On Sept. 29, Broadway Musicals Day will be celebrated because everything has to have a day.
And why not? Broadway musicals seem more worthy of a celebration than something like National Broccoli Lovers Day or National Broccoli Haters Day, and can you imagine the bloodbath if those got scheduled on the same date? (Shudders)
Should you choose to participate you’ll be celebrating an art form that was born of desperation.
The Black Crook is considered by some, not all, to be the first musical. Its origin story is ridiculous and its existence seems preposterous. It was a huge hit.
The Black Crook began as a non-musical play, a German melodrama concerning a sorcerer, playing at Niblo’s Garden on Broadway.
Meanwhile, the venue for a ballet performance burned down, leaving the show’s producers scrambling to save their investment. They proposed bringing their production to Niblo’s Garden which was booked with The Black Crook.
The ballet’s producers then proposed combining the two shows. The resulting work is described as a combination of French Romantic ballet and German melodrama, and it is literally that: a ballet wedged into a melodrama.
Whatever the virtues of the ballet or play might have been, together they were dynamite. The new, value-added Black Crook drew crowds like no other show in the theater district had before.
At a time when a 20-show run constituted a smash, The Black Crook ran for an astounding 470-plus performances.
Clocking in at a tight five-and-a-half hours (opening night ran past six hours), The Black Crook introduced audiences not only to the musical, but to spectacle as well.
The presence of scantily clad dancers – “a magnificent CORPS OF SEVENTY LADIES,” shouted the program – was part of its appeal. But it was the elaborate routines the dancers performed that mesmerized the crowds.
(Let’s not discount scandal, though. The exposed flesh of the dancers drew the scorn of moral guardians which, unsurprisingly, was a box office boom.)
Songs were written for the show, while already popular tunes were used as well (shades of Moulin Rouge!). Special effects were advanced for the time, including a transformation scene in which a rocky grotto becomes a fairyland throne room.
The way The Black Crook came together could have resulted in a misbegotten mess. Instead, it became a milestone. It certainly validated the pursuit of innovative/crazy ideas in the theater. More than a century later, someone had the kooky idea to dress up actors as felines and have them sing. That was a hit, too. Go figure.