Theater - musical theatre in particular - is a genre known more for its artistic craft than its artistic depth. Most people think of musicals as a showcase for fun, catchy songs and fascinating stories. Rarely are they viewed as an opportunity for confrontation or subversion.

And yet, subversion may very well be what musical theatre does best. The Music Man takes aim at small town close-mindedness and legalism, Rent attacks those who sell out their art for the sake of a buck, and Sweeney Todd strikes at the heart of our assumptions about human nature. 

Wicked takes that musical subversion to a new level. The tale of the Wicked Witch of the West (real name: Elphaba) and how she came to gain such a moniker begins with a familiar scene in which all of Oz celebrates her death. The music seems heavy-handed and overbearing, and we quickly learn why: The citizens of Oz declare Elphaba wicked in order to distract from their own problems and injustices.

We understand going into the play that Elphaba is our heroine, but as we learn more we start to realize to what extent Elphaba was determined to do good. Meanwhile the musical plays with that word, “good” in various ways, causing to reconsider not just the way we use the word but the way we think of the concept itself.

The musical nature of the genre is used to demonstrate how horrific concepts can sometimes seem grand and seductive. Frightening or unscrupulous sentiments are sung with catchy, fun melodies. Wistful and exciting tunes describe the nature of hatred that is allowed to run free without limits.

Our admiration for Elphaba only grows as she consistently chooses to do what is truly good in the face of trial, tribulation, and those who claim she is doing evil. Elphaba learns too late, though, that while she may be able to do good, she can’t trust herself (or anyone else) to be good:

One question haunts and hurts
Too much, too much to mention:
Was I really seeking good
Or just seeking attention?
Is that all good deeds are
When looked at with an ice-cold eye?
If that’s all good deeds are
Maybe that’s the reason why
No good deed goes unpunished

Elphaba is onto something. We are a corrupt people, and even the best things we do are wrought with wickedness and selfishness. The tragic tale of the Wicked Witch of the West is the tale of one who is well aware of this concept for herself but unaware that it applies to everyone else as well. 

But the even more tragic tale belongs to Glinda and the citizens of Oz. The citizens spend the bulk of the play distracting themselves from their own wickedness by dehumanizing Elphaba and virtually worshipping Glinda. Glinda, in a desperate attempt to reinforce a lie, ends the play by giving herself a new name: Glinda the Good.

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In each season, much of the humor and pathos comes from seeing how the characters’ situations begin to mirror those of characters in the play. In the first season, New Burbage’s new artistic director, Geoffrey Tennant, is haunted by the ghost of the former artistic director (and Geoffrey’s former mentor) Oliver Wells, as Hamlet is haunted by the ghost of his murdered father. (The parallels aren’t absolute, though, as Oliver is not killed by his usurping brother, but rather accidentally hit by a truck bearing the slogan “Canada’s Best Hams.” If you don’t find this funny, you probably won’t like Slings and Arrows.) No one but Geoffrey can see Oliver’s ghost, and thus everyone begins to wonder if Geoffrey is mad, if he’s just pretending to be mad, etc., just as every high school senior is made to wonder the same about Hamlet when discussing the play in English class.

Season 3, which I’ve just finished watching, deals with appropriate King Lear themes of aging, loss, and father-figures. One of the subplots, however, focuses on the conflict between the cast of Lear and the cast of the simultaneously running musical East Hastings (think: a fictional, Canadian version of Rent). The Shakespeareans are classically trained and eloquent, if neurotic; the musical cast is boisterous, fun-loving, and flaky. When the musical becomes a hit and the Lear production fails to open, due to the inconsistencies of its lead actor, the Lear cast is forced to vacate the main stage and move to New Burbage’s smaller venue. The musical has all the appearances and accessories of success, while Lear is cast out into the cold, just as King Lear himself is within the play.

As someone who loves both Shakespeare and Broadway musicals, I have to admit that I wanted to see more reconciliation between the musical-people and the Shakespeare-people. The division between the two camps reminded me in some ways of disagreements over worship styles in the church. Traditionalists look down upon chorus-singing, hand-raising churchgoers as “happy-clappy,” while these “low church” worshipers view their “high church” brothers and sisters (who somewhat proudly refer to themselves as “smells and bells” sorts, referring to the incense and bells that accompany more liturgical services) as stiff, legalistic, and snooty. Both sides have a point. Both sides bring people to Christ. And yet they still shoot insults at each other across the walls they have raised.

