RAT SQUONK, Part II

[TimNGail@aol.com]

Sorry to bug you all again... this'll be the last post... on this, anyway... 
just found an article, though, that makes the point much better than I did 
for the purposes of discussion on the RAT list...

tim
funkopolis


By John Hayes

Post-Gazette Staff Writer



The reviews were mixed. The emerging art form breaking onto Broadway was

embraced by some critics and misunderstood by others who longed for familiar

patterns. The buzz in some circles was that it would never fly, that it

wasn't "Broadway material."

The date was March 31, 1943 and the show was "Oklahoma!," the first project

by a new writing team, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, and the

first show to successfully combine drama, relevant songs that propelled the

story and dance. 

"Many theater watchers had reservations about the show," writes Colin

Larkin in The Virgin Encyclopedia of Stage and Film Musicals. "...

Although some of its innovative features had been attempted previously,

sometimes successfully, never before had such features as a ballet sequence

and a serious plot [been] blended ... into a production."

"Oklahoma!" was revolutionary, the founder of the modern American musical.

Another insurgency is seething just under Broadway's skin. It's a reaction

against the ultra-sophistication of million-dollar productions and the

cash-cow mentality that too often makes the Manhattan Theater District a

safe haven for tourist-trap revivals. It's an acceptance that TV and film

have drama-telling tools that stage does not; a movement that makes better

use of theater's unique strengths. Developing for years off-off Broadway the

new, multidisciplinary format has finally ruptured like a zit through

Broadway's tender skin, and the first group to get there is Pittsburgh's

Squonk.

Off-off Broadway, the group's "bigsmorgasbordwunderwerks" drew rave

reviews from New York's most influential critics. 

"Ingenious! Hallucinatory!" wrote The New York Times' Ben Brantley.

"Squonk inhabits its own reality warp, a place where squares and hipsters

alike can seek refuge from the too solid world."

Other critics agreed. But when Squonk recently moved from Performance Space

122 to the nearly-600 seat Helen Hayes Theater, the critics changed their

tune.

Brantley called it "clunky." USA Today bemoaned singer Jana Losey's

"vibratoless voice" and the group's lack of "Martha Graham choreography."

With few exceptions the critics seemed to delight in the new form, as long

as it stayed in the East Village. 

"This is Broadway," wrote USA Today's David Patrick Stearns, "with promises

of more sophisticated theatricality."

Audiences haven't bolted because of the bad reviews, but Squonk's chief

promoter admits that he was counting on the bump in sales that good reviews

might bring. As a result, the Helen Hayes wants Squonk out, and has

threatened to invoke a clause in the contract that can evict the group after

March 19 if they don't bring in $100,000 per week.

As a critic I admit that I've publicly spanked a few artists in my time. But

the reaction to Squonk is more than a few bad reviews. I fear a broader plot

in which members of the media elite are attempting to control an emerging

art form that they say doesn't meet the Broadway standards they've

established. They loved it at PS 122 but it doesn't "belong" at the Helen

Hayes? That's too much power for critics to have.

This is no longer just about Squonk. This is the "Oklahoma!" story. It's

radio in 1961 saying that Bob Dylan isn't AM material. It's the Nashville

Establishment saying that Lyle Lovette and kd lang aren't country, and

Hollywood saying that independent art films can't play in the multiplexes. 

I've always believed that there's such a thing as a good polka band even

though I don't like polka. As a professional I should be able to tell a good

one from a bad one and explain the difference. In a broader sense critics

should encourage and articulate evolutions in art, not attempt to bury them

simply because they represent change. What Brantley and the others seem to

be saying is that Squonk is a "pleasant diversion" as long as it stays in

an unimportant venue, but they draw the line at a house in which

they stake their reputations, as if they're the arbiters of how and where

musical theater should evolve.

With its pop-inspired progressive music and musicians who make their own

sets and act the surrealistic roles, Squonk is unique but not alone in the

revolution. Other groups including Oranj Symphonette, Blue Man Group and

the Emerson String Quartet are blurring the line between theater and musical

performance. In fact, people who've worked with Squonk see the group as part

of a new, emerging art form.

"It is an emerging form, but it's been emerging for 20 years, says Carnegie

Mellon University's Jed Harris, who directed Squonk's tongue-in-cheek "Night

of the Living Dead: The Opera." "What Squonk is doing is rejecting

narrative, which is one of the hardest things for Broadway critics to deal

with."

"It's hard to categorize them," says Jim Woland, director of presenting

organizations at the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a funding group that

has supported Squonk since 1993. "The audience when I was [at PS 122] loved

them. The audiences were getting it on Broadway even if the critics weren't.

That's an important barometer."

"One of the things that is happening is Broadway is changing," says City

Theatre's Marc Masterson, who commissioned Squonk's take on "Night of the

Living Dead" and presented an early version of "bigsmorgasbord" last year.

"It's becoming a different kind of place and a lot of people don't like

that. [Squonk] is challenging that."

Broadway has changed before despite the resistance of entrenched

establishment. It's about to feel a another backlash, this time against the

stylized "higher" art forms, spearheaded by insurgent performances that are

intentionally "vibratoless" and Martha Graham-less. Everybody won't like it

and some shows, including Squonk, may fall on their faces like so many do.

But I'd rather see Squonk close because not enough people like it than have

it squelched because a few elite critics have decreed that it "isn't

Broadway." It's art. Let the people decide.



- John Hayes