Musical Theatre has a women problem.

Or more accurately, it seems to have a problem with women. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love musical theatre more than most. I spend about half my time in a theatre enjoying a well choreographed number. It’s exactly because I am so well acquainted that I feel well placed to say: Musical Theatre has a problem with writing women.

It was announced today that Chicago is heading back to UK stages later this year, as it heads out on a tour. Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly are going to be dazzling audiences across the country as they compete for the services of Billy Flynn, from October in Milton Keynes. At the same time, brand new musical Burlesque - adapted from the 2010 movie of the same name - will be back in Manchester for a month, concluding its regional runs before it heads to the West End. Whilst we don’t know the exact plot of the stage adaptation, the film is the story of Ali, a small town girl with big dreams, who moves to Los Angeles to become a star. After losing an audition she stumbles upon a burlesque club that’s struggling for money, and what do you know? Ali is so beautiful and has such a good voice, she manages to save the club, and also fall in love.

Does that sound somewhat familiar? Well, may I direct your attention to sparkling diamond of the Moulin Rouge, Satine. For those unfamiliar with the story, Moulin Rouge follows Christian, a composer who goes to Paris to find himself, and he finds the Moulin Rouge. A club that’s deeply struggling for money, and its lead star, Satine, is tasked with charming the Duke into lusting after her enough to part with his money and save the club. Along the way she falls in love with Christian, saves the club, but also *spoiler alert* dies at the end.

Are you sat there thinking “hmm, sexy woman is the star of a club, falls in love with leading man, and doesn’t offer much more than that? sounds incredibly familiar.”? If so I would ask: have you seen Cabaret? Sally Bowles, the toast of mayfair, the star of the Kit Kat club. She’s beautiful, she sings suggestive songs, she falls in love with Clifford, and she doesn’t really do much more than that.

I love a beautiful woman as much as the next girl, but I have to ask - do we really need 4 productions happening at once that can be boiled down to “come look at women in sexy outfits, dancing suggestively, with no substance to them as characters but they do in some way further the plot of the men.”?

And it’s interesting, because these are roles so often described as empowering roles for women. Roles for girls and women who want to perform to aspire to play. Because the main alternative to being hypersexualised and essentially an object only to be desired, is to be almost a non-character. I have two tests. The first I call the coat stand test. Could I remove your character entirely, or replace them with a coat stand without the story changing? The second I call the “for a man” test. Does your character serve any purpose other than furthering the plot of a man. They may be silly names but it highlights an important issue with the way women are written in musical theatre.

I love Les Mis, it’s a classic for a reason, and those songs hit in a way that very few other musical tracks do. There are 3 main women in the show - Fantine, Cosette, and Eponine.  

- Fantine’s plot is she gets fired from the factory Valjean runs when they discover she has a child, desperate for money she turns to prostitution, catches Tuberculosis and dies in Valjean’s arms, after telling him about Cosette. She passes the coat-stand test, but she fails the for a man test.

- Cosette’s plot is that she is the daughter of Fantine. Orphaned, and left in the care of the Thénardiers who mistreat her, she is rescued by Valjean - largely to assuage the guilt he feels about her mother’s fate. He raises her as her own, and she grows up and falls in love with Marius. The Marius-Cosette love story gives us some pretty songs, but if you remove it entirely does the show change? Not massively, no. Cosette exists to further Valjean’s plot, to further Marius’s plot, and for large parts of the show could be replaced with a coat stand and little would change. She fails both tests.

- And so we come to Eponine. Her entire plot is that she’s in love with Marius, but he doesn’t love her back, and she’s devastated about it. And then she dies. Whilst On My Own is a defining song for this show, and for musical theatre as a whole, she doesn’t pass the coat-stand test.

Another classic that’s having a huge moment right now is Guys and Dolls. To be clear, I absolutely adore the production currently on at The Bridge Theatre. It’s exciting, it’s innovative, it challenges the ideas of what theatre has to be. But we’re discussing the books, not the productions, and as far as the content goes it’s more a case of Guys (oh yeah and there’s some Dolls too I guess). The main women in this show are Adelaide and Sarah Brown, both love interests to the lead guys. Adelaide’s story is she’s been with Nathan Detroit for years and he refuses to marry her, and she would really quite like him to marry her but he’s not emotionally mature enough yet, but by the end she gets what she wants. Sarah Brown’s story is that she is a Sister, and Sky Masterson attempts to woo her to win a bet with Nathan. It works, they fall in love, they fight, they get back together, the end. You can’t replace them with a coat stand, but they do both only exist for the improvement of the two lead men. So they fail the for a man test.

And you may be thinking “Okay fair I see what you’re saying, but Chicago is from like 60 years ago, Les Mis was written in the 1800s, Cabaret is also 60 years old, and Guys and Dolls is from 1950. Hardly fair to hold them to modern standards for representation of women.” And to that I say, you’re right. So let’s look at newer productions. We’ll start with my two favourites, so you all know I’m playing fair. Jersey Boys and Hamilton. I’ve seen the former 8 times (and I am still mourning the loss of it from the West End), and I’ve seen the latter 4 times.

