Overview

This Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical provides the perfect introductory text for students of theatre, music and cultural studies. It traces the history and development of the industry and art form in America with a particular focus on its artistic and commercial development in New York City from the early 20th century to the present. Emphasis is placed on commercial, artistic and cultural events that influenced the Broadway musical for an ever-renewing, increasingly broad and diverse audience: the Gilded Age, the Great Depression, the World War II era, the British invasion in the 1980s and the media age at the turn of the twenty-first century. Supplementary essays by leading scholars provide detailed focus on the American musical’s production and preservation, as well as its influence on daily life on the local, national, and international levels. For students, these essays provide models of varying approaches and interpretation, equipping them with the skills and understanding to develop their own analysis of key productions.

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9781472513380

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Reviews

Particularly useful for those just embarking on study of theater, A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical takes a fresh look at the Broadway musical, a unique art form ... This book is meant as further illumination of the numerous extant works on musical theater history. In the last of the eight sections, Critical Perspectives, Wollman offers five essays, written by contemporary scholars, that shed further light on the forces behind commercial musical theater, thus providing the reader with additional voices and opinions about the development she outlines in the main body of the text. The detailed notes, index, and bibliography offer further opportunity for researchers to connect with a greater body of writing. This compact book provides a vast wealth of information. Summing Up: Highly recommended. * CHOICE *

Elizabeth L. Wollman manages to create subject of many academic dreams: a scholarly text with mass-market appeal. Meticulously researched and bristling with citations, A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical has the dual feature of potentially being heavily cited at MATC or ATHE, while simultaneously being quoted by Jennifer Ashley Tepper at BroadwayCon or on Twitter. The book's greatest strength is its tone, which is key to the book's dual marketability as a classroom text or a theatre lover's enrichment reading. * New England Theatre Journal * Particularly useful for those just embarking on study of theater, A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical takes a fresh look at the Broadway musical, a unique art form ... This book is meant as further illumination of the numerous extant works on musical theater history. In the last of the eight sections, Critical Perspectives, Wollman offers five essays, written by contemporary scholars, that shed further light on the forces behind commercial musical theater, thus providing the reader with additional voices and opinions about the development she outlines in the main body of the text. The detailed notes, index, and bibliography offer further opportunity for researchers to connect with a greater body of writing. This compact book provides a vast wealth of information. Summing Up: Highly recommended. * CHOICE * Wollman offers a substantial historiography of the musical, in the context of the form as a commercial industry, in this recent addition to Bloomsbury's excellent 'Critical Companion' series ... The volume comprises a substantial monograph section, with several valuable contributions by figures such as Stacey Wolf, who offers an important consideration of amateur musical theatre. * New Theatre Quarterly *

Author Information

Elizabeth L. Wollman is Associate Professor of Music at Baruch College, City University of New York, in New York City, USA.

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