A Word About Those “Flesh-Crawling” Female-Empowerment Musicals

By Hayley Levitt and Bethany Rickwald

Last week, New York Post columnist Michael Riedel broke news about Jennifer Hudson’s impending Broadway debut in a revival of The Color Purple — a musical neither he nor other New York critics were too keen on the first time around.

He cited negative comments from specific reviews, which expressed grievances with the show’s book, score, and other creative elements generally accepted to be subjects of artistic critique. However, Riedel also saw fit to venture into a far less constructive and artistically irrelevant realm of criticism with the following aside:

“Female empowerment is fine for daytime television, but it’s flesh-crawling in a musical.”

Adhering to (or failing to refute) Riedel’s stated principle would be to discount a huge breadth of impactful stories that have been turned into legendary works of musical theater. Annie Get Your Gun (1946), Gypsy (1959), Thoroughly Modern Millie (2002), and Wicked (2003) are a few that lead the pack of beloved musicals that dwell in the muck and mire of what Riedel calls “flesh-crawling” female empowerment. Yet, despite these musicals’ significance to the canon, stories driven by strong female characters such as these have remained few and far between — and even fewer have been penned by women.

Recent Broadway seasons have seen an encouraging uptick in the empowered female protagonist department. Since The Color Purpleopened for the first time in 2005, Nice Work If You Can Get It, Matilda, Lysistrata Jones, If/Then, Beautiful, the newly imagined Cinderella,Violet, 9 to 5, and Legally Blonde are some that have joined the list of musicals that fit this bill. However, all of these projects, save the last two, have books written by men.

Men compose the gross majority of the theater’s creative community. Yet, even the male-composed stories that are not specifically “female” in nature are frequently supported by strong female characters. Jonathan Larson’s duet “Take Me Or Leave Me” from his Pulitzer Prize-winningRent has become one of the most popular female power ballads in the Broadway archives; A Chorus Line, written by the male trio of James Kirkwood, Nicholas Dante, and Marvin Hamlisch (and also Pulitzer Prize-winning), brought us the infinitely sassy and strong-willed Sheila Bryant; and Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods, which also happens to be raking in the big bucks at movie box offices, would be nothing without the its female authoritarian Witch (we’d like to see Riedel try making his assertion again in the presence of Meryl Streep or Bernadette Peters, who have personally felt the force of that character).

For years, male hands — like those of Larson, Hamlisch, Sondheim, and Lapine — have shaped musical theater’s iconic female characters, obviously with great success. However, it could only benefit our collective artistic heritage if our best female writers were more prominently represented in the theatrical landscape. There’s no greater advantage in telling a woman’s story than living her challenges — a depth of understanding no male writer, no matter how talented, will ever be able to access.

Women in theater have enough of an uphill climb without having to carry the added burden of journalists undermining the stories that they — with their unique female perspectives — both want to share with audiences and are most qualified to tell. Riedel even admits that The Color Purple, whose creative team is predominantly female (book by Pulitzer Prize winner Marsha Norman, music and lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray), eventually won him over with its portrayal of “Celie’s indomitable spirit.”

Nonetheless, when it comes to theatrical portrayals of women, Riedel’s mind — or at least his pen — seems to be lagging behind his heart. But if he insists on stories of women whose powers are confined to flirtatious swooning and phone-chord twirling, perhaps he should campaign for another revival of Bye Bye Birdie.

Bethany Rickwald is a journalist who received her B.A. in Theater and Communications from the University of Michigan in 2009. Originally from the Great Lakes State, Bethany now lives in New York City writing for a major theater website. She has worked for Berkeley Repertory Theatre and volunteered with 826 National, Dave Eggers’ nonprofit writing and tutoring organization.

Hayley Levitt graduated cum laude from Harvard University in 2012 with a B.A. in philosophy, receiving high honors for her senior thesis on aesthetics. She has been a critic and features writer for a major online theater publication since May of 2013.