Stage Struck

Peter Crawleyon the connection between words and music.

There's no such thing as "musical theatre" in Nigeria, because, in Nigeria, there's no such thing as a theatre without music. The African tradition of "total theatre" makes no distinctions between acting, music, dance, rhythm and storytelling. As that accidental theatre theorist John Lennon put it, there's nothing you can say that can't be sung.

All of which begs the question: if a show is missing any of these elements, does that make it less than total? Is Hamletnot as dramatically accomplished as, say, Starlight Express? Would

A Long Day's Journey Into Nightbe a more absorbing experience if it had a nifty dance number?

Garry Hynes is unlikely to address that last question with her new production of Long Day'sfor the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival, but given that her next project is Juno, a musical version of the O'Casey classic destined for Broadway - yes, seriously - we can only hope. Either way, one by one, the Irish are harmonising with the musical. Our theatre is becoming complete again.

When did squeamishness sneak into classical European drama? At some point the word melodrama, a positive association between music and dialogue, became an embarrassment, a blushing term better suited to Latin soap operas and Rock Hudson movies.

Lee Breuer, the maverick American director, recently tried to reclaim it. "Actors should listen to lead singers!" he instructed a Kilkenny audience. "Don't lose the fact that theatre is music!"

He had a point. But whether Breuer was extolling the virtues of gospel songs or explaining the continuum between African music and Greek chanting, there was one musical form he placed above all others. "There is no level of density that you can't attain with the blues," he said. "There is no way that you can't find a way to make those words sing."

Two new shows may prove his point: Calypso's Bones, a post- apartheid psychological drama in which African music is integral and will be performed by multiethnic group Tower of Babel; and Randolph SD's Fewer Emergencies, a typically unrestricted play from Martin Crimp (Time: "Blank", Place: "Blank") which, at one point, features four middle-class white folk singing 12-bar blues.

Calypso has honed the delivery of about 12 traditional Xhosa songs with Joe Legwabe, one- time member of Ladysmith

Black Mambazo, to tell Kay Adshead's allegory of truth and reconciliation. The intention is to envelop the audience in sound. Yet a sense of apartheid may linger in the music: only one culture has access to it.

A more curious experiment underlines Fewer Emergencies. Not only are rich white people moved to sing traditionally poor black music, but the song composed by Ivan Birthistle and Vincent Doherty slips discreetly between the surge of blues and the harmony of doo wop, touching on gospel and even rock. An ironic joke in a play of hip urban ennui, perhaps, or a little nod towards a theatre feeling its way through the connections of song.

Does anybody know why music is making a theatrical comeback? Maybe not. But hum a few bars and maybe we can fake it.