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Storm Warnings
Just when it seemed that traditional musicals were back, the decade ended with critics and audiences giving mixed signals. On the plus side –

• In a superb revival of Peter Pan (1979 - 550 perfs), actress Sandy Duncan became the longest-running Peter in theatrical history.

• MGM veterans Mickey Rooney and Ann Miller scored a surprise smash with Sugar Babies (1979 - 1,208), a mildly risqué revue of classic burlesque material.

However, the most anticipated events of that season were three major new projects by veteran writers. To the theatrical community's general shock, each came and left with surprising speed –

• Jerry Herman's Grand Tour (1979 - 79 perfs) offered Joel Grey as a Jew escaping Nazi persecution in a warm-hearted adaptation of Jacobowsky and the Colonel. The underrated score featured the gorgeous ballad "Marianne."

• Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner's Carmelina (1979 - 28 perfs) starred Georgia Brown as an Italian mother who has convinced three different American veterans that each was the father of her child. Even those critics who dismissed the show admired the score, particularly "It's Time for a Love Song" and the ravishing trio "One More Walk Around the Garden."

• Richard Rodgers' final musical was I Remember Mama (1979 - 148 perfs), which offered film star Liv Ullman as a Scandinavian immigrant using love and ingenuity to raise her family in the early 1900s. Preview audiences cheered, but after the critics dismissed it as corny and old-fashioned, ticket sales petered out. Rodgers died soon after Mama closed.

Changing Climate
It's not so much that the public disapproved of these well-written shows. Most Americans were not paying attention to the musical theatre anymore, and consequently musicals had become a sort of subculture. Rock and disco were the predominant pop sounds, and neither had more than a token presence in Broadway scores. The potential sales for cast albums had fallen so low that major labels stopped recording them. 

To make matters worse, Broadway production costs soared. In 1970, a new musical could be mounted for $250,000. Six years later, Annie was produced for about $650,000. By 1979, most Broadway musicals cost $1,000,000 or more to produce, and operating expenses were so high that even a two year run could not guarantee a profit. Some blamed the volatile economy, but Broadway was the only place where inflation ran at a rate of 400 percent! In this unsettled environment, two important musicals came to represent the forces that would compete for the soul of musical theatre in the decade to come.

While Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd (1979 - 557) used a conventional plot structure, its operatic score was the most ambitious Sondheim had yet attempted. This tale of an unjustly persecuted man's all-consuming quest for revenge explored emotional territory no musical had ever touched before. Not since Shakespeare had a poet of the theatre taken such an unflinching look into the darkest corners of the human soul. Tony-winning performances by Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou added to the impact, as did a massive production helmed by Hal Prince. Such lofty accomplishment came at a price. When Sweeney's cast pointed at audience members and insisted that they had a murderous hate like Sweeney's hiding inside them, it was bound to leave many theatergoers uneasy. The show ran for more than a year but was unable to turn a profit – thanks in part to director Hal Prince's brilliant yet expensive physical production.

A far different musical came from England with advance hoopla that Gilbert and Sullivan might have envied. Following the pattern they had initiated with Jesus Christ Superstar, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and librettist Tim Rice launched their stage biography of Argentina's Eva Peron as a recording. Working with director Hal Prince, they refined it on stage in London, sharpening the book's focus, toning down the rock elements and adding a touch of disco to expand the score's commercial possibilities.

By the time it reached Broadway, Evita (1979 - 1,567) was a slick and stylish smash hit, with breakthrough performances by Patti Lupone as Evita and Mandy Patinkin as Che. A disco version of "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" became a hit single – one of the last showtunes to reach the pop charts in any form. Evita was a calculated triumph of stagecraft and technology, undeniably entertaining but in some ways as vapid as any of Ziegfeld's Follies. Webber and Rice depicted Eva as a whore with flair and ruthless ambition, but gave no clue as to what made her complex character tick. Meaningful or not, people liked it. Running three times longer than Sweeney Todd, it made a massive profit from productions all over the world. With this flashy victory of matter over mind, the British Mega-musical was born.

Both Sweeney and Evita were expensive productions with stunning stage direction by Hal Prince, winning Tonys for Best Musical in adjoining seasons. The key difference: Sweeney Todd lost money but made theatrical history, while Evita made money and left history to its own devices. This was not lost on producers and investors risking millions on new productions. It is easy to advocate artistic merit over financial concerns, but answer this: If you were investing $100,000 or more of your own money, would you prefer to lose it or make a profit? The inevitable answer to that question set the uneasy course of the Broadway musical for the remainder of the 20th Century.

Next: Stage 1980s