I saw my first Broadway musical in 1979: a revival of The King and I
starring Yul Brynner and Constance Towers. 1979 was the end of the decade in which microphones became ubiquitous on Broadway, so I heard a King who captured me not only with his stage presence but with his enveloping voice. Microphones had been around for years, of course, but it was in the seventies that they became universal. Over the course of the following decade, the next wave of amplification came in the form of body mikes: big musicals like Les Miserables put a microphone on the person of each and every cast member.
The King and I was the beginning of a lifelong obsession with musicals, and as I learned more about their history I heard lots of people mourn the advent of amplification. Miles Kreuger, a musical theater historian I interviewed for my college radio show, talked longingly about hearing Gertrude Lawrence in the original production of The King and I. She had a small voice, he said, so everybody quieted down, leaned forward and actually listened. If Gertrude Lawrence could be heard, he said, anyone can be heard without a microphone.
For all the mystique surrounding old-style, unamplified shows, I never felt like I was missing much. Then in 2002, I saw Barbara Cook at Lincoln Center. Cook is one of Broadway's legendary divas, and in recent years has become a teacher and mentor to many up-and-coming performers. As a teacher of vocal technique, it makes sense that she would show off the way it should -- or at least could -- be done. For her final number, Cook sang Anyone Can Whistle without amplification.
It was spectacular. It was magical. And it in no way changed my feelings about the amplified musicals I'd seen and enjoyed for years. I had been captivated by almost every one of those shows, and the use of microphones hadn't kept me from falling in love with Tommy Tune at the age of 12 (no, that didn't work out too well) or crying my eyes out at the end of Falsettos at the age of 21.
The continued hand-wringing over how amplification has damaged the musical reminds me of the hand-wringing over how the Internet has damaged human communications. A new technology comes along and makes some voices louder: we're told that once we no longer have to work at paying attention, we stop listening. We're told we won't appreciate nuances that get lost when we turn up the volume.
We've turned up the volume, all right: the volume of e-mail, the volume of information, the volume of ways we have to connect. And it can get very loud online. But talk to most musical theater-lovers, including those of us who regard our affection for Stephen Sondheim as proof that we are serious musical theater people, and they will probably confess that they loved Les Miz, mikes and all. Loud is loud, but it isn't necessarily bad. It's just another kind of stimulation, another kind of spectacle.
Growing up online is like growing up in the era of the amplified musical. Quieter forms of communication -- letters, phone calls, and increasingly e-mail itself -- get crowded out by texting, IMs and Facebook. The digital natives who grow up in this environment may be perfectly happy with the level of stimulation and engagement it offers, and have no nostalgia for a past quiet they don't know and can't recall.
And those of us who do recall it would do well to remember that nostalgia is no proof of superiority. We may sometimes miss leaning forward -- into the phone, over the coffee table -- but spend more and more time leaning back, nestled into the sofa with our smartphones and our tablets. We romanticize the good old days in our paeans to the written letter and the work-free weekend, but we check our smartphones as much as the next guy.
Once we let go of the normative superiority of the olden days we can listen to our behavior rather than our nostalgia. We can recognize that our daily choices to spend time online and communicate electronically may not reflect some kind of moral failing or compulsion, but rather, a legitimate preference and decision. We can hear the inner voice that is telling us, oh so quietly, that actually we quite like these Internets. And we can hear that voice equally well, if a bit differently, with or without a mike.
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