There’s a moment in Slings and Arrows when Paul, the young actor playing Edgar in King Lear, intending to play a prank on the East Hastings cast, sneaks backstage with a stink-bomb. However, he hears Megan, the musical’s female lead, singing her solo and is transfixed by the power of her voice. The song itself (”Tryin’ to Be Heard”) is pretty maudlin, as Slings and Arrows’ creators have clearly intended, but they do let us see why Paul is impressed by Megan’s singing. Paul and Megan fall in love (or at least “hook up”) and there seems to be some hope for reconciliation between the two camps. However, because the parallels to King Lear require the Lear cast to be betrayed and cast out, the potential reconciliation never occurs, and the musical and its cast become the villains. Slings and Arrows clearly affirms the authenticity and integrity of the “true” theater people, as opposed to those who have sold themselves out for commercial success.

So I wished for reconciliation but understood why, given the structure of the TV series, it didn’t happen. However, I was surprised, when I looked up Slings and Arrows on Wikipedia this morning, to find that some of its writers and actors were behind the Tony-winning 2006 Broadway musical The Drowsy Chaperone. These people don’t look down on musicals after all; they write them! It seems that one can love Shakespeare and Broadway. Maybe there’s hope for reconciling “high” and “low” culture within the church, too.

Note: Though I greatly enjoy Slings and Arrows, I should mention that it’s not for all viewers. The language alone would qualify it for an “R” rating if it were an American movie. There’s also a good deal of sexuality (no nudity, though, as far as I recall) and drug use. Moreover, according to my husband, Slings and Arrows isn’t that funny unless you’ve spent a good deal of time around theater people-or at least Shakespeare’s plays. I admit I may be biased, as I’ve spent a good many years of my life around both, but I find the show hilarious and occasionally moving, as in this season, when Geoffrey weighs the limits of compassion as he tries to grant a dying man’s wish. I also admire that, with the end of Season 3, the series brought things to a definite end. Like “true” theater people, our Canadian and British cousins in TV end shows while they’re still good, rather than extending their run for further profit. Of course, maybe that’s just because they don’t make any money in the first place.

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The play centers on the trials of the Youngers, a three-generation African American family living in a small apartment in 1950s south-side Chicago. Lena Younger, the grandmother, tries to hold the family together as they find that their dreams conflict with other family members’ dreams (the arrival of a $10,000 life insurance check after Lena’s husband’s death is what sets things in motion). Walter Lee Younger, her son, suffers daily indignities as a chauffeur for a rich white family and dreams of starting his own business. His wife Ruth tries to make ends meet by taking in laundry and, at the beginning of the play, is dismayed to find herself pregnant, facing the prospect of another mouth to feed (Ruth and Walter Lee already have one son, Travis). Beneatha, Lena’s college-age daughter, dreams of going to med school and becoming a doctor, but she also feels contempt for her extended family.

Lena is the backbone of the family, but the play really centers on Walter Lee’s growth, though he is arguably the least likable character. Beaten down by racism, poverty, and injustice, he takes out his anger against his family, resenting their lack of support for his business plans. Lena especially has trouble understanding why his dreams center around money. “Once upon a time freedom used to be life—” she says, “now it’s money. I guess the world really do change . . . ” Walter contradicts her, “No—it was always money, Mama. We just didn’t know about it.”

Lena comes to understand that, for Walter Lee, money is the tangible sign that speaks louder than words. She wants him to step up and take responsibility, but she knows that, with the world constantly telling him that as a black man he is worthless, he needs something to convince him otherwise. No empty “I believe in you” platitudes will do. Lena eventually hands over a large portion of her insurance check to Walter Lee, even though she disapproves of his plan to start a liquor store, telling him that he can choose what to do with it. She even gives him the money set aside for Beneatha’s medical school expenses, telling him to put it in a savings account for her. She could have put it in the savings account herself, but, by trusting him, she gives him the opportunity to earn trust.

He fails. He invests not only his portion of the money but also the money for Beneatha in the liquor store scheme, which turns out to be a scam dreamed up by a con man who runs away with the money. The whole family is devastated by the loss, but even more devastated when Walter Lee decides to earn the money back by taking a bribe from the chairman of the all-white neighborhood where Lena has bought a house. The chairman will buy the house back from them if the Youngers agree not to move in. Disgusted with her brother’s willingness to debase himself, Beneatha cries out, “There is nothing left [of him] to love.” Lena replies, “There is always something left to love. And if you ain’t learned that, you ain’t learned nothing. Have you cried for that boy today? I don’t mean for yourself and for your family ’cause we lost the money. I mean for him: what he been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain’t through learning—because that ain’t the time at all. It’s when he’s at his lowest and can’t believe in hisself ’cause the world done whipped him so! When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done take into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.”

