Snark follows. I received my Dr. Horrible DVD in the mail today. Although I enjoyed it when I first saw it, and still enjoy it, I think the lyrics are one of its weakest points. With the exceptions of the Bad Horse numbers, and, to some extent, the medley-created humor of “So They Say,” I am getting sick of the bad-on-purpose writing. Like this, from “My Eyes”:

Listen close to everybody’s heart
And hear that breaking sound
Hopes and dreams are shattering apart
And crashing to the ground

Blah. It’s not even funny any more. After a week of Gilbert, Sondheim, Hart, Willson, Harburg, and Ashman, this is embarrassing. Even in the Bad Horse choruses, which are my favorite parts of the film, because a) they are choruses, and b) they are better written, there are, sorry, really horrible touches:

He saw the operation you tried to pull today,
But your humiliation means he still votes “neigh –”
And now assassination is just the only way.
There will be blood, it might be yours —
So go kill someone —
Signed: Bad Horse.

That “just” in the line “and now assassination is just the only way” is awful. It’s, er, “just” there to provide another syllable.

It’s better to have nonsense words than bad writing — it’s better to have unrhymed text than bad rhyming — and it’s better to do anything than write this, from “Everything You Ever”:

So you think justice has a voice,
And we all have a choice?

Come on. Grateful as I am to this team for experimenting with new methods of distribution and production, and for creating a humorous Internet musical, and for employing Neil Patrick Harris, it seems pathetic mismanagement to have spent 200K on anything and still have lines like that left in.

Also, to ensure my credentials as a curmudgeon, the habit of putting lyrics online without any punctuation is driving me bonkers. In trying to create handouts for the class, I spend way too much time fiddling with semicolons. I can’t give them handouts without punctuation. It completely undermines the premise of this course that lyrics are serious writing. (Gilbert, I am sure, would never have allowed his lyrics to be printed without punctuation. If I’m wrong about that, and I guess I should probably find out, then I disagree with him.)

Here’s how. I think.

We’re going to choose an over-arching narrative for our class-written musical, something with mass culture appeal that has not yet been made into a musical – Harry Potter…AVATAR…something… – and break it, roughly, into acts and scenes. Each student gets assigned to an act and a scene, and to the song from that scene.

They each (the students) only have to write one set of lyrics. One. But they have to revise it twice. They’ll be assigned (or can assign themselves, better) to particular topics or scenes from the over-arching story, and that topic becomes their song. They work on it for the entire course.

The students are going to be divided into 5 groups of 5 each, each assigned to a chunk of the narrative. I’ll try, based on the first day, to break it up so that folks with theater experience are divided fairly among the groups.

The other 4 members of the group become the chorus members for the lyricist’s song, if the song has a chorus. Everyone will, in this way, be in four choruses as well as writing their own song.

Any rehearsal time they get will have to occur outside of class – I think most of them won’t rehearse, but will just do a cold read.

And on the final day of the course, we’ll present all the lyrics, one after another, in narrative sequence, resulting in a mass-crafted musical. There won’t be music, but they can read them out loud.

I like it. A lot. I like it better for its many seeming impossibilities.

The primary business that makes this clogged artery [Times Square] the tourist heart of the city is theater, and the musical remains its driving force.

Perhaps the most ominous detail I noted in assembling the list of the decade’s most important new musicals relates to this troubling phenomenon. Only one composer-lyricist on this list had more than one new show on Broadway during the decade. His name was Mel Brooks*.

– Charles Isherwood, “Cue The Chorus: The Musical Endures,” NYT

Isherwood provides a timely survey of the decade in musicals, days before the start of the intersession class I’m teaching. There is so much material on this topic. I am used to having my critical and academic interests be more marginal — this is as if** I suddenly decided to write a paper on the atomic bomb, or something. Sources? Websites? Lyrics online? Everything! At your fingertips! Constantly! I’m The musical is so popular!

*We are going to see the touring version of the Mel Brooks YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN musical on the 14th, as a class.

**You know you’ve been in graduate school too long (and only one semester!) when your California-honed habits of using the word “like” inappropriately are challenged. Makes me sad.