necks of all of London?

Also, the omissions here seem particularly notable. Mordden spills more than a little ink on the modest My Life With Albertine, but renders hardly two sentences (and no critique) on the comparably small show of Jason Robert Brown's, The Last Five Years, considered by many to be one of the best new musicals to see New York in the last decade.

Still, it is valuable to have Mordden's take on this final era of the genre, and despite its disappointments, it makes for an interesting read for Broadway fans.

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