There’s 3 main women in Jersey Boys, Mary Delgado, Francine Valli, and Lorraine. All three of them real people, meaning they’re 3 dimensional women full of personality and depth and character. But does that translate to the stage? Not at all. Francine could simply be removed entirely and turned into an “offstage character” - someone mentioned but not seen - and it wouldn’t change the show. She doesn’t pass the coat stand test. Mary needs to be on stage, she passes that test, but she is only there for Frankie’s development. We know nothing about her as a person, and so she doesn’t pass the for a man test. Lorraine, a later love interest for Frankie, is a combination of both. She could both be an offstage character, and also is only there to move Frankie’s story along. She fails both tests.

Hamilton has 4 main women. The three Schuyler Sisters, Angelica, Eliza and Peggy, and Maria Reynolds.

Angelica’s purpose in this show is to connect Hamilton with his future wife, Eliza. After that, she moves to England and becomes an offstage character, until she returns briefly to see her sister. And then she dies. She exists within this story to further Hamilton’s story, she fails the for a man test. Peggy is so much a coat stand character that they don’t even mention her death. Maria Reynolds seduces Hamilton, and her husband blackmails him, which leads to his downfall. She doesn’t pass the for a man test. Eliza for the majority of this show exists entirely for a man. She sings about removing herself from the narrative, but until that point she had hardly been in the narrative at all. It’s in the final moments that she becomes more than this, in the final song we find out about what she did with her life. Whilst it’s better than the other women get, this to me isn’t enough for her to pass the for a man test.

Another newer example is Death Note, which had its European premiere in London last year in a series of concerts. It’s an exciting piece of theatre, the music is incredibly strong, and the male characters are very well developed. The women though? Not so much. This musical is based on a Manga series of the same name, so the depth of characters in it draw on how well the women are developed within that source material. But regardless, the women are not well developed. Misa Amane exists entirely for the development of lead character Kira. She doesn’t pass the for a man test. Rem, a shinigami, has so much potential and has one of the most beautiful numbers in the show, but in her current form, unfortunately she doesn’t pass the coat stand test. Her male counterpart, Ryuk, is significantly better developed.

There are some exceptions of course - Wicked is a notable example. The leads are both well developed women, multi-dimensional, they grow together, they aren’t just important to the plot, they are the story. Hairspray is another example, it has multiple women who both need to be there, and also have depth of character. Six, Legally Blonde, and Mean Girls are more modern examples.

Interested in why this might be, I had a look at who wrote the book for all of the above.

• Chicago - Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse.

• Burlesque (Film, as we don’t have information on the content of the show yet) - Steven Antin.

• Cabaret - Joe Masteroff.

• Moulin Rouge - John Logan, based off a film written by Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce.

• Les Mis - Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, based off a book written by Victor Hugo.

• Jersey Boys - Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice.

• Hamilton - Lin-Manuel Miranda.

• Death Note - Ivan Menchell.

Notice anything? Let’s have a look at who wrote the books of the shows where women have substance.

• Wicked - Winnie Holzman.

• Hairspray - Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan

• Six - Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss.

• Legally Blonde - Heather Hach.

• Mean Girls - Tina Fey.

With the exception of Hairspray, they all include at least one woman in the team that wrote the book. The book being the story, the bit that includes the character development, and therefore dictates the space the women within the story occupy. It’s interesting to note, that every single one of the books for the first list of shows was written solely by men. Why does it then - on the whole - take the involvement of women in the creative process, for women to be portrayed as something more than a overtly sexual object of desire or a non-entity that serves only to further men? What does this tell us about how men perceive women? What does it tell us about what men value in women, that the main way they know how to write us as “empowered” is to take our clothes off, put us in lingerie, and have us dance?

When we say representation matters, we don’t just mean it’s important to be there. It’s not simply about being in the room, it’s about the position you hold within it. Art not only reflects what society is, but also imagines what society could be. So when these productions are making up such a large percentage of the shows available for us to go and see, what message are we sending the girls that go and see them about the position they hold in the room?

Newer musicals certainly offer hope, but as we can see with Hamilton and Death Note, new doesn’t mean the problems of the past are gone. When we look at who the writers are, it’s clear that if we want to see strong women on stage, who are well developed, full of substance, and whose empowerment comes from more than simply their body, we need to be increasing opportunities for women to have their works produced. Theatre is an overwhelmingly male space when it comes to the writers, directors and producers. In an ideal world, we should be able to rely on those men to portray women as interesting, multifaceted individuals, filled with depth and with plenty to add to a plot. But we live in this world which is far from ideal, and so if we want to see that in the stories, we need to see more women writing them.