Gotta Dance – Top Hat the Musical and the History of Hollywood Crowd Pleasers

Top Hat the Musical has some good DNA. It is born from the film of the same name – Top Hat – starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, with music and lyrics by the legendary Irving Berlin. The show and the film are both ostensibly simple comedies, in which the central characters all mistake each other’s identities and everyone ends up in a right old mess – which of course is sorted out nicely in the third act. However, like some of the other musicals of the time (the time of the original that is); and like many of the Irving Berlin musical movies; Top Hat the Musical has more going on under the surface.

There’s a basic theme that runs through a lot of really good musical comedy. That theme has to do with people’s essential inability to express themselves clearly without the assistance of art. In the musical form, this is explored very clearly: people break into song in the middle of the street to tell everyone how great their girl is.

Underneath the jollity, there’s a serious point about art happening here. The musical world is one in which artistic self-expression is not just deemed alright, or not embarrassing; it’s a world in which artistic self-expression is the default mode of communication. For audience members who perhaps resonate with the central characters; inability to self-express without aid, the idea of being transplanted to a world where you’re allowed to have that aid is irresistible.

This is at the heart of the success of Top Hat the Musical; it’s at the heart of the success of Singin in the Rain; and it’s at the heart of the success of White Christmas. In every case (two of them penned by Irving Berlin), potentially unpleasant situations are resolved thanks to the ability of song and dance to reveal personalities clearly, in ways that normal spoken words cannot. Indeed, so prevalent is this assumption throughout the world of Hollywood musicals that it is frequently used to denote the true character of people on stage or screen.

The Broadway sequence in Singin in the Rain clearly uses dance to reveal character traits; as does the moment in Top Hat where the Fred Astaire character first wakes his love interest by tap dancing in the room above hers in the hotel. The language of dancing, of free self-expression divorced from the complications of words, is everywhere in these best-loved movies and shows.

For more information please visit : http://www.aldwychtheatre.com/shows/top-hat-the-musical/

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