In honor of NYC's Pride Parade, a few thoughts on Howard Ashman.
Mr. Ashman helped America to come out. He did this by infiltrating Disney. His wry, bitchy voice made it into many American homes, including mine, and I knew about him before I knew about Sondheim or about RuPaul. A recent play suggested that "to be gay is to mock something while celebrating it at the same time." (So, for example, gay men often poke fun at Mariah Carey while still venerating her. Or: There's a guy who dresses in a tutu in NYC and calls himself "Carrie Dragshaw," in honor of "Sex and the City." That's part eye-rolling, part respect. And it's all-gay.)
Ashman found a way to laugh at middle America while also giving middle America what it wanted. In "Beauty and the Beast," there's enough earnestness to help us get swept up in Belle's story. But there's also a Peggy Lee "is that all there is?" quality to the storytelling. Ashman doesn't write much for the Prince, at the end of the story, and I think it's because ho-hum heterosexual romance doesn't really interest him. He's much more invested in the saga of the Beast. (I think the closest we get to Ashman's actual personality, in "Beauty," is the cynical, worldly Lumiere. "No one's gloomy or complaining while the flatware's entertaining." This, to me, seems to be Ashman's mission statement: There is razzle-dazzle in the world, but there's also, always, a threat of gloominess and complaint.)
As a kid, I knew of "Little Shop of Horrors." I knew early on. But it was the triumph of "Little Mermaid" and "Beauty" that brought me back to that early Ashman masterwork: "Little Shop." Such a strange show. There's silliness in the concept of a demonic plant. But, again and again, Ashman really seems to want to tug at your heartstrings. He wants to slip in seriousness, despite the premise he is working with. Certain lines haunt me:
Someone tell me there's still a way outta here.
I'll start climbing up hill and get outta here.
Someone give me my shot
Or I'll rot
Here....
Someone tell Lady Luck
That I'm stuck
Here....
And...
Please understand this is still strange and frightening...
For losers like I've been
It's so hard to say...
Suddenly Seymour...
And...
I couldn't sleep.
I took a Sominex.
But voices in my head
Kept saying, Go to Seymour;
Talk to Seymour....
I drank some tea
But, gee,
The feeling wasn't gone.
Seymour, Sweetheart?
Tell me, Darling...
What's been going on?
Ashman uses the sturdy bones of a Hammerstein musical to tell an un-Hammerstein story. There's a tone-setting opener, in the tradition of "The Carousel Waltz." (Three ladies explain that there will be "Sturm und Drang in the air." They say: "You betta tell your mama something's gonna get her..." The tone is funny and creepy and alarming--and that's all you need to know. The ladies are informing you about what you can expect in the next two hours.) There's a heartbreaking "I Want" number, where Seymour lays out his extravagant ambitions. How is a shmoe like this going to get out of Skid Row? The "I Want" becomes a kind of Conditional Love Song when the two leads allow their voices to blend, maybe without even realizing what they are doing:
I'd do I dunno what
To get outta Skid...
But a helluva lot
To get outta Skid...
People tell me there's not a way outta
Skid Row....
From here, we get a classic (Anti)-Hero's Journey. Like Goethe's Satan, an evil cabbage plant materializes. He will give Seymour fame and wealth and Audrey's love, if Seymour will simply trade in his soul. This is the source of the musical's galvanizing tension. Seymour wrestles with himself. He begins to give bit by bit to the cabbage plant, sadly/hilariously christened "Audrey II." Seymour starts spilling his own blood. And then a great opportunity presents itself: Audrey I's brutish, abusive, sadistic boyfriend could be a corpse for the plant. Did that boyfriend really deserve to die? There's no time to think about this. Magazine interviews and movie deals are flooding Seymour's office.
Like Walt in "Breaking Bad," Seymour reaches a turning point. It's one thing to kill a really nasty guy, but how about someone fully innocent? Walt crosses a threshold: He pseudo-murders Jesse's girlfriend. And Seymour does the same: Mr. Mushnik really doesn't deserve to die, and Seymour kills him anyway. The great tragedy here: Audrey I would have loved Seymour even if he had remained a shmoe. She just wanted a nice guy to be kind to her. Before Seymour can right his own path, the ever-more-powerful Audrey II gets his roots on The Girl. Audrey I becomes plant food.
