Summary: Black Crook
Assignment 2: Article Summary by Beth Atkins
- Rogers, Bradley. “Redressing the Black Crook: The Dancing Tableau of Melodrama.” Modern Drama 55, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 476-496.
In 1866, Henry C. Jarrett and Harry Palmer traveled to Europe to assemble a ballet troupe for their production of Undine. After a fire destroyed their NY theater, they partnered with William Wheatley to feature their extravagant scenery, costumes, and French dancers in a production of Charles Barras’ melodrama The Black Crook. While early historians argue that it was the first production to successfully integrate music, dance, and theater, later historians counter that it was merely melodrama on a larger scale. Rogers argues that The Black Crook deserves its place in the history of musical theater because it transformed the role of the female performer by contrasting the convention of static tableau in melodrama with the animated female form.
Conventionally, melodrama alternates scenes and tableaus. These tableaus would interrupt the dramatic action with a frozen picture where the characters’ gestures and expressions would provide a visual summary of the emotional situation. During the 1830’s-1840’s, tableau vivant and pose plastique became wildly popular. These “living pictures” depicted Classical artwork and literature. Revealing the female figure, these art forms created tension between mythic ideals and eroticism. Silencing and paralyzing the woman, the melodramatic tableau diminished her power and celebrated the ideal submissive Victorian woman. Powerful female figures in myths would be depicted in tableau only in their weakest moments, reducing the woman to a silent, passive, exposed figure. While the dancers in The Black Crook were scantily clad, their sexuality was tempered by their art. Animating the female form by incorporating ballet into the performance contrasted the submissive Victorian woman and instead celebrated her vibrant performing power.
Ballet was also the art form that allowed Broadway in 1943 to delve into more serious content in the first integrated musical, Oklahoma! The dream ballet “Laurey Makes Up Her Mind” interrupts the dramatic action with dance, delving into a psychological study of the place of women in a masculine world. By animating the female form, The Black Crook paved the way for Agnes de Mille’s choreography and the fully integrated musical.
Sources
Primary sources include programs and contemporaneous theater reviews. Secondary sources include scholarly works on The Black Crook, the history of American musical theater, dance, and tableau.
Significance
This article argues the significance of The Black Crook in the history of theatre, claiming “modern musical theatre began when dancers transformed the static tableaux of melodrama into episodes of singing and dancing” (496). Rogers contends that through the use of ballet rather than static tableau, “The Black Crook endows these women with power… all the while adumbrating the shift from interruptive tableau to interruptive song and dance,” marking the end of melodrama and the beginning of musical theater (489).