Overview

In Broadway Babies Say Goodnight Mark Steyn, renowned as one of musical theatre's sharpest observers, examines the state of the musical, past, present and future. The Broadway musical was a glorious seventy-year tradition, proceeding smoothly from Jerome Kern to Rodgers and Hammerstein to Stephen Sondheim, and giving us along the way the best songs in American popular music, the art of colloquial lyric-writing, the structural integrity of the musical play and a new form of dramatic choreography. But what's left of that in a lush, 'through-composed' operetta such as Phantom of the Opera or a dance-free 'chamber opera' such as Aspects of Love? Mark Steyn considers the pioneers who made the Broadway musical the central thruway of American popular culture, and the reasons why it crumbled away to a dusty backroad. But, fifteen years after Cats, he also contemplates the health of British musicals and wonders whether they, too, have met their Sunset Boulevard.

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... a wide ranging and provocative study... whatever your taste in musicals, you will be stimulated by what he has to say. - London Daily Telegraph, March 4, 2000 A columnist and critic offers an irreverent history of the Broadway musical, a diverse and lively art form that, judging from the flood of revivals these days, may be in its death throes. Last year in the Book Review, Robert Gottlieb called this an 'eccentric, funny, shrewd, and somewhat dismaying book.'. - New York Times Book Review, May 21, 2000 A witty, anecdote-stuffed history of the past seventy years in musicals. - The New Yorker Steyn deserves a standing ovation. . . . His prose is as sharp as his stiletto. - Washington Post Wise but wicked in his analysis . . . Steyn leaves no turn unstoned. . . . At last, a book of theater criticism with real teeth; it may rankle, but it never bores. - OUT

"...""a wide ranging and provocative study... whatever your taste in musicals, you will be stimulated by what he has to say.""-""London Daily Telegraph, March 4, 2000 ""A columnist and critic offers an irreverent history of the Broadway musical, a diverse and lively art form that, judging from the flood of revivals these days, may be in its death throes. Last year in the Book Review, Robert Gottlieb called this an 'eccentric, funny, shrewd, and somewhat dismaying book.'.""-""New York Times Book Review, May 21, 2000 ""A witty, anecdote-stuffed history of the past seventy years in musicals.""-""The New Yorker ""Steyn deserves a standing ovation. . . . His prose is as sharp as his stiletto.""-""Washington Post ""Wise but wicked in his analysis . . . Steyn leaves no turn unstoned. . . . At last, a book of theater criticism with real teeth; it may rankle, but it never bores.""-""OUT"

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