This is Part 3 in a series of posts that examines Disney’s Aida in detail. Aida has a book by Linda Woolverton, David Henry Hwang and Robert Falls, lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Elton John.
Act 1 Scene 1 (Continued)
Heather Headley as Aida in the Original Broadway Production
What happens next in the show is, in some ways, a surprise: we find ourselves in the middle of a book scene. It’s surprising because, although there are three writers credited to the book thereby indicating that dialogue would indeed play an important role in the show, this musical seems to have set itself up as a rock opera. Now, in one moment, perhaps a little too far into the show, it’s asking us to change our expectations in regard to the way this story is being told, not as a rock opera but as a book musical that uses rock music instead of a conventional “Broadway” style score, a sub-genre also known as the rock musical. Some will, at this point, enter into a debate about the use of rock music to tell a story that is set in Egypt’s Old Kingdom. Others will counter with the point that “Broadway” style music didn’t exist back then either and argue that the criticism is moot. That, of course, can be countered with the argument that a more conventional score might be based in part in a conventional “Broadway” musical vocabulary, but that since the days of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, such a score would be influenced by the musical styles of the characters that inhabit it and the world in which it takes place. Advocates of this score might counter than the same thing is done here, as we’ve already seen in the “Overture” and opening number.
My concern around the issue is that a very clear choice has been made on the part of Disney Theatricals and the creative team to use contemporary popular music styles to tell this story and I can’t see any artistic justification for it. Yes, this choice will appeal more to the ‘pop-fan audience’ at whom the show was originally aimed (according to the production history article on Tim Rice’s website), but what happens when pop music moves on and the show gets left behind? Rock musicals set in ancient worlds aren’t known for their timelessness. Furthermore, the question arises whether popular music structures and styles really help to create drama when used in the context of a book show. I think not: all it really creates is a seductive, but artificial energy that hooks an audience but doesn’t really cut them to the core. In rock opera, the complexity required by the form demands that popular musical structures become adapted to suit the requirements of the storytelling, so the problem solves itself. Jesus Christ Superstar, for example, works because it follows the principle that form follows content, otherwise put: content dictates form. As postmodern take of the gospels, deconstructed and framed by the experiences of Judas Iscariot, the rock opera format is the perfect choice for the show, even when the original concept of Jesus literally being a rock star is abandoned and the idea becomes a conceptual metaphor for the narrative.
When Aida suddenly introduces a rather shoddy book scene after apparently setting itself up in the rock opera mode, it becomes clear that there is no such vision holding the show together. I think it would take an immensely talented librettist to reduce an operatic narrative like this into a musical theatre book without making the course of events seem superficial and contrived. Here we have Linda Woolverton contributing the primary material. Woolverton was best known at the time for her contributions to the screenplay of Beauty and the Beast and its subsequent stage adaptation. Add a few more Disney films, some low-budget children’s television and a couple of young adult novels to the mix and you have her entire writing resumé at the time of her appointment to the creative team of Aida in your head. That body of work does not represent a librettist with the skill to craft a book for a project such as this. Proof positive that Woolverton wasn’t up to the task comes with the addition of David Henry Hwang to the creative team, along with the fact that director Robert Falls seems to have made enough contributions to earn himself a credit too. Even with all those heads around the table, we don’t seem to get a book that rises above mediocre, signpost writing. Certainly not in this first scene, at any rate, in which we Aida is brought on board and has her first interactions with Radames.
This brings us to the next song, “The Past is Another Land”. Starting off as an interaction between Aida and Radames and ending as a soliloquy for Aida, the song consists of a verse and three choruses, stopping once for a snippet of dialogue. I think the introductory verse is perhaps the best lyric we’ve seen in the show so far. It’s perfectly tailored to character and situation and really is the kind of statement that might make Radames pause for thought given the thirst he has for something more, as expressed in the previous song. This is followed by the first chorus, during which Aida muses poetically about the conquering of Nubia:
The past is now another land far beyond my reach
Invaded by insidious foreign bodies, foreign speech
Where timeless joys of childhood
Lie broken on the beach
This is followed by dialogue that is meant to show that Radames’ interest in Aida is peaked by her dignity in this situation, before he once again forces the shackles onto her wrists so that she can disembark in Egypt as a slave. I think the dialogue would play better if it immediately followed the verse, where it would be clearer that it is Aida’s spirit that impresses Radames, rather than her lament of her lost childhood and broken dreams. That leaves the option open that it is pity that shifts his attitude towards her and that is simply not the case, nor would it be an appropriate foundation on which to build this narrative.
Heather Headley singing ''The Past is Another Land'' in the Original Broadway Production
That would leave the three choruses of the song to play against what could be a filmic montage that takes us from this cabin to the docks for the start of the following scene. The two choruses that follow are written in meter that approximates the rhythm of the first chorus, but which makes allowances for variation. This is a great proposal on Rice’s part, who wrote the lyrics before passing them onto Elton John to write the music, but I feel that the variation in the third chorus (dealing with the unknown future), which is the one that really works, would be more pointed if the meter used in the first chorus (dealing with the past) was strictly followed in the second (which deals with the present). I also feel that there should be a bridge between the second and third choruses, something that delves deeper into Aida’s mind in the present moment and something that ties up with some later aspect of the score, a motif that could be developed throughout the show. The first thing that springs to mind is the middle section of “Elaborate Lives”, which would fit the piece musically and really push Aida’s soliloquy to a climax in the final verse. Nevertheless, the song as it is is a strangely haunting piece of work, not least because of John’s musical setting of the lyric, which manages to balance the tricky relationship between a popular music style and character writing.
