A Brechtian Perspective on London Road: class representations, dialectics and the Gestic character of music from stage to screen

TLDR: The role of music and song in the audience reception of the verbatim musical London Road (Taylor 2013; Zavros 2018) has been discussed in this article, with a particular focus on the dialectics and the gestic role of the music and lyrics.

Abstract: This article contributes to discussions about the role of music and song in the audience reception of the “verbatim musical” London Road (Taylor 2013; Zavros 2018). It uses Brechtian philosophy to assess the audience reception, and shows how London Road can illuminate the resonance of Brechtian philosophy with contemporary docu-musical. The first section analyses Brechtian class representations in London Road, with a particular focus on the dialectics and the Gestic role of the music and song. The second section explores how the adaptation from stage to screen further affected the dialectics of the musical and, paradoxically, further served key Brechtian aims. I consider the audience’s reception of both productions. I include my own reception, because I have seen both the stage and screen versions. I focus on two dramaturgical changes in the adaptation from stage to screen: the chronological order of the narrative and the alternation of interview sections and dramatised sections, which resembles the structure of the popular drama-doc genre. Given that reordering and restaging the original verbatim numbers could affect audience reception, I analyse the way the meaning is affected through the Brechtian notions of alienation and the gestic character of music. Throughout, I discuss class representations and relevant dialectical implications.