2025 Wrapup

Ye Olde End-of-Year Post

Older pic, timeless situation.

Deep thanks to everyone who has read my blog this year, be they new subscribers or readers since inception. Also to those who for some reason follow me on Substack without subscribing. I hope you are ghost-subscribing through an RSS reader or similar workaround.

My rate of output this year has been pretty meager. This reflects a limitation of time rather than enthusiasm. The reality is that my musical-theater-related energy goes largely towards developing new musicals! I am not primarily a critic, but a creative artist who also spouts opinions. I feverishly bang out essays when time permits, or despite lack of permission. It doesn’t help that my “regular” music career — scoring film, TV, and games — consumes an outsized portion of my time. What I’m getting at is: thanks for your patience.

Don’t look too carefully at anyone’s hands.

Focus on the negative

I’ve noticed that many of my posts tend to be critical and fault-finding in nature. This is out of love of the medium of musical theater, and burning idealism about its potential.

There’s nothing wrong with a show that sets out to “merely” entertain, and there’s also nothing wrong with loving a bad show. (I have my own guilty pleasure list, believe that.) But I become frustrated when I see shows at the highest level of production that use slant rhyme, or give digressive songs to minor characters, or otherwise make avoidable mistakes. I want avoidable mistakes to be avoided. Absent that, I want them to be learning experiences for lovers or creators of musicals.

I think that anyone writing a musical for Broadway or the West End has no business not being an expert dramatist. However I’m aware that many large shows are producer-driven, and that those calling the shots, rather than the writers, may be the non-experts. I don’t reflexively blame creators for poor results. Were I offered a wheelbarrow of money to musicalize an unmusicalizable movie, would I tear up the contract and storm out of the room like Bernard Herrmann? I’d probably pocket the advance and try to make the show as good as it could be. Hence, when being critical, I try to hate the sin rather than the sinner. I point out the flaws of a show and imagine how it could have been done better.

Something I tell myself regularly.

Writing musicals is hard. The hard part isn’t writing catchy tunes, nor coming up with a good story, but the integration of the two. Telling a story through music is the tricky part. Musical theater is one of the most powerful artistic forms available to human experience, but it’s also highly constrained in the kinds of stories it can convey effectively. Newbies, well-intended and infused with energy, stumble into known pitfalls. As do experts. There are far more bad musicals than good, even when accounting for the vagaries of taste. Thus there are more opportunities to blog critically than sing praises.

Same thing but better

Next year I’ll continue to think about the topic at the heart of musical theater: the blending of narrative and song so that each supports the other. I’ll try to highlight more shows that are well-crafted; I have a long-postponed essay on Waitress that falls into this category. I hope to divvy focus between recent offerings from Broadway and the West End, musicals of yesteryear, and indie efforts that you might have no realistic opportunity to see in person but might catch secondhand online. I’ll continue to cover movie musicals, which I think represent an interesting hybrid medium with its own set of rules.

I’ll also blend in craft-related blog posts, which talk about the how-to (or how-not-to) behind musical creation. Feel free to send in requests for particular topics, or coverage of particular musicals; I’ll read and consider every suggestion. Also feel encouraged to plug this blog to anyone whom you think might be interested. Subscribing will always be free.

Thanks again for reading! See you in 2026.

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