For most twenty-first century theater-goers the word "melodrama" conjures up visions of mustachioed villains tying helpless maidens to the train tracks, overwrought acting and soap opera plots. As a form, it has been minimized and looked down upon—the word itself suggests a criticism. But melodrama is far more complex than these stereotypes would suggest. The predominant form of theater in the nineteenth century, melodrama has survived into the twenty-first, and its newest incarnations retain the energy and depth of emotion of the earlier work, while contributing a grace in writing and complexity often lacking in its ancestors. In setting out to write The Bells Theresa Rebeck was inspired by a typical nineteenth-century melodrama, but her modern vision helps bring the genre into the twenty-first century.

Traditionally, melodrama includes:
-A strong plot, with high, intense, emotional stakes
-Characters that are identifiable types
-A moral tale, where virtue triumphs and/or evil is punished
-Sensational incidents and effects

In nineteenth-century melodrama, morality was rigidly defined, and the course of the action confirmed that the moral order would prevail, in spite of the chaos of the world. People were punished and rewarded as they deserved, and characters were instantly recognizable to the audience as types—heroes, ingénues, villains. There was very little “subtext” in characters’ speeches. Instead, characters declaimed— either in dialogue or in soliloquies— exactly who they were and what they were feeling. Internal emotional journeys were all expressed on stage somehow, either verbally or through visual effects. Not surprisingly, the rise in the popularity of melodrama in the eighteenth and nineteenth century coincided with both the industrial revolution and a more democratic, working and middle class audience for theater. In a time of unprecedented changes, class insecurity and political tensions, audiences clung to this genre, which both provided thrills and reinforced the status-quo of class and morality.

Melodramas also often incorporated music, gesture and tableaux in creating a multi-media spectacle. All physical actions, many of which were part of a complex codified system of gestures, had emotional connotations.

Scene from stage production of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, 1901. Library of Congress.

While not all of these characteristics are present in all melodrama, the basic central conceits of sweeping emotions, muscular plots and an emphasis on the visual have survived and even thrived in playwriting, both before and since melodrama’s Victorian heyday. European masters of the genre include writers such as Pixerecourt and Kotzbue, with Dion Boucicault capturing audiences in England and the US. Various adaptations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, perhaps the most famous melodrama for all time, became (and remain) the most performed plays in American history. In addition to the great nineteenth-century melodramatists, writers whose work has been considered melodrama, and can be analyzed usefully as melodramas, include Eugene O’Neill (Desire Under the Elms, Mourning Becomes Electra), Stephen Sondheim (Sweeney Todd), William Shakespeare (King Lear, among others), and Charles Ludlam (The Mystery of Irma Vep). In The Bells Theresa Rebeck embraces the strong plot, intense emotions and visual potential central to all melodrama, but she also injects an element of complexity in this twenty-first century melodrama often absent from its nineteenth century cousins. Using the sophisticated tools of twenty-first century theater technology, and a more nuanced twenty-first century view of character, The Bells presents a modern approach to a classic form.