Songwriters, unless they are singer/songwriters, aren’t generally celebrities except to those who pay attention to such things. Yet Alan Menken, who wrote the music for the some of the most loved Disney musicals of the past few decades and has presumably been seen on national television only while accepting awards (he’s won eight Oscars), packed the 3,900-seat Auditorium Theatre on Saturday, March 30 for a two-hour, one-man concert. These nearly 4,000 fans not only showed up, they gave Menken a hero’s greeting when he took the stage. The man who gave them (and their children and grand-children) the melodies from THE LITTLE MERMAID, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, ALADDIN and so many more, plus stage musicals like LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, was a hero indeed.
Humble Mencken Seems Surprised by the Warm Reception at Auditorium Theatre
Sharing the stage with just a grand piano and three screens, Menken showed a humility that was far from regal – seeming to be just as surprised as anyone to be performing to such a huge audience in such an august venue. “What a beautiful theater,” he said as he surveyed the crowd after a bit of “Prince Ali” from ALADDIN, possibly a wry comment on his enthusiastic reception.
It wasn’t hard to picture this self-effacing 69-year-old man as the skinny teenager of the 1960’s shown on one of the screens. Menken was the son of a New Rochelle, NY dentist who had hoped his boy would follow in his dad’s footsteps. Menken devoted only a modest amount of time on his own biography, though. While he gave mention to his schooling from 1967-71 at New York University (where he initially enrolled in pre-med), to his marriage shortly after graduation to Janis Roswick (to whom he’s still married) and to their two daughters; the focus of his onstage patter was most heavily on his work.
Menken briefly mentioned his early gigs like writing songs for SESAME STREET and for TV commercials (he played one such jingle for Roundup Herbicide) before describing his meeting with the man who would become his most significant writing partner, Howard Ashman. Menken performed an obscure but touching song (“30 Miles from the Banks of the Ohio”) from their first project, the musical GOD BLESS YOU, MR. ROSEWATER. The musical flopped but was soon followed in 1982 by their mega-hit, LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, and Menken obliged the Auditorium audience with three songs from the stage version (title song, “Be a Dentist” and “Suddenly, Seymour”) plus their Academy award nominee written for LITTLE SHOP’s film version, the song “Mean Green Mother from Outer Space.”
How Menken came to write songs for Disney
Menken explained how it was Ashman who had originally been offered the gig to write songs for THE LITTLE MERMAID and that Menken joined the project as composer upon Ashman’s recommendation to Disney. This anecdote set up the opportunity for Menken to play and sing (in a voice this would reviewer would term “passable”) some of the most enduring songs the pair wrote together: “Part of Your World,” “Under the Sea” and “Kiss the Girl” from THE LITTLE MERMAID; “Belle,” Gaston, “Be Our Guest” and the title song from BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. Menken explained how Ashman was diagnosed as HIV+ in 1988 and that they created the songs for those two films as Ashman’s illness progressed. Ashman died in 1991, before BEAUTY AND THE BEAST was completed and after the two had finished only a portion of the ALADDIN score. Menken then performed a little known, heartbreaking song he and Ashman had written to describe the AIDS epidemic in New York City, “Sheridan Square.”
After Ashman’s death, Menken finished the ALADDIN score with Tim Rice, who penned the lyrics to “A Whole New World,” along with several other songs for the film. The concert’s second half moved quickly through the estimable career Menken has enjoyed since Ashman’s death: with anecdotes about the Broadway productions of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, LITTLE MERMAID and ALADDIN and running through the many songs that have been popular since then.
Even if they haven’t achieved the iconic status of the early Menken and Ashman pieces, the audience’s love for songs like “Colors of the Wind” from POCAHONTAS, “Go the Distance” from HERCULES and “Out There” from THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME was evident. So was the crowd’s enthusiasm for the songs from NEWSIES (“Santa Fe,” “Carrying the Banner,” “King of New York”), which initially flopped as a movie musical in 1992, the year ALADDIN premiered, but was reborn in 2012 as an unexpected hit on Broadway.
A WHOLE NEW WORLD OF ALAN MENKEN showcased lesser-known gems alongside his standards
Menken’s work over the past few decades has been mostly focused on original scores for Broadway (SISTER ACT, LEAP OF FAITH and A BRONX TALE) and individual songs for feature films including HOME ON THE RANGE, CAPTAIN AMERICA and RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET, though Menken explained he nearly missed the chance to write pastiches of his own song styles for ENCHANTED. If this prolific body of work hasn’t produced as many standards as Menken’s earlier partnership with Ashman, Menken managed to find some lesser-known gems to share with the audience like “Raise Your Voice” from SISTER ACT and the title song from LEAP OF FAITH.
The two-hour and fifteen-minute show closed on an emotional note, paying tribute to some lost loved ones. The song “Proud of Your Boy,” written with Ashman for ALADDIN and cut from the original film but reinstated for Broadway, would have been touching enough as a remembrance of the writing partner who died at age 40. Menken’s performance of that song took on even greater significance, though, when the composer shared the news that he had lost his mother just six days earlier and his father six weeks earlier.
Menken’s songs have been shared by families for a generation or two already, whether in movie theaters or on a seemingly endless loop of home video as kids watch their favorite Disney animated films over and over. Their lyrics – so often concerned with self-discovery – finding our better selves – have resonance among all age groups. In this frequent Broadway reviewer’s view, Menken’s ability to provide music to match those words – music that evokes a visceral response to those lyrics of hope and aspiration is what distinguishes his body of work
Auditorium Theatre presents ongoing programming of music, dance and more. For a schedule of upcoming performances visit the Auditorium Theatre website.
Photos by Frazer Harrison
About the Author:
John Olson is an arts carnivore who is particularly a love of music, theatre and film. He studied piano, trombone and string bass into his college years, performing in bands and orchestras in high school and college, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. While working as an advertising agency account manager, he began a second career as an arts journalist and is now principal of John Olson Communications, a marketing and public relations business serving arts and entertainment clients.
