Exploring Theatre Hot Takes: Bring Back Overtures
by Chris Peterson
Theatre people always have opinions and sometimes those opinions come in hot. Recently, I put out a call on social media asking for your boldest, spiciest theatre takes, and the responses did not disappoint. From thought-provoking critiques to eyebrow-raising declarations, you gave me plenty to chew on.
So here’s what we’re going to do: I’ll be exploring as many of these submissions as I can in this column series. Some I may agree with, others I may not, but that’s the fun of it. Theatre thrives on conversation, and even the most out-there hot take can lead to surprising insights and fascinating discussions.
Think of this as an open forum, where no opinion is too bold to examine. Ready to dive in? Click on the “Exploring Theatre Hot Takes” tag at the bottom to keep up with every installment.
Looking through the thread of submitted theatre hot takes, one caught my eye the other day: Alejandro Pteal posted “Bring overtures back.” Just three words. No punctuation. No hashtags. But somehow, it said everything.
If you’ve ever sat through an overture — a real overture — you know that feeling. It wasn’t just about nostalgia. It was about ceremony. The overture was the invitation to enter another world, a handshake between audience and orchestra, a collective breath before the story began. And that breath, for the most part, has disappeared.
For most of the twentieth century, the overture was as essential to a musical as the eleven o’clock number or the final bow. The overture served as a symphonic appetizer — introducing melodies, setting a tone, and perhaps most importantly, giving the audience time to transition from their day into the dream.
Even movie musicals honored the ritual. Think of the velvet curtain at the start of West Side Story (1961), when the orchestra swells before the first shot appears. It was a promise: you were about to be taken somewhere extraordinary.
However, for some reason, over the past couple of decades, the overture has begun to fade away. I don’t know if directors wanted immediacy or producers worried about pacing. Maybe in an age of shrinking attention spans, the idea of sitting still through a three-minute orchestral introduction suddenly felt indulgent. But it feels like we lost something deeply necessary: anticipation.
An overture did more than preview a score. It tuned the audience’s ears and hearts, reminding them that the music was the soul of the story. You could tell so much about a show from its overture. Gypsy’s was brassy and relentless — a showbiz march toward ambition and breakdown. Oklahoma! felt open and pastoral, the sound of a young nation learning who it was. West Side Story exploded with chaos and passion. The overture wasn’t just a sound; it was storytelling. Without a word, it told us what kind of world we were entering — bold, romantic, dangerous, whimsical.
We live now in an era obsessed with speed. So it’s no surprise that many modern musicals now begin mid-beat — right into the opening number, or worse, straight into dialogue.
It’s not that today’s composers lack musical brilliance. Far from it. Hamilton, Hadestown, and Six are dazzling in their own right. But we’ve lost the art of the slow entrance. We’ve forgotten the theatrical power of saying to an audience, “Wait. Listen. Let the music take you there first.”
So yes — bring overtures back. Bring back the moment when the orchestra gets its own standing ovation before the first line. In a world obsessed with skipping to the good part, the overture is the good part. It’s the promise that what’s coming next will be worth the wait.