"Look at the darkest hit musicals - Cabaret, West Side Story, Carousel - they are exuberant experiences. They send you out of the theater filled with music"
About this Quote
Lithgow’s point lands like a backstage confession: the bleakest stories often make for the most bracing nights out. He’s not defending darkness for its own sake; he’s describing a craft trick musicals pull better than almost any form. Cabaret ends with fascism and rot. West Side Story leaves bodies on the pavement. Carousel tries to launder tragedy through redemption. Yet people walk out humming, charged up, weirdly lighter. That contradiction isn’t a bug. It’s the engine.
The intent here is practical, almost protective of the genre. Musicals get dismissed as escapist glitter, but Lithgow flips it: even the “darkest hit musicals” are built to metabolize dread into something bodily and communal. Music doesn’t cancel the pain; it carries it, gives it rhythm, makes it speakable. You can’t argue with a melody the way you argue with dialogue. It sneaks the hard stuff past your defenses.
The subtext is also a quiet pitch for why theater still matters in an age of private streaming. An “exuberant experience” is social technology: a roomful of strangers agreeing to feel together, then leaving with the same tunes lodged in their heads like shared evidence. Those shows don’t send you home comforted by outcomes; they send you home animated by form. The darkness stays, but it’s been transformed into music you can’t stop hearing.
The intent here is practical, almost protective of the genre. Musicals get dismissed as escapist glitter, but Lithgow flips it: even the “darkest hit musicals” are built to metabolize dread into something bodily and communal. Music doesn’t cancel the pain; it carries it, gives it rhythm, makes it speakable. You can’t argue with a melody the way you argue with dialogue. It sneaks the hard stuff past your defenses.
The subtext is also a quiet pitch for why theater still matters in an age of private streaming. An “exuberant experience” is social technology: a roomful of strangers agreeing to feel together, then leaving with the same tunes lodged in their heads like shared evidence. Those shows don’t send you home comforted by outcomes; they send you home animated by form. The darkness stays, but it’s been transformed into music you can’t stop hearing.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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