One of the biggest shocks to the theatre community of the internet age is the quick and massive popularity of Epic: The Musical.
Epic is a musical written and produced by Jorge Rivera-Herrans based on the Homeric poem, The Odyssey, following the titular character, Odysseus, and his journey home, released through nine different sagas. Its concept album blew up on social media, especially on TikTok and the like. It’s amazing how popular it got, and the reasons for that are its musical composition, its story and characters and how accessible it is.
The musical composition is careful and purposeful, each motif, lyric, and instrument giving depth to the characters and adding impact to scenes. For example, there’s an instrumental motif in “Different Beast”, being a big and bold horn composition, adding a lot of impact to Odysseus’s monstrous actions in the song. So, when the instrumental motif is reprised in “Six Hundred Strike”, the impact is immense, since the listener already knows from its debut song that whatever is going to happen is going to be brutal.
The story of Epic is beautifully crafted, and the characters are engaging. The theme of the show is that ruthlessness is sometimes necessary to do what needs to be done. This is shown through a vast variety of characters, from the friend of Odysseus, Polites, who greets the world with open arms, and the sea god Poseidon, who claims that ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves. And every saga informs the next, the transition to each saga being smooth and seamless, making the pace and progression feel natural at all times.
Epic is very accessible to the general public. The entire concept album is posted on multiple platforms, and the process of creating the songs is documented on Rivera-Herrans’s social media pages, making insight readily available, even during production. Even the auditions were accessible as Rivera-Herrans would run auditions for characters as a public process on social media, letting everyone have a chance to shine in his musical.
However, there is a glaring problem here. Epic is only a concept album. It’s not a stageplay yet, and it most likely won’t be a stageplay anytime soon, either, since Rivera-Herrans is working on another massive project. But, the community around Epic may have made this a benefit, as they created a visual piece of art for every single song in the album, making visualizing the story a more unique experience because of the different ideas put forward by multiple creators.
Epic has left its impact on the internet, creating a large community through its clever composition, its superb story and its amazing accessibility. It is one of the best modern musicals of all time because of this, no doubt. Its entire soundtrack is on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Music, open for anyone to check out.