Purchases from Amazon.com
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: 1. Aida Original Concept Album CD. 2. Aida Original Broadway Cast CD. 3. Disney on Broadway Book. 4. The Making of Aida Book. 5. Disney’s Aida Vocal Selections.
Deconstructing Disney: AIDA Part 4
This is Part 4 in a series of posts that examines Disney’s Aida in detail. Aida has a book by Linda Woolverton, David Henry Hwang and Robert Falls, lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Elton John.
Act 1 Scene 2
Micky Dolenz as Zoser in the Original Broadway Production
The next scene begins with another book segment, thankfully one that is less contrived than the interaction between Aida and Radames in the previous scene. We are introduced to Mereb, one of Radames’ slaves, and Zoser, Radames’ father, whose ambitions for his son include marrying the Pharaoh’s daughter, Amneris so that his future in the palace will be secure. During the book scene, when Radames is present, Zoser’s plans seem to end with that ambition, but during the following song, it is revealed that Zoser is, in collaboration with the other ministers, helping his cause by slowly poisoning the Pharaoh with arsenic. This is another aspect of a theme that was introduced in the the previous scene: that all things are not as they seem in Aida. This is reinforced by Radames’ treatment of the women slaves in this scene, saving them from certain death in the copper mines by sending them to work in the fields, an act that surprises Aida because of its decency.
The song that follows, “Another Pyramid”, serves to establish Zoser’s character further and to inform us of his political undermining of Egypt’s theocracy. The name given to the character is undoubtedly a nod to the the real Egyptian pharaoh Zoser who, along with his head architect, Imhotep, was responsible for conceiving the first Egyptian pyramid.
The song, known for its choreographed staging, doesn’t allow Zoser much complexity and unfortunately reduces him in some ways to a cartoon villain, like Scar in The Lion King. Starting with a reggae vamp, it eventually builds through the dance break to a strong rock finish – once again a choice that would suit the demands of a rock opera perfectly, but which seems odd when placed into a book musical, which requires a rather different, more organic integration between the libretto and the score.
The lyrics of “Another Pyramid” are messy to the extent that they seem exist in contradiction to the process that was followed in the writing of the songs for the show, with Elton John composing music to lyrics written and passed on to him by Tim Rice. In other words, it seems like the lyrics were forced to fit the music, even though we know the process was completed the other way round. Look, for example, in the awkward way the title is incorporated at the end of each of Zoser’s series of verses.
There is also this invocation of ‘the Hawk God Horus’ which makes me wonder whether Rice is trying to be clever by throwing in the name of an Egyptian deity, but failing because he doesn’t really know the conventions of the mythology: although, as would be the case in a theocracy, Horus is a god that is associated with the king and is indeed identified with the king during his lifetime, it is Osiris that is associated with the afterlife. Neither seems to be a god that deals in prophecy, so one is left to wonder through what oracle Zoser divined this information. The other option is to wonder whether Rice is really being clever and allowing the character to make the mistake, a flaw in the cover-up of his less admirable deeds for the benefit of his son, to whom he is singing this lyric. But then why doesn’t Radames pick up on the inconsistency? Is he so upset to hear of the Pharaoh’s illness? Certainly, the brief inter-verse dialogue that sees him exit indicates that he is – but perhaps that is a fortunate accident in theatre-making rather than a considered decision.
The rest of the song manages to incorporate trite expressions (“each dog must have its day”), poor linguistic choices for the sake of meter (“just like his fathers did”), self-conscious Rice-isms (“Summon Egypt’s greatest builder re: another pyramid”) and a statement that is just plain confusing:
The opening of the first stanza quoted above reads logically, given what we’ve heard about Egypt’s exploitation of Nubia and their quest to explore and map the areas around the Nile. The second stanza also makes sense (the awkward fourth line notwithstanding) and throws in a delightful rhyme to boot. However, one wonders about the lyric that links the two. Who is the ‘we’? Egypt? Zoser and the ministers? Zoser and Radames? And why is this ‘finest hour’ ‘far beyond the mighty Nile’? Surely the triumph that Zoser is seeking is within Egypt itself? The answers to these questions remain evasive.
John Hickok sings "Another Pyramid" in the Original Broadway Production
Musically, as mentioned above, the song makes use of reggae to create (one assumes) the sense of political unrest that underscores Zoser’s words. It’s an interesting choice, given reggae’s use as a tool of political protest – although I don’t think that that its use as such in the real world encompasses out-and-out treachery. The fact that the show is a book musical rather than a rock opera also forces one to wonder how a Jamaican musical style from the 1960s makes its way to Ancient Egypt, but – as I’ve implied in the third post in this series – I think this kind of anachronism is a key feature of the score, the validity of which can be debated back and forth in relation to the form that has been chosen to communicate this narrative.
NEXT UP: Aida and MerebCo
Purchases from Amazon.com
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: 1. Aida Original Concept Album CD. 2. Aida Original Broadway Cast CD. 3. Disney on Broadway Book. 4. The Making of Aida Book. 5. Disney’s Aida Vocal Selections.