Full of the festive spirit, and wondering what kind of entertainment will keep the children off my back over Christmas, I thought I’d take a swipe at one area of music which has been bugging me for years – the music in musicals.

When a musical gets it right and the music is passionate and the dancing and singing and staging all work together, they can be a magical, joyful experience, but of late musicals have been a series of pastiche experiences. Pastiche comes from the Italian word pasticcio which is apparently a pâté or pie-filling mixed from diverse ingredients, and the theatrical equivalent is music that has all the dynamic texture of pâté and sounds like every other musical you’ve ever heard. I watched the musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels recently in Sydney and while the acting and production were great, the music in the show was like some old 1950s generic score taken out of the freezer covered in frost and congealed fat, reheated in the microwave and served up as a new dish. As soon as a song begins you know exactly what is going to happen, every chord, every rhyme. You could even just start the song...