If a show has a beginning, middle and end, and follows a set series of scenes or songs, that's still a plot, even if it seems untraditional.
A musical's book covers not just dialogue, characters and setups for the songs, but the show's structure. Things don't happen willy-nilly.
My bigger issue with Eliot winning the Tony is that he didn't work on ''Cats'' at all. He wrote ''Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats'' as a collection of whimsical poems in 1939. And he died in 1965. If anyone deserves any recognition for the book of ''Cats,'' it's Trevor Nunn, its director who adapted it for the stage. Apparently, he figured out the sequencing of the cats' appearances onstage, which appear to differ from the book. Nunn decided ''Cats'' couldn't be just a series of isolated numbers; it needed a narrative. He took the Jellicle Ball, which Eliot referenced in one of the poems, and expanded it, using it as an annual ritual and framing device. He also says the storyline was inspired by the poem of ''Grizabella the Glamour Cat.''
Nunn said: ''Here in eight lines Eliot was describing an intensely recognizable character with powerful human resonances, while introducing the themes of mortality, and the past, which occur repeatedly in the major poems. We decided that if Eliot had thought of being serious, touching, almost tragic in his presentation of a feline character, then we had to be doing a show which could contain that material, and the implications of it. Furthermore, we would have to achieve the sense of progression through themes more than incidents.''
That said, if I were a Tony voter in 1983, I would've given Best Book to Peter Stone & Timothy Mayer's ''My One and Only.''
I also thought ''My One and Only'' should've won Best Musical, but I guess that's because I've never been a ''Cats'' lover. |
