Alan Menken and Glenn Slater are new musical troupes in Spellbound

Alan Menken has spent a lifetime writing musicals. But even to this day, the EGOT-winning composer will admit that working on a new musical is an extremely difficult task, and not for the faint of heart: “There’s a reason musicals are so often adaptations,” says the composer. That’s because in an adaptation, the story beats are already there, making it easier to pinpoint the emotional moments that call for a song.

But for an original musical, you have to create the whole story while figure out where the songs are going. Which for Menken, as he admits with a bit of annoyance, isn’t as fun as it sounds. As he exclaims, “When people say, ‘Write any song you want to write,’ I say, ‘Oh, that’s hell.’ It’s hell! Tell me you want a song sung by, you know, one that’s late for a train coming from the East Side to the West Side. Give me all the details and I’ll know how to write the song.”

That’s partly why for the new animated musical film enchanted –for which Menken composed the music with longtime writing partner, lyricist Glenn Slater – the two have been working on it for five years, and the first two years were admittedly difficult. That was because in those early years the film’s director, Vicky Jenson, and its three screenwriters (Lauren Hynek, Elizabeth Martin and Julia Miranda) were still trying to figure out their story.

In the film, which was released by Netflix on November 22, Romeo + Juliet‘s Rachel Zegler is the voice of Princess Ellian, whose parents have been turned into monsters. With his parents indisposed, Ellian is forced to become the adult in space, lead the magical kingdom of Lumbria, and figure out a way to turn his parents back into humans. The film also features the voices of John Lithgow, Jenifer Lewis, Tituss Burgess, Nathan Lane, Javier Bardem and Nicole Kidman.

Spoilers ahead!

While Enchanted set in a magical land, it is gradually revealed that the film is actually an allegory about divorce – that Ellian’s parents are monsters because they can’t stop fighting, making Ellian feel like she has to be the one to keep the family together. “There’s no romantic arc to this at all,” Menken says. “There’s no villain. So the dramatic tension really has to come from Ellian’s inner journey and how we express that.”

Slater has worked with Menken at Disney’s Tangled and The Little Mermaid on Broadway. He describes Enchanted as a sort of “reverse adventure” because it takes the tropes of the Disney princess musical movie genre, but uses it to tell a different kind of story—one where the heroine and her family go on an emotional journey rather than a physical one. . Musically, this meant that Slater and Menken used the conventions of musical theater that audiences understood, while also upping expectations.

As Slater explains, “We have an upbeat opening number where the heroine introduces us to her world, but what she’s really doing is hiding, trying to hide from us how she feels about the world and putting a positive spin on, what we can clearly see is not a positive situation we have a song that works like a villain song does but it’s sung by her two counselors who actually just want the best for her…And so all the way through we always play with them conventions. Because this is a fairy tale, but it’s kind of a reverse fairy tale. And it doesn’t really have a happy ending, but it has its own kind of internal logic that makes it work on its own terms.”

Nowhere is this play with musical conventions clearer than in Ellian’s “I want” song called “The Way It Was Before.” While a typical musical theater “I want” song is forward-looking, “The Way It Was Before” is nostalgic, opening with a pensive piano solo.

“We realized we didn’t have any time for our audience to understand what was at stake for Ellian, because what she desperately wants is for her parents to get back together,” explains Slater. “But we haven’t seen until that song what that means for her: What were her parents like? What was that relationship like? What would it really mean to get it back?”

Menken continues: “I love what they’re doing visually (in the film), where it’s actually this broken piano, which is kind of a metaphor for a broken family. It’s sad, but it has a hopeful outlook. And the way we work, the music comes first. I want to be at the piano playing with ideas. And when we get down to it, it just feels right.”

All this might feel like a more mature story also mature for a young audience. But in a world where divorce is common, Menken and Slater see Enchanted as a way to soothe young viewers who might be in that situation. And to reassure them that they don’t have to be the heroes in their own family.

“We’ve seen how kids watch these kinds of movies and really absorb the lessons, even if it’s subliminal,” explains Slater. “And so we wanted to make sure that kids didn’t feel like they’re the ones who have to get their parents back together, that it’s their job to keep the family together, that they have to feel guilty, or that they’re on some way at fault because of what’s going on in their family, that’s a lot for an animated film to tackle, but when we decided to take it on, we had to deal with it honestly and make sure we gave a message to children who would not be a level of heroism that no child can actually achieve.”

Menken even admits to feeling “deeply emotional” while working on the film. Although he has been married to his own wife, Janis, for over 50 years, what Ellian and her parents go through in Enchanted feels familiar to any family that has had rough patches. “We have a solid marriage, yet I can relate to things that happened in our lives that deeply affected our daughters,” Menken says. “I look back on it and it breaks my heart.”

And in the end, isn’t that what a good musical can do? Help us see situations in our own lives with more clarity? “Musicals can’t just be this brain,” Menken says, pointing to his head before gesturing to his heart. “The gut has to be a very, very big tool to create a successful musical.”

0
of

Images: Spellbound on Netflix