LAUSR

This article approaches the concept musical as a form defined by epistemological self-critique. Inviting spectators to affectively engage with its thematic concerns precisely by problematizing the spectators’ pleasurable consumption of musical theatre conventions, the concept musical deploys this reflection for potentially political purposes. Through a close reading of Love Life, the 1948 musical often understood as the first concept musical, I argue that the show’s unique structure cultivates the sense that capitalism, as embodied in the conventions of popular entertainment, has intervened in the life and happiness of the musical’s central family. By critiquing popular culture, Love Life – itself an element of popular culture – questions whether its own materials, the popular songs that make up its score and the vaudeville show on which its form is based, are fragmenting and dangerous illusions. I show how Cabaret pursues a similar epistemological experiment, implicating spectators in the passive sensual pleasures that the show frames as having facilitated fascism – just as Company pursues a formal structure that implicates spectators in the issues of “observing the action” that plague its central character, Bobby.