At this point, Seymour could go over fully to the Dark Side, or he could try to redeem himself. To his credit, he takes on Audrey II. He will die trying to put an end to the plant's reign of terror. He gets digested, and--we can hope--he is reunited with his love in the Afterlife. What we've seen is a tragedy. It's silly and campy, but, also, Seymour has fallen prey to his own flaw: an inability to believe in himself. In the aftermath of his dark journey, horror stalks the Earth. The plant grows more and more omnipotent, and millions of would-be Seymours fall, and fall, and fall, all over North America, and then all over the planet.
It seems to me Ashman deliberately repressed his own dark view of human nature--in order to work for Disney. In the World of Disney, you never see planet-destroying and triumphant cabbages. Ashman now had to spin out happy endings: Princesses paired with their Princes, a mermaid finding her voice. Maybe Ashman's change was a result of his new corporate partnership, but maybe, also, he mellowed as death approached. He found himself with HIV. One of the last songs he wrote was the sweet and devastating "Proud of Your Boy," cut (stupidly) from "Aladdin." This is the work of someone looking back on his own too-short life:
I've wasted time.
I've wasted me.
So say I'm slow for my age,
A late bloomer:
OK.
I agree...
That I've been one rotten kid.
Some son.
Some pride and some joy.
But I'll get over these lousin'-up,
messin'-up, screwin'-up times...
It seems, to me, there's a sizable distance between the snarkiness of "Sturm und Drang in the air" and the plainspoken sadness of "Proud of Your Boy."
I listened to "Little Shop" religiously through high school, and, in my teaching career, I became a Howard Ashman advocate. Whatever else I may have imparted to my students, I at least hope I imparted a basic understanding of the rudiments of a well-built post-Hammerstein musical theater number. (I remember feeling impatient if children talked during certain moments of "Aladdin." How could anyone fail to take notice when Lea Salonga was singing? That kid. That kid there. He would most certainly grow up to be heterosexual.)
Others think of rainbow hearts on Pride Day. They might dress in tank tops or put glitter on their eyelids. I think of Mr. Ashman. I start Googling song lyrics. I briefly remember all there is to aspire to, in this life. To each his own.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOdqriSeY7k
Mr. Ashman helped America to come out. He did this by infiltrating Disney. His wry, bitchy voice made it into many American homes, including mine, and I knew about him before I knew about Sondheim or about RuPaul. A recent play suggested that "to be gay is to mock something while celebrating it at the same time." (So, for example, gay men often poke fun at Mariah Carey while still venerating her. Or: There's a guy who dresses in a tutu in NYC and calls himself "Carrie Dragshaw," in honor of "Sex and the City." That's part eye-rolling, part respect. And it's all-gay.)
Ashman found a way to laugh at middle America while also giving middle America what it wanted. In "Beauty and the Beast," there's enough earnestness to help us get swept up in Belle's story. But there's also a Peggy Lee "is that all there is?" quality to the storytelling. Ashman doesn't write much for the Prince, at the end of the story, and I think it's because ho-hum heterosexual romance doesn't really interest him. He's much more invested in the saga of the Beast. (I think the closest we get to Ashman's actual personality, in "Beauty," is the cynical, worldly Lumiere. "No one's gloomy or complaining while the flatware's entertaining." This, to me, seems to be Ashman's mission statement: There is razzle-dazzle in the world, but there's also, always, a threat of gloominess and complaint.)
As a kid, I knew of "Little Shop of Horrors." I knew early on. But it was the triumph of "Little Mermaid" and "Beauty" that brought me back to that early Ashman masterwork: "Little Shop." Such a strange show. There's silliness in the concept of a demonic plant. But, again and again, Ashman really seems to want to tug at your heartstrings. He wants to slip in seriousness, despite the premise he is working with. Certain lines haunt me:
Someone tell me there's still a way outta here.
I'll start climbing up hill and get outta here.
Someone give me my shot
Or I'll rot
Here....
Someone tell Lady Luck
That I'm stuck
Here....
And...
Please understand this is still strange and frightening...
For losers like I've been
It's so hard to say...
Suddenly Seymour...
And...
I couldn't sleep.
I took a Sominex.
But voices in my head
Kept saying, Go to Seymour;
Talk to Seymour....
I drank some tea
But, gee,
The feeling wasn't gone.
