Theatre might should be marked with a “degree of difficulty” rating.

In some sports (the ones that maybe really aren’t sports), the way they get judged is to rate how hard something is and then score participants based on how well they did it.  For example, in diving, a tuck reverse double somersault from a one meter springboard is a “2.3″.  That’s almost meaningless to me, too, but that’s just what divers do.  For a high jump, you just set the bar, measure, and see whether you cleared it.  Because high jump is a sport.  Unlike ice skating or cheerleading.

Similarly, some things in theatre are more difficult than others.  Putting on Equus is maybe harder than Driving Miss Daisy.  I’m not saying that it’s easy to put on any particular show.  Getting the people together and moving in the right direction is always an amazing and laudable effort.  But I think some shows have a higher “degree of difficulty” to perform and perform well.  Put another way, some shows carry a higher risk of failure or leaving an audience unsatisfied.

To break it into parts, there can also be individual, discrete pieces of theatre that are more difficult for performers.  Certain songs are just plain hard to sing.  Certain lines are hard on the tongue.  Certain characters are difficult to get right.  Certain moments or emotions may be tough to convey.  Maybe the beautiful dress the Costume Coordinator made for you makes it impossible to dance and sing.

While watching the musical Grey Gardens – as presented by Dane Peterson’s Theatre Series – I couldn’t help but think how difficult it seemed.  Whereas I believe likability and charisma are the most important assets for a performer – whether you’re playing good or evil – these characters seemed to have been written as mostly unsympathetic.  This kind of writing asks a lot of your actors.  If your character is kind-of a jerk, you’d better be a very likable jerk.  To this day, I can’t explain the popularity of Seinfeld.  Although I have to say that Leah Luker’s performance as “Little” Edie Beale often gave me reasons to pull for the character and Carole Armistead as Edith Bouvier Beale had the likability thing down pat.  Though he plays a rascal, I also liked Brad Simmons as George Gould Strong and I especially liked his voice.

I’m no expert, but it seemed like many (or most) of the songs in Grey Gardens were written to be flat-out hard.  This is part of the “degree of difficulty” I’m talking about.  I understand that these kinds of songs can take a lot of mental energy for a performer.  And that it takes substantial work to get the technical details right.  But this doesn’t free anyone from a responsibility to act.

I’m not usually wowed purely by masterful technique.  In the world of musical theatre, I generally want to find a groove where the performers don’t seem like they’re performing at all.  Any singing should mostly feel like a seamless part of the character.  No matter how gifted your voice, in musical theatre you shouldn’t forget the theatre part.  No one is allowed to ignore other actors while they flirt with and sing to the audience.

Thanks to Dane Peterson for working hard to bring a difficult and unusual musical to the Birmingham stage.