West End musicals 2008: The Year of Musical Non-thinking

In a year when new musical theatre productions in London consisted of juke box transfers, classic revivals, whimsical adventure stories and majestic failures, one might be forgiven for thinking that the age of great new musicals exists merely in days of Auld Lang Syne. So let's pause and think back over the year's musical fayre.

Broadway's smash hit Four Seasons bio-musical, Jersey Boys, crossed the pond and succeeded in lighting up the London gloom with its witty yet dramatically strong book and feel-good score of (mainly) Bob Gaudio hit songs. And during the course of the year revivals of shows by some of the major icons of musical theatre have also managed to shine: notably Terry Johnson's brilliant staging at the Playhouse Theatre (transferring from the Menier Chocolate factory) of Jerry Herman's masterpiece La Cage Aux Folles; Trevor Nunn's delicious production of Sondheim's A Little Night Music at the Menier Chocolate Factory; Lindsay Posner's stylish revival of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic, Carousel at the Savoy; and Craig Revel Horwood's stunning actor/muso reinvention of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Christopher Hampton and Don Black's Sunset Boulevard (transferring from a sell-out run at the Watermill).

But new musicals have generally not fared as well. Back in the Spring, the first of the year's small crop of new musicals - Trevor Nunn's bold or misguided (depending on how philosophical one's approach to theatre may be) production of Margaret Martin's first (and possibly last) musical, Gone With The Wind - failed to bear fruit and was gone by summer. The summer saw a glimmer of new hope in the shape of Michel Legrand's beautiful score for Marguerite. But, largely due to a rather bland libretto by Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schonberg and Jonathon Kent and equally bland Herbert Kretzmer lyrics, what might have been a promising new show also disappeared after a few months. Also in the summer the musical extravaganza, Zorro, opened at the Garrick and, though far from a musical theatre masterpiece, its catchy score by the Gypsy Kings, vibrant choreography and spectacularly entertaining staging turned it into one of the year's surprise hits. Then in November came Imagine This, the musical with the dual setting of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Zealot mass suicide at Masada. Again, despite a score by Shuki Levy that was at times both beautiful and powerful, a clichéd and pretentious book made one think it was hard to imagine anything worse than this.

But the year was not all doom and gloom. There were some quite brilliant performances in the new musical productions that graced London's stages: Ryan Molloy in Jersey Boys, Alexander Hanson in A Little Night Music, Peter Polycarpou in Imagine This, Ben Goddard in Sunset Boulevard, Ruthie Henshall in Marguerite, Connie Fisher in They're Playing Our Song, Hannah Waddingham in A Little Night Music, Kathryn Evans in Sunset Boulevard. And - for me the two absolute stand-out performances - Douglas Hodge in La Cage Aux Folles and Elena Roger's sensational "little sparrow" in Piaf.

Robert Gould is a graduate of the University of Wales, Swansea, a former teacher, a writer of history books for schools (The French Revolution and European Nationalism, 1848-71) and the librettist and lyricist of a number of musicals. Collaborating with composer Ty Kroll, he has written the book and lyrics for the musicals, Lovers, Alone and Vocalize!. Concerts of songs from Lovers and Vocalize! were presented at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (in March 2002 and April 2003) and Alone received its world premiere staging in Madison, Wisconsin in April 2003. He has co-written the book & lyrics(with Jimmy Granstrom) for The Dying Game, a musical that speaks for the victims of HIV/AIDS in Africa (with music by Filip von Uexkull, Ty Kroll & Tristan Bons) - which received a showcase production at the Greenwich Musical Futures season in 2005. He wrote lyrics for the Tim Prottey-Jones albums More With Every Line and Surrounded By The Sounds and is currently developing the musical Roundabout with songwriter Joe Sterling and the musicals Based On A True Story, Elephant Juice, Grace Notes, Flop and My Land's Shore with composer Christopher J. Orton.

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