Non-linear Musicals?

[happytobehere]

Sorry if this is not the correct place to ask- but can you guys tell me of any musicals with a non-linear narrative?

I’m trying (& failing lol) to picture how a musical can successfully follow a non-linear storyline without it getting too muddled. Not including a change in performers however- i see how they could do it there.

Sorry again if not an acceptable reason to start a thread lol!

[Mark]

Company is the obvious one

The Last Five Years

[Deleted]

I guess The Last Five Years, as one of them tells the story backwards.

[Deleted]

Would Wicked count? It ends up coming full circle with Glinda telling the story of Elphaba to the citizens of Oz. The entire piece is pretty much told from Glinda’s memory if you think about it. After her line “and we were both very young” the linearity of the story begins, and after For Good we end up back in the setup of the first scene eg “fellow Ozians!”

[firefingers]

Merrily We Roll Along goes backwards by scene, but obviously each scene individually is played forward. Does that count?

[daisy24601]

Follies goes back and forth between past and present, if that counts?

[showtoones]

Hair doesn’t so much have a plot...it’s a pastiche of the 1960s

[Scswp]

Miss Saigon has elements of moving about in time. It moves forward in Act One, then has a flashback in Act Two.

[tom08]

Ghost Quartet by Dave Malloy.

[Stasia]

"Dessa Rose" jumpes back and forth, and I still remember remember how Synthia Erivo aged 60 years with just her acting and voice....

[distantcousin]

Miss Saigon? Does the flashback count?

[Bickers]

'In Trousers' jumps between Marvin's present life and his childhood throughout

[Deleted]

Cripes. If Wicked and Miss Saigon count as Non-Linear narrative then Phantom does too because it opens 30 years after the finale.

[Deleted]

Well, yes.

[joeinnewyork]

"Assassins"?

[anthony40]

Grey Gardens

[Deleted]

Bat Out Of Hell barely has anything resembling a plot, does that count?

[anthony40]

Cats-minimalistic plot

[TallPaul]

@cardinalpirelli is the Board's non-linear expert.

[Deleted]

Dec 19, 2018 13:14:57 GMT TallPaul said:

@cardinalpirelli is the Board's non-linear expert.

Well, I mentioned it once.....

As has been said, with shows like Follies and Company, remembering is the simplest way to use non-linearity. In my work with students I introduce it via the idea of a 'memory play' as, given that our minds are not bound by chronology, it's fairly easy to replicate that in storytelling. More complex structures can create different meanings such as the backwards/forwards The Last Five Years and its holding on/moving on or the backwards Merrily We Roll Along showing the uninevitability of cynicism replacing idealism. Sondheim, as you can see, figures large and Company really was a game changer, albeit trailing behind playwriting by a considerable time.

Early examples of flashbacks go back to operetta, the idea of 'looking back' being very conducive to that form. A later example being Bitter Sweet (Noel Coward) from 1929 and, of course, much later, taking its cue from operetta, Phantom of the Opera.

Not necessarily based on chronology but other ways of disrupting linearity can be seen in the idea of dreams (Peggy Ann or A Connecticut Yankee (both with Rodgers and Hart scores and books by Herbert Fields), Dubarry Was a Lady (Cole Porter, book again by Fields with Buddy DeSylva) or Lady in the Dark (Weill and Moss Hart)). Weill also, with Alan Jay Lerner, writing Love Life which is less dream more fantasy eschewing realism quite comprehensively as time moves on yet characters move on a different timescale. These are all from the twenties to the forties.

Later on the idea of a story being told, shifting between storyteller and story allowed for early/mid sixties shows such as Man of La Mancha and Zorba. A similar element of a more revue like structure of separate scenes permeates shows like Stop the World I want to Get Off, Oh, What a Lovely War, Hair or You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown from the early to late sixties, this at a time when revues were also making a comeback. Godspell, Chorus Line and Pacific Overtures in the seventies cover both the storytelling aspect and the revue-like structure, arguably Chicago as well.

One of the most successful musicals building on the Sondheim shows that really started to play around with form is 'Nine' (1982), a brilliant piece of storytelling and score. Sondheim's own Assassins (1990) is also as non-linear as anyone could expect.

Since then we seem to have regressed a bit, Our House had a really nice dual-linear story with If/Then on a similar (dual) path, these followed by Groundhog Day with its variations on a day. Otherwise it's been, ironically, variations on what has come before.

[Deleted]

ADDENDUM: It's interesting to go further and think about why these experiments in form happened when they did. The backwards looking operetta has already been mentioned, always harking back to a golden age and used as escapism from war, industrialisation etc..

Freud figures a lot in the dream structure shows, even to the extent of Lady in the Dark being about psychoanalysis. Eugene O'Neill had helped to make visible the Expressionism that came from a similar source in New York by the early twenties.

Brecht's work permeated global theatre post the Second World War and the storytelling aspect likely comes from that, albeit softened markedly. His 'epic structure' with self contained scenes as opposed to cause and effect also leading to more revue like structures. Then again, Wilder's Our Town had done something similar by the outbreak of war just as his Skin of Our Teeth prefigures Love Life with its structure.

It might be pushing it but the sixties social revolution and its questioning of previously accepted norms might have led to the Sondheim gamechangers and, maybe more obvious, the mind expanding substances that are clearly paralleled in Hair (Walking in Space, particularly) leading to further fractures in linearity.

Multiverse theory surely leads to the dual/multiple reality timelines more recently seen, when there can be more than one universe then all bets are off. Science Fiction is really playing with that idea to great effect.

[Dawnstar]

I don't think anyone has yet mentioned On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, which moves between the 1960s and, when Daisy is hypnotized, the 18th century.

[lem]

Sunset Boulevard starts at the end and is told in flashback.
So does Love Never Dies and Phantom and Stephen Ward and (I think) By Jeeves - seems Lloyd Webber likes this format

[richey]

Dec 19, 2018 18:28:06 GMT lem said:

Sunset Boulevard starts at the end and is told in flashback.
So does Love Never Dies and Phantom and Stephen Ward and (I think) By Jeeves - seems Lloyd Webber likes this format

I suppose it could be argued that Joseph also does to an extent now Any Dream will Do is now also a prologue ("may I return, to the beginning..)

[Deleted]

Martin Guerre. Or at least the 1999 West Yorkshire Playhouse production, which toured the UK.