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The Problematic History of Lesbians in Musical Theater

Right now on one of London’s premier stages, eight times every week, two lesbian lovers share a passionate love song. They kiss in the show’s moving finale and cement their status as the stars of the show by sharing the final curtain call. Most importantly, their romance is the emotional centerpiece of a musical comedy. Finally! After 81 years – since the first lesbian-themed play, The Captive, opened on Broadway in 1926 – a lesbian relationship is at long last taking center stage.

The featured romance between prisoner Nikki Wade (Caroline Head) and Wing Governor Helen Stewart (Laura Rogers) in Bad Girls: The Musical illustrates what’s possible, but also highlights how invisible lesbians have been on Broadway and in West End musicals. Despite some recent progress, the history of lesbians in musical theater (unlike that of gay men) is sparse and inconsistent.

Along with Bad Girls: The Musical, two popular musicals currently playing on Broadway, Rent (Broadway: 1996, West End: 1998) and The Color Purple (Broadway: 2005), have included positive portrayals of lesbians, although both reveal problems as well.

The Color Purple‘s love affair between Celie (created by Tony-winner LaChanze and currently played by American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino) and Shug (Elisabeth Withers-Mendes) is familiar to fans of the Alice Walker novel and the Steven Spielberg film. The musical version, though flawed, is a watershed: The lesbian relationship is much more emotionally and sexually explicit than the film, and more importantly, The Color Purple is the only Broadway or West End musical ever to depict a lesbian relationship between two women of color.

In the musical, Shug awakens Celie’s fighting spirit and sexual desire. She helps Celie free herself from her abusive, loveless marriage and reunite with her long-lost sister. When Celie and Shug get together at the end of Act I, they kiss – still a rarity on Broadway for same-sex characters – and sing a powerful and romantic love duet:

Will you be my light in the storm?

Will I see a new world in your eyes?

With you my whole spirit rise.

However, the show as a whole relegates the lesbian relationship to the background, emotionally speaking. The muted chemistry between the original two actresses is partially to blame, along with the show’s focus on Celie’s relationship with her sister. Even worse, Shug abandons Celie when they’ve reached middle age so that Shug can pursue one last relationship with a man. While true to the source material, this conclusion is a bitter pill to swallow for lesbians yearning to see a positive representation of their relationships on stage.

Like The Color Purple, Rent features a prominent — but not central — lesbian relationship between Maureen (Idina Menzel) and Joanne (Fredi Walker). When the show opens, performance artist Maureen has recently dumped her boyfriend to be with Joanne. Maureen and Joanne’s relationship is fraught with jealousy and dysfunction, and Joanne spends most of the show worried that the fickle Maureen will leave her.

The couple finally reaches understanding in the song “Take Me or Leave Me,” perhaps the first musicalization of dyke drama. The song begins with Maureen’s exasperated exclamation to Joanne, “There will always be women in rubber flirting with me!”

No way, can I be what I’m not.

But hey, don’t you want your girl hot?

Oh, don’t fight, don’t lose your head,

‘Cause every night, who’s in your bed?

The lesbian relationship is not one of the most loving or romantic in the show. But it is completely normalized and accepted.

While The Color Purple and Rent are more progressive in their depiction of lesbians than the average Hollywood film or network television show, they don’t balance out three other recent and popular Broadway musicals that delight in rehashing the oldest and most persistent lesbian stereotypes.

Most recently, the musical adaptation of Legally Blonde (Broadway: 2007) transforms the film’s strong, intelligent and political lesbian law student Enid (Natalie Joy Johnson on Broadway) into a walking, talking, singing lesbian stereotype. In contrast to the beautiful (and straight) heroine, Elle, Enid is overweight and has no fashion sense, sporting Converse sneakers with a frumpy pantsuit.

New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley described her as “routinely the object of the show’s most unsavory jokes.” In a musical in which fashion and appearance reflect a character’s inner worth, this depiction is flat-out offensive.

The musical Hairspray (Broadway: 2002, West End: 2007), despite its drag queen mother and queer sensibility, also reduces lesbians to comedy gags. Two bit characters, the lecherous lesbian gym teacher (of course) and the lecherous lesbian prison guard (both played by Jackie Hoffman), provide comic relief at lesbians’ expense.

With only one scene each and lines such as “All right girls, who wants to take a shower? Extra credit!” the two characters are undeveloped and totally disconnected from the story lines in the musical. They simply exist to be laughed at.

Some critics argue that campy musicals like Hairspray deserve leeway for their comedic stereotypes. Some theatergoers — including lesbians — have found the gym teacher and prison guard to be a total scream, particularly as performed by Hoffman, a lesbian favorite. But in the hands of the less well-known, less gay-friendly actresses who have replaced Hoffman, the role veers into mean-spiritedness.

