Musicals? Cool?

Whilst 'theatre' garners maximum credibility as an art-form, the moment you pop the dreaded m-word in front of it, all that cred goes out the window. Musicals just aren't cool. They're drippy, trite, and over-sentimental. And yet there must be something more alluring than just Michael Ball in drag to regularly pack out the stalls at Hairspray.

Maybe it's time we stop disregarding all of them as mere sugary poppycock. Instead, we should take heed of the brilliant satire and booming score of Bernstein's Candide, and the recent success of Betwixt, where the jokes were sharper, the lyrics more savoury, and the entire experience generally less juvenile than one might have feared.

The glittery trash of Catherine Zeto-Jones' stage-to-screen Chicago was nothing if not fun, but now it looks like Hollywood is getting in on the m-word big time. Following film ratings in excess of 255 million (and surely not all of them were pubescent), the already phenomenal High School Musical is set to hit our stage at the end of the month. And with big names like Pierce Brosnan and Tom Hanks attaching themselves to the new Mama Mia! flick, that's definitely worth making a song and dance about.

Hairspray now on at Shaftesbury Theatre
Candide - opens today June 23 at ENO
High School Musical - opens June 28
Mamma Mia! - opens July 10

by SH