Thomas S. Hischak - The Mikado to Matilda: British Musicals on the New York Stage

Charlestons South Carolina Gazette announced in 1735 that the opera Flora; or, Hob in the Well would be performed in the courthouse on Tuesday, 18 February, along with a pantomime and a dance performance. This is the earliest record of a work of musical theatre in the colonies. It was, of course, British. Just as theatre in the New World was European theatre, so too musical entertainments were from abroad. Original forms of American music can trace their roots to the eighteenth century, but it takes quite a long time for homegrown musical theatre to fully develop its own character and style. There are instances of some American musicals as far back as 1767, the same year that the first play written by an American-born playwright (The Prince of Parthia by Thomas Godfrey) was produced. But for the most part, the musicals that colonists saw were products from Great Britain. The most popular form of musical at the time was the ballad opera, a more accessible form of opera, with dialogue scenes, individual songs that were sometimes already known to the audience, and a strong plot. Of all the ballad operas to play in the colonies in the eighteenth century, none was more popular than John Gays The Beggars Opera. It was first performed in England in 1728 and was an immediate success, revived in London and the provinces throughout the rest of the century. The first production of The Beggars Opera in America was not until 1750 in New York City, and it eventually became a staple with theatres across the colonies except in puritanical New England.

By the end of the century, comic operas were finding a niche in theatres both in Britain and America. These were closer to musical comedies yet were still operatic, with recitatives and many of the conventions of opera. What made them so popular was their lighter plots and farcical characters, usually played by favorite stage comedians. In 1796, a notable comic opera, The Sicilian Romance; or, The Spectre of the Cliffs, opened in New York. It had been a hit in London and was brought to America by Lewis Hallam Jr. (The Hallams were pioneers in touring plays and musicals in the colonies before the Revolutionary War, and the son continued the practice in the new nation.) As would happen often over the next 130 years, the British score for The Sicilian Romance was replaced by American songs. It was the first, and far from the last, time a London success was Americanized for New Yorkers. The nineteenth century saw more and more British musicals finding audiences in New York. A good example was Tom & Jerry; or, Life in London (1823) which was billed as An Extravaganza Burletta of Fun, Frolic, Fashion, and Flash. The musical was so popular that in 1856 it was remembered well enough to have an American musical counterpart titled Life in New York; or, Tom and Jerryon a Visit. Ironically, the most successful musical from Britain to open in New York before the Civil War was not a ballad opera or a comic opera but the melodramatic operetta The Bohemian Girl. It was a sensation in London in 1843 and the next year it thrilled New Yorkers. It and The Beggars Opera are perhaps the only two British musicals before the Civil War to still be performed today with any frequency.

The Black Crook (1866) is usually credited as the first truly American musical. That is questionable, but it was the first successful mixture of song, melodrama, dance, and spectacle on a Broadway scale. The Black Crook featured chorus girls (French ballerinas, no less); tons of scenery and special effects; tuneful songs that changed as needed; and sometimes, during its long run, stars. No British importation had ever come up with something so big. Or so successful. The Black Crook ran over a year in its first engagement, toured and returned to New York over the rest of the century, and made more money than any theatrical venture the world had yet seen. Such a juggernaut spawned more American musical spectacles as well as musicals, like A Trip to Chinatown (1891), which succeeded on the merits of its story, characters, and songs. But The Black Crook did not diminish the number of British musicals crossing the Atlantic and finding a ready audience in New York. Perhaps the most notable of them was the melodramatic musical The Lily of Killarney (1868). Its Irish setting and characters were especially appealing to Irish Americans, though, in truth, immigrants in New York were flocking to the more street-savvy, rough-and-tumble musical comedies put on by Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart. Their raucous Mulligan Guard series of musical farces in the 1880s were a bold alternative to British musicals. Similarly, Lew Fields and Joe Weber presented their own series of musical burlesques at the turn of the century. Yet neither had much effect on the London imports that reached an all-time high between 1875 and World War One.

The impetus for this golden age of British musical theatre in America was, quite simply, Gilbert and Sullivan. Between 1875 and 1894, these very British, very Victorian artists brought the art of comic operetta to heights it had never seen before or since. Such blockbusters as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado, and The Gondoliers were as popular in America as they were throughout the British Commonwealth. This fertile era may have started with Gilbert and Sullivan, but dozens of other artists kept up the momentum and London was flooded with musicals, many of which they sent to New York. Just as George M. Cohan was developing the All-American brand of musical at the turn of the century, various British producers, playwrights, and songwriters were moving the British musical away from operetta to its own kind of musical comedy. Because of the economics of London theatre, several of these musicals were able to run hundreds of performances, some even over a thousand. The popularity of such musicals as Erminie (1886), Florodora (1900), The Geisha (1896), San Toy (1900), A Chinese Honeymoon (1902), The Toreador (1902), The Arcadians (1910), Chu Chin Chow (1917), and The Maid of the Mountains (1918) is remarkable even by todays long-run standards. But these long-run hits did not have Gilbert and Sullivanlike superior quality and very few can be revived today.

The Roaring Twenties saw a record number of homegrown American musicals on Broadway. With the emergence of such new songwriters as the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Vincent Youmans, E. Y. Harburg, Harold Arlen, and Oscar Hammerstein, the American musical was a clearly defined and ever-growing art form. London also saw a record number of musicals in the 1920s, but the traffic seemed to be moving mostly eastward across the Atlantic. British playgoers saw plenty of Broadway, but New Yorkers saw little of the West End. Only Noel Coward seemed to find audiences on both continents with his plays, revues, and book musicals. Coward was also able to brave the Depression in the 1930s when the number of musicals in both New York and London dropped considerably. The war years and the rest of the 1940s were a boom time for musicals in both cities. It was the beginning of the golden age for the American musical with Lady in the Dark (1940), Pal Joey (1940), Oklahoma! (1943), Carousel (1945), Annie Get Your Gun (1946), Brigadoon (1947), and South Pacific (1949). Yet it was also a prodigious period for the British musical, despite the war and postwar recession. The strongest single force in the West End during this time was Ivor Novello. Too little known in the States, he was a dashing film and stage actor and a busy song-writer who gave London seven hit musicals between 1935 and his untimely death in 1951. Not one of them ever came to New York.