Lots of e-mails about NBC's live telecast of The Wiz. My pal Peter David wrote to say…
I think I may have been the first person to say that: that what was wrong with it was that it needed a live audience. I put that up on my Twitter feed 45 minutes into it. I'm pleased to see that not only did you say it as well, but so did several other articles about it. Maybe NBC will get the hint.
Apparently not. Playbill just ran this interview with Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, who produced The Wiz Live! telecast. Here's the relevant paragraph…
With increasing talk among viewers about the need for a live studio audience, the duo said that they stand by their decision not to have one. "We still would like to honor the tradition where this genre was given birth and that's in the '50's," commented Meron. "We know that it's taken a while for the audience to get used to it, but in the three years we've been doing it, there's always a cry for live audience but that's not [that] special. What's special is [to] do these on a soundstage and live in the moment without that audience and to allow cameras to come in and get up close and personal and have the audience at home be the live audience."
I'm not sure what tradition they think they're honoring. Back in the fifties, there were live musicals on TV. Often, those live musicals had live audiences. Sometimes, they didn't…and when they didn't, I believe it was only because (a) the show was an intense drama or (b) it had technical considerations that made it impossible to have a live audience. To not have one for a musical, comedy or musical comedy was not a creative decision. It was because, for example, the show required so many sets that they couldn't fit it into the kind of studio that could hold a live audience.
That's not many of them. After all, these shows were all written to be performed in buildings with a live audience watching. When they couldn't be, it probably meant the producers were doing more elaborate sets and staging than had been seen on the stage, and had decided to trade off having an audience to achieve that.
One of the more acclaimed musicals done for television in the fifties was the 1954 adaptation of Cole Porter's Anything Goes, starring Ethel Merman, Frank Sinatra and Bert Lahr. Here's Merman and Lahr performing the song "Friendship" on it. As you can hear, they're playing to a live audience…
By the way, in case you care: "Friendship" was not in Anything Goes when the show debuted on Broadway in 1934, nor was it in the 1936 movie version. That was because the song hadn't been written yet. It was created by the same composer (Cole Porter) for his 1939 musical, DuBarry Was a Lady.
In later years, lots of people wanted to revive certain Porter musicals and not others and it was not uncommon to steal the best songs from the non-revived shows and stick them into the revived shows. When Merman was asked to do Anything Goes for TV, she reportedly said, "I'll do it if you interpolate 'Friendship' into it and I can do it with Bert Lahr." And then when Lahr was asked to be part of the production, he said, "On one condition. I want you to stick in 'Friendship' and let me do it with Ethel!"
I'm not sure if they started the trend but nowadays, every revival of Anything Goes includes "Friendship" as well as a couple of tunes from other Porter shows.
Getting back to The Wiz: One of the problems with not having a live audience for these televised musicals is that it limits them to shows that aren't particularly comedic. You could do The Sound of Music and Peter Pan that way because those shows aren't big on laughs — although I did note in my review of their Peter Pan that laughter and applause could have helped certain sections. But think how truly hollow a show like A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum or The Producers would be without an audience giggling every line or two. That sound is almost part of the score. The Wiz had a lot of lines that could have profited from audience response and to me, some of the musical numbers cried out for it, especially at the end.
Then again, Mssrs. Zadan and Meron are very successful doing it the way they're doing it, so I suppose they'll keep on doing it the way they're doing it. The Wiz Live! reruns (not live) on December 19 and as the above-linked article notes, some version of the TV production is heading for Broadway shortly. I assume they'll want a live audience there for it.