Singing in the Rain, Les Misèrables, Guys and Dolls, Cats, My Fair Lady, Cabaret, West Side Story, Chicago, The King and I, Anything Goes, The Phantom of the Opera… Musicals: you either love them, or you hate them. And I think most dreamers and romantics, like myself, are firmly in the former camp.

I love, love the expressionism in a musical. Everything is bigger, brighter, more vivid, more colourful: the settings, the costumes, the lighting, the audio, the movements. Music and dance have such power to convey emotion, and in the musical every feeling is heightened through such mediums:

When a character falls in love, we feel it. Think of ‘Tonight’ in West Side Story and ‘Hopelessly Devoted to You’ in Grease.

When a character is joyous, we feel it. Think ‘If I Were a Bell’ in Guys and Dolls and ‘I Could Have Danced All Night’ in My Fair Lady.

When a character is sad, we feel it. Think of Joseph’s ‘Close Every Door to Me’ and ‘Where Is Love’ in Oliver.

When a character dies, oh how we feel it! Think of ‘A Little Fall of Rain’ in Les Mis and ‘Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again’ in Phantom.

Everything that draws me to reading and writing romance novels is there in a musical. Of course, they push the boundaries further into fiction than a simple romance film or play, but there is something wonderfully escapist about that.

When I was young, I loved the classic Hollywood musicals, and I think the depth of the feeling between characters in these productions inspired me in my writing. One my favourite reviews of Burning Embers is ‘romance like Hollywood used to make’. My characters don’t break into song and dance routines, but I hope that they sweep my readers away in the same vein as a musical.

It has been a delight, in recent years, to see Hollywood resurrect the medium of the musical, and indeed it is a genre that has been gaining critical recognition, with BAFTAS and Golden Globes and Oscars for the recent Les Mis. I was so pleased to see the artistic effort that went into the film, and its unashamed pursuit of being a big-screen epic. Perhaps this will be the film that finally earns the musical much-deserved respect as a worthy and influential art form.

Recently, I read an interview with Patricia Kelly, wife of that classic Golden Age musical actor Gene Kelly. She pointed out that filmmakers today are reticent about making musicals because of the cost:

“When Gene was at MGM he was working with an extraordinary repertory company that would make several films a year. They had the greatest composers, arrangers, actors, dancers, costume makers, cinematographers – everybody was at hand. To pull that kind of talent together now is prohibitively expensive in today’s Hollywood terms. Studios don’t want to risk that, instead they’ll make big action movies and make millions of dollars.

Gene kept waiting for the next guy to come over the hill; he was somebody who looked to the new generations. Of the people who could sing, dance and act, such as Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, Hollywood seems to have made them and then broken the mould. Hollywood needs to cultivate that talent again.” (Source)

I so hope they do, because I for one think the world would be a better place were the cinemas showing more musicals and fewer violent, dark films.

I will leave you today with the iconic scene in the musical genre, ‘Singing in the Rain’ from the musical of that name, which was named the best musical of all time by the American Film Institute. It is one of my favourite uplifting songs from the musicals (well, living part of the year in England, I do have to find some means to smile through the rain!). Amazing to think that Gene Kelly shot this scene with a temperature of 103 – he utterly defies the concept of man flu, don’t you think?