Seymour, Sweetheart?
Tell me, Darling...
What's been going on?
Ashman uses the sturdy bones of a Hammerstein musical to tell an un-Hammerstein story. There's a tone-setting opener, in the tradition of "The Carousel Waltz." (Three ladies explain that there will be "Sturm und Drang in the air." They say: "You betta tell your mama something's gonna get her..." The tone is funny and creepy and alarming--and that's all you need to know. The ladies are informing you about what you can expect in the next two hours.) There's a heartbreaking "I Want" number, where Seymour lays out his extravagant ambitions. How is a shmoe like this going to get out of Skid Row? The "I Want" becomes a kind of Conditional Love Song when the two leads allow their voices to blend, maybe without even realizing what they are doing:
I'd do I dunno what
To get outta Skid...
But a helluva lot
To get outta Skid...
People tell me there's not a way outta
Skid Row....
From here, we get a classic (Anti)-Hero's Journey. Like Goethe's Satan, an evil cabbage plant materializes. He will give Seymour fame and wealth and Audrey's love, if Seymour will simply trade in his soul. This is the source of the musical's galvanizing tension. Seymour wrestles with himself. He begins to give bit by bit to the cabbage plant, sadly/hilariously christened "Audrey II." Seymour starts spilling his own blood. And then a great opportunity presents itself: Audrey I's brutish, abusive, sadistic boyfriend could be a corpse for the plant. Did that boyfriend really deserve to die? There's no time to think about this. Magazine interviews and movie deals are flooding Seymour's office.
Like Walt in "Breaking Bad," Seymour reaches a turning point. It's one thing to kill a really nasty guy, but how about someone fully innocent? Walt crosses a threshold: He pseudo-murders Jesse's girlfriend. And Seymour does the same: Mr. Mushnik really doesn't deserve to die, and Seymour kills him anyway. The great tragedy here: Audrey I would have loved Seymour even if he had remained a shmoe. She just wanted a nice guy to be kind to her. Before Seymour can right his own path, the ever-more-powerful Audrey II gets his roots on The Girl. Audrey I becomes plant food.
At this point, Seymour could go over fully to the Dark Side, or he could try to redeem himself. To his credit, he takes on Audrey II. He will die trying to put an end to the plant's reign of terror. He gets digested, and--we can hope--he is reunited with his love in the Afterlife. What we've seen is a tragedy. It's silly and campy, but, also, Seymour has fallen prey to his own flaw: an inability to believe in himself. In the aftermath of his dark journey, horror stalks the Earth. The plant grows more and more omnipotent, and millions of would-be Seymours fall, and fall, and fall, all over North America, and then all over the planet.
It seems to me Ashman deliberately repressed his own dark view of human nature--in order to work for Disney. In the World of Disney, you never see planet-destroying and triumphant cabbages. Ashman now had to spin out happy endings: Princesses paired with their Princes, a mermaid finding her voice. Maybe Ashman's change was a result of his new corporate partnership, but maybe, also, he mellowed as death approached. He found himself with HIV. One of the last songs he wrote was the sweet and devastating "Proud of Your Boy," cut (stupidly) from "Aladdin." This is the work of someone looking back on his own too-short life:
I've wasted time.
I've wasted me.
So say I'm slow for my age,
A late bloomer:
OK.
I agree...
That I've been one rotten kid.
Some son.
Some pride and some joy.
But I'll get over these lousin'-up,
messin'-up, screwin'-up times...
It seems, to me, there's a sizable distance between the snarkiness of "Sturm und Drang in the air" and the plainspoken sadness of "Proud of Your Boy."
I listened to "Little Shop" religiously through high school, and, in my teaching career, I became a Howard Ashman advocate. Whatever else I may have imparted to my students, I at least hope I imparted a basic understanding of the rudiments of a well-built post-Hammerstein musical theater number. (I remember feeling impatient if children talked during certain moments of "Aladdin." How could anyone fail to take notice when Lea Salonga was singing? That kid. That kid there. He would most certainly grow up to be heterosexual.)
Others think of rainbow hearts on Pride Day. They might dress in tank tops or put glitter on their eyelids. I think of Mr. Ashman. I start Googling song lyrics. I briefly remember all there is to aspire to, in this life. To each his own.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOdqriSeY7k
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