Inspiring words, true, but what makes them mean so much is that they’re not just words. Lena has showed her faith in Walter Lee in tangible ways, at great cost to herself; when he fails to come through, she forgives him and continues to love and believe in him. Talk about forgiving someone seventy-times-seven! But the most significant thing is that she shows her faith in him by continuing to hold high standards for him.

Of course, being who I am, I see theological parallels here. In my crankier moments, I’ve sometimes asked God why he put the tree in the Garden of Eden if he knew Adam and Eve were going to eat from it. I can intellectually agree that it was necessary to give us free will and grow us into people fully formed in his image. But, I have to say, a theological belief like that really comes alive for me when I see it embodied in characters in a story. Lena Younger isn’t naïve; she knows Walter Lee’s nature, and she knows he will probably mess up. She longs for him to live up to her expectations. Like God, she does not lower her expectations; rather, she has a seemingly endless capacity to forgive and to give Walter chances to grow into the man he was born to be.

So far I’ve been talking about the play itself and not this particular TV production, which stars the same cast as the acclaimed 2004 Broadway revival. Phylicia Rashad is stunning as Lena, though there were a couple of moments when I was distracted as she did that slow-head-turn with one eyebrow raised that, from my childhood, I associate with “Uh oh! One of the Huxtable children (or Cliff himself) is in trouble!” Audra McDonald and Sanaa Lathan complete the strong triumvirate of women, and Sean Combs (a.k.a. P. Diddy) strikes the right balance between displaying Walter Lee’s unlovable qualities and showing his true potential. Unfortunately, someone decided to add a heavy, melodramatic score to the production, apparently not trusting the power of Hansberry’s words and the actors’ skill to communicate emotion. It made me wish even more that I had seen the production when it was on Broadway, where no score would intrude.

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I work a part-time job in a non-Christian environment. I am the only believer in my immediate work station, and I can think of only a handful or so of professing believers in my whole building. This can sometimes give me a unique voice in certain conversations, and because of that I get asked lots of questions. Some of the question are of a contentious nature, while other questions are purely out of curiosity. Recently my partner asked me one of the latter.

Knowing that I am an evangelical and knowing something about my past experience in theater he inquired of me, “If you were still an actor would you play a homosexual?” My initial knee-jerk reaction of “NO!” was caught before it left my mouth, and I was able to ponder the question more thoughtfully. I had never really thought about this particular problem. I had thought much about what it meant to play immoral people on stage, and had even done so in previous performances. I had thought about what it meant for homosexuals to play Christians (this came about with the controversy surrounding End of the Spear a few years ago). But I had never thought about what it meant for Christians to play the role of homosexuals. A thought occurred to me as I pondered further on this subject: do Christians make homosexuality a worse sin than others?

We know that to God sin is sin! It’s all the same, in one sense anyways, because it is all equally offensive to Him. But for some Christians, homosexuality strikes us as some how more sinful than, say, speeding or lying. Would I play a liar on stage? Would I play a cheater, womanizer, murderer in a show? The answer became clearer in my mind as I compared the sins. It all relates to story and message.

What is a particular film or play trying to say with its overall production? What does the story value and promote? If sin, whether that is lying or homosexuality is endorsed then I struggle to justify playing that role. If, however, sin is condemned, or its consequences are spelled out that might convince me to take the role. There are a number of related questions that need to be asked as well. What is the role of character? Is he a good guy, or bad guy? Hero or villain? Does his sin play a major part of his character or of his activity in the production? The recent news about Dumbledore raised the question in my mind, “If I were a famous actor, and an evangelical Christian, would I play the part of Dumbledore?” I think I would. The reason being his sin is not a part of his role in the movies. The larger question to ask in all of this pertains to the nature of “acting” itself.

Is it possible to “act” the part of someone and not have to agree with, or endorse, that character’s morality? I think, to some degree, this must be true. You can “play the part,” so to speak, and not condone the activity, though this of course does not excuse those who participate in pornographic films and the like. There are some parts that cannot be separated from immorality, and Christians should not take such roles. Any role that asks you to sin against God is not one Christians should take. But with that in mind I must say, perhaps to my own shock as much as to yours, that there are cases where I would willingly and to my best ability play the role of a homosexual.

I suppose the final question to ask is as follows: Just how mad, do you think, the homosexual community would get if a Bible believing Christian played gay in a show?

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