The lesbian prison guard isn’t a character unique to Hairspray and Bad Girls. She’s had a long life on Broadway and the West End in the 11-year-old revival of Chicago (Broadway: 1975, 1996; West End: 1976, 1997).

Matron Mama Morton runs the women’s prison where the musical’s two tabloid-friendly “murderesses” reside. While Mama’s sexuality is never stated explicitly, celebrity lawyer Billy Flynn talks to her using the nickname “Butch.” Mama’s solo outlining her quid pro quo philosophy on prisoner-guard relationships, “When You’re Good to Mama,” is chock full of same-sex sexual innuendos, such as “When you’re strokin’ Mama/Mama’s strokin’ you” and:

They say that life is tit for tat

And that’s the way I live.

So I deserve a lot of tat

For what I’ve got to give.

Mama Morton reflects some of the prejudices of the 1970s, when Chicago was written, and her lesbianism is largely relegated to subtextual and stereotypical innuendos. But Mama, while shallow and stereotypical, narrowly avoids offensiveness: Her exploitative tendencies are no worse than those of any other character in the musical. But the lesbian characters in Legally Blonde and Hairspray have no such excuse. They traffic in the same tired lesbian stereotypes as musicals that hit the stage decades ago.

One of the earliest musicals that showed an explicit romantic connection between two women was Aspects of Love, which appeared on the West End in 1989 and on Broadway a year later. Rose (Ann Crumb) and Giuletta (Kathleen Rowe McAllen), the two primarily heterosexual female leads, shared a kiss and possibly more (depending on the hopefulness of your imagination).

However, their kiss occurred partially for the benefit of George, Rose’s husband and Giuletta’s lover. In addition, their dalliance was one short moment in a show focused on their numerous love affairs with men.

The lesbian clichés don’t stop at women kissing for the exhibitionist thrill of it. All of the familiar favorites have graced the stage in the past 20 years. Grand Hotel (Broadway: 1989, West End: 1992) depicted a lesbian’s futile love for a straight woman. The song “How Can I Tell Her?” sung by Raffaela (Karen Akers) about her employer, the aging ballerina Elizaveta Grushinskaya (Liliane Montevecchi), is perhaps Broadway’s first unrequited lesbian love song.

For an even more infuriating lesbian stereotype — the lesbian who just needs a good man — look no further than the notorious flop Nick & Nora (Broadway: 1991), a musical murder mystery where the lesbian murder victim (Lorraine Bixby, played by Faith Prince) is seduced by her male boss. She later laments the affair in a cringe-worthy song, “Men”:

He would call

I would come

On his floor

On his desk.

A handful of other musicals have avoided these types of clichés, but their lesbian characters and relationships lack depth or passion — and often both. Falsettos (Broadway: 1992), a musical that focused on a gay male couple, also included a demure lesbian couple (Dr. Charlotte and Cordelia, played by Heather MacRae and Carolee Carmello).

This couple was a first — the first lesbian couple in a musical on Broadway. But they were also “safe lesbians,” providing comic relief as well as emotional support for the male leads.

More recently, The Wild Party (Broadway: 2000) included a lesbian couple (Madelaine and Sally, played by Jayne Summerhays and Sally Murphy) as equal participants in the show’s 1920s debauchery. Progress, yes, but the two characters blended into the background, minor parts of a larger ensemble.

With all these shallow, ill-conceived portrayals of lesbians, it’s natural to ask why we aren’t seeing more lesbian characters and relationships that offer depth and complexity. The answer is the same for musicals as it is for television and film: economic and creative interests.

Mounting a show on Broadway or the West End is expensive — and rarely profitable. Most Broadway shows lose money, so writers and producers try to appeal to the broadest possible audience in hopes of achieving mega-hit status. Hitting it big is the only way to survive, which explains the old Broadway adage, “You can’t make a living, but you can make a killing.”

These extreme financial pressures may be one reason for the other factor: Few lesbian characters appear in musicals because few lesbians write mainstream musicals. There may simply be a lack of lesbians who have the desire or talent write musicals. Or it may be that producers are unwilling to risk $10 or $15 million on female writers.

Some regional or small productions of musicals, such as Zanna, Don’t! and The Break-Up Notebook: The Lesbian Musical, have focused on lesbian characters. These smaller shows fill a void, but with total audience attendance numbering at most in the tens of thousands, they lack the cultural impact of Broadway and West End musicals, which are seen by theatergoers in the tens of millions worldwide.

Bad Girls: The Musical, with its lesbian producers and creative team, has risen above these challenges and excuses that have kept prominent, well-developed lesbian characters offstage throughout the history of musical theater.

As Helen and Nikki take their bows, lesbians will be rising from their seats cheering. The question that remains is whether a show featuring a complex, satisfying lesbian romance can draw crowds for months or even years. Because only if Bad Girls: The Musical is a certified hit will it inspire other shows to take similar risks and change the future for lesbians onstage.

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