A Little Theory on Musical Stars and Their Making

Interesting post from Mark Shenton at the Stage.

He discusses two recent musical stars: Elena Rogers who took the lead in Evita a few years back and Tracie Bennett who is curently playing Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow. Mark Shenton points out that neither were the overnight sensations that is sometimes claimed. Both paid their dues before their big breaks.

This is often the case and I don't doubt their talent or that they've earned their stripes. But are they stars? Certainly they are in the theatreland but what about the country at large? Neither is really a household name and I doubt they will be any time soon. In fact very few musical stars are household names. Here's my little theory as to why.

First I have to make a distinction between Musical Stars, that is stars who earned their stardom doing musicals, and Stars Who Do Musicals, that is someone from TV (Denise van Outen) or pop (Mel C) or non-musical theatre (Dame Judi Dench) or Bolton (Peter Kay) successfully making it in a musical. This is, by the way, not a judgement on the abilities of Stars Who Do Musicals, only a remark on their route to stardom.

I can only think of two current Musical Stars who became household names by starring in musicals: Elaine Page and Michael Ball. Elaine Page became with Evita and later by singing "Memory" from Cats and Michael Ball with "Love Changes Everything" from Aspects of Love. It probably helped that they both had chart hits and subsequently have appeared on TV and radio but, essentially, it was the musicals what made 'em.

You could add Michael Crawford to the list. Although he had previously made his name in a TV sitcom, he became even more famous for doing Phantom of the Opera. Sheridan Smith may be following a similar sort of path with Legally Blonde.

From this I surmise that to become a Musical Star you need to do two things:

1. Star in an original role in an original musical.

And

2. Be associated with a big song from an original musical. (This could be the fatal flaw for Sheridan Smith - Legally Blonde is lacking a hit song)

To prove this little theory with a negative, let's take two top-drawer musical performers who, if it were based on talent alone, probably would be household names but aren't: Ruthie Henshall and Colm Wilkinson. Ruthie Henshall has oodles of talent, has won awards and even made it big on Broadway. But her best-known shows have been revivals (She Loves Me, Crazy for You, Chicago) not originals. Colm Wilkinson did star in a big original (Les Miz) but didn't have a big song to go with it. It took the Mighty SuBo dreaming her dream to give Les Miz its take-home tune.

So that's why Elena Rogers and Tracie Bennett aren't household names. Starring in revivals and doing old Judy Garland songs, however brilliantly, just isn't enough to scale the heights of popular culture. What they need is original shows and original songs. Until we get some more of those, no matter how good the performers, we won't get any more Musical Stars.

Just a little theory.