Depending on your taste and point of view, Disney either rescued the modern musical or ruined it. Certainly, they Disneyfied it. From the moment the entertainment conglomerate decided to adapt one of their animated features into a stage musical – with Beauty and the Beast in 1994, followed three years later by The Lion King – audience expectations around the form altered. Sets and costumes needed to be lavish, songs needed to be recognisable and, by the time the curtain came down, schmaltz should win the day.
Musicals that have become major hits since have done so by leaning away from the Disney formula towards smaller-scale, single-set productions, using idiosyncratic music and a serious approach to storytelling to differentiate themselves. Come from Away, Hadestown and even Hamilton are all essentially chamber pieces, whose musical expression comes from outside the musical theatre canon.
