Check out the trailer for “Smash,” a new NBC television show premiering this fall. The show looks like a hoot (of course that’s the job of trailers, but nevertheless . . .). Recent Times coverage is here.
Live theatre, especially that of the musical variety, has received a big-time status boost in recent years from the television show “Glee.” Particularly for all those impressionable adolescents out there, whose views about life and professions are still unformed, singing and acting on stage has migrated from dork darkness to the footlights of the cool. Football players and cheerleaders, please stand aside while our performers make their way to the stage.
“Glee” has also contributed to a growing tolerance of diversity, particularly by younger Americans. The show not only acknowledges diversity, it celebrates it, and not just diversity of sexual orientation, but also ethnicity, disability and body-type. Fox deserves credit for not nixing those more controversial plot lines. All this from the same network that brings us such progressive voices as Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck and Karl Rove. I have read that the entertainment side of Fox operates independently from the news/political side; the presence of “Glee” certainly suggests that’s the case. Either that or Rupert Murdoch has a serious problem with split-personality.
Lest we get too carried away about the nobility of media, it is obvious that “Glee” represents a serious intersection of commerce and art, with commerce dominant. I don’t know about you, but recent episodes of “Glee” have seemed more like a long commercial interrupted by snippets about high school singers. The caravan of Brinks trucks taking “Glee” profits to the bank did not go unnoticed by NBC. More than anything else, those Brinks trucks explain the arrival of “Smash” on NBC this fall.
If pedigree assures success (which it doesn’t), prospects look good for “Smash.” No less than Steven Spielberg is executive producer. The cast, including Brian d’Arcy James, Megan Hilty and other luminaries, is drawn mostly from New York stage, not L.A. film. The plot is the quest to create a new musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. There’s a plot concept for you with no shortage of obstacles to please the writers. Regular characters include a lyricist and a composer.
An irony is that in the same era when TV struck gold with “Glee” by going to the stage for source material, Broadway theatre has been criticized for scrounging in the archives of films and nostalgic song lists to compensate for a poverty of imagination.
It will be a relief to see actors in “Smash” playing their own age. The suspension of disbelief has started to fray for “Glee,” with that cast still playing high school students. Here’s hoping that “Smash” doesn’t crash, and enjoys a long run like “Glee.” Theatre and all its practitioners will benefit.
