From the favorites of Tin Pan Alley to today’s international blockbusters, the stylistic range required of a musical theatre performer is expansive.Musical theatre roles require the ability to adapt to a panoply of characters and vocal styles. By breaking down these styles and exploring the output of the great composers, Songwriters of the American Musical Theatre offers singers and performers an essential guide to the modern musical. Composers from Gilbert and Sullivan an...

From the diverse proto-musicals of the mid-1800s, through the revues of the 1920s, the ‘true musicals’ of the 1940s, the politicization of the 1960s, the ‘mega-musicals’ of the 1980s, and the explosive jukebox musicals of the 2010s and ’20s, every era in American musical theatre reflected a unique set of socio-cultural factors. This new edition has been brought up to date to include musicals from the last ten years, reflecting on the impact of Covid-19 and the state of the contemporary mus...

The "essential and hilarious" book that highlights almost 200 musicals and examines how they became Broadway's biggest fails ( The New Yorker ).Ken Mandelbaum offers the behind-the-scenes story of the development of almost two hundred musical flops that played Broadway between 1950 and 1990, along with a reevaluative and often revisionist study of their quality.Here they all are, from such legendary catastrophes as...

Ethan Mordden has been hailed as "a sharp-eared listener and a discerning critic," by Opera News, which compares his books to "dinner with a knowledgeable, garrulous companion." The "preeminent historian of the American musical" (New York Times), he "brings boundless energy and enthusiasm buttressed by an arsenal of smart anecdotes" (Wall Street Journal). Now Mordden offers an entirely fresh and infectiously delightful history of American musical theatre. Any...

The “fantastically interesting” (NPR’s All Things Considered) biography of the legendary, intensely ambitious choreographer and director who changed Broadway with his productions of Fiddler on the Roof, West Side Story, and Gypsy—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Pride and Pleasure“Superlative . . . a vivid account of a theatrical wizard.”—VogueTo some, Jerome Robbins was a demanding perf...

The first biography of the celebrated Broadway and Hollywood choreographer and director—a complex man of extraordinary genius and overwhelming demons.His work on such legendary shows as The King and I, West Side Story, Gypsy, Funny Girl, and Fiddler on the Roof made him one of the most influential and creative forces in the history of American theater. His collaborators, friends, and enemies were among the greatest celebrities of stage an...

Although the venue Off Broadway has long been the birthplace of innovative and popular musicals, there have been few studies of these influential works. Long-running champs, such as The Fantasticks and Little Shop of Horrors, are discussed in many books about American musicals, but what of the hundreds of other Off-Broadway musicals?In Off-Broadway Musicals since 1919, Thomas Hischak looks at more than 375 musicals, which are described, discussed, and ana...

Tracing the development of the musical on both Broadway and in London's West End, this updated Companion continues to provide a broad and thorough overview of one of the liveliest and most popular forms of musical performance. Ordered chronologically, essays cover from the American musical of the nineteenth century through to the most recent productions, and the book also includes key information on singers, audience, critical reception, and traditions. All of the chapters from the first e...

Musicals have been a major part of American theater for many years, and nowhere have they been more loved and celebrated than Broadway, the theater capital of the world. The music of such composers as Rodgers and Hammerstein, Berlin, the Gershwin brothers, Lerner and Loewe, Steven Sondheim, and Andrew Lloyd Webber continues to run through people's minds, and such productions as South Pacific, Cats, My Fair Lady, The Phantom of the Opera, Guys and Dolls, Rent, and West Side Sto...

In On Sondheim, renowned author Ethan Mordden takes the reader on a tour of Stephen Sondheim's work, arguing for the importance and appeal of the composer-lyricist in American theater and, even more, in American culture. Over the course of eighteen shows, Mordden demonstrates that Sondheim is a classical composer who happens to write musicals. Sondheim has intellectualized the musical by tackling serious content usually reserved for the spoken stage: nonconformism (in Anyone C...

Here is the vibrant, colorful, high-stepping story of tap--the first comprehensive, fully documented history of a uniquely American art form, exploring all aspects of the intricate musical and social exchange that evolved from Afro-Irish percussive step dances like the jig, gioube, buck-and-wing, and juba to the work of such contemporary tap luminaries as Gregory Hines, Brenda Bufalino, Dianne Walker, and Savion Glover. In Tap Dancing America, Constance Valis Hill, herself an accomplished ...

Show Tunes fully chronicles the shows, songs, and careers of the major composers of the American musical theatre, from Jerome Kern's earliest interpolations to the latest hits on Broadway. Legendary composers like Gershwin, Rodgers, Porter, Berlin, Bernstein, and Sondheim have been joined by more recent songwriters like Stephen Schwartz, Stephen Flaherty, Michael John LaChiusa, and Adam Guettel. This majestic reference book covers their work, their innovations, their successes, an...