The Musical Writer's Guide to Rating Musicals.

When I rate musicals on here, I will be using the "Corbin" 100-point rating system. I know that it may seem to you like a lot of things are named after me in this blog. Tough it out. Besides explaining to you so that you know how I get my ratings, you can also see what sort of things I consider when giving a value in each category.

First thing to consider though before we start is objectivity vs subjectivity. You may notice that nowhere do I rank actors, setting, or music performance. We're rating these as metaformances. A metaformance is a hypothetical performance with the best actors, the best musicians, the best set, etc. My opinion shouldn't conflict with yours just because I saw it performed in a local theatre and you saw it on Broadway, except in the case where the directors actually change the Book/Score.

Plot: X/20
1. Consider whether the plot was hard or easy to follow. Keep in mind that if the plot was intended to be hard to follow that you don't punish the author for that.

2. How much was plot versus filler? If there was a lot of filler, was the filler enjoyable? Filler is anything that doesn't really do a job of characterization or advancing the plot or anything. I can't think of a good example. Maybe when Raoul gets the people to try to shoot the Phantom and they fail. They could have cut that without much loss. Most of Music Man is filler, but it's enjoyable filler.

3.How original the plot was is important. You can forgive fairly unoriginal plots if they were still very good, but a plot score can suffer if it's the same romance story you have heard fifty times.

Characters: x/15
1. Are the characters who are supposed to be interesting interesting? You have to look past actors' performances for this one. If you have any strong feelings, good or bad, towards characters, they are probably interesting.

2. Don't punish musicals for having superfluous characters. Sometimes you need to add in a few more male or female roles just so that it doesn't get rejected because most high school productions try to include many people. Broadway people will have people double up, don't worry about it. The only time this gets to be a problem is when you have forty characters who are named and have few lines.

3. Are the characters strongly connected to the plot? This mostly applies to main characters, but if they don't seem to fit with the plot and the plot is pretty good, then the problem is with the characters.

Dialogue: x/15
1. People really overuse the phrase "People don't talk like that" when referring to works by their peers. I'm guilty of saying it to. However, when it comes to musicals for example, I always write out most contractions. That makes the actor/director aware that they are there. They can recontract them later if it sounds choppy. The good actors can figure out which contractions are necessary.
Also, just because you don't know people that talk that way doesn't mean no one does.

2. Are there a lot of pointless lines?

3. Take points off for unnecessary accents on the parts of characters. Making your work hard to understand because of dialect is just stupid. I'm looking at you Brian Jacques with your stupid Redwall dialects. I can figure out that the moles are supposed to sound like rednecks or whatever. I don't need "Ow geroff muh' . She seys dat nuhbudy gunna get tru har"

Music: x/20
1. Are the pit crew parts good? Remember that the pit is more important in creating the mood of a song than the singer. If you don't like the music, that's usually where you can look.

2. Are the songs memorable? You don't have to punish Musicals for not having memorable songs, but reward them for it for sure. Sometimes things just don't click with individuals.

3. Is there too much singing and too much repetition of themes? Phantom...!

Adaptation: x/10
1. If it's not an adaptation, give 10 points, unless it's really bad and you are looking for more places to take off points.

2. If it's a good adaptation of the source, give it a higher score out of /10. I mean, have you ever said, "I liked that better than the movie."? That would be a good adaptation regardless of how "faithful" it is to the source material.

3. If it was a terrible adaptation, did it atleast stick to the source material?

Curtain Call: x/5
1. Did you enjoy the hypothetical curtain call? Did it have the right music for the curtain call? If you watch a movie, credit music takes the place. If there is absolutely no indication of you what the curtain call would be like, just use this as free reward/punishment.

Theme/Underlying Social Message: x/7
1. Was it a strong theme? Stronger themes get more points unless it becomes obnoxiously in your face.

2. Could you find a theme? If you couldn't and it seems like it was trying to have one, punish them. If it just legitimately doesn't have one, use this category for whatever.

3. Does it violate my Underlying Social Message thing?

Other Opinion Category: x/8
1. Poor use of plot twist or anything like that?

2. Just didn't like the historical setting?

3. Just don't like certain musical writers?


Hopefully this guide will help you. Either judge each category, or give a score out of 100, and then divide the points up into how you see them. Like, I would give Dream Girls a 40/100 probably. If I went down category by category I would probably end up with a higher score than 40, simply because it's hard to determine whether I'm being too harsh or not.

Use this to your advantage in rating musicals with an objective point of view.