Broadway: The American Musical, and: The Rise and Fall of the Broadway Musical, and: Broadway Musicals: The 101 Greatest Shows of All Time (review)

Recent scholarly efforts to rehistoricize and theorize the Broadway musical—and to investigate the putative Americanness of this country's most popular theatrical form during the twentieth century—are a welcome development. Whereas earlier historians of the genre focused primarily on the aesthetic significance of selected shows and the creative contributions of individual artists, current scholars such as Andrea Most, John Bush Jones, Stacy Wolf, Alisa Roost, and Bruce Kirle have chosen to investigate the various cultural and historical forces that have shaped the genre, and how, in turn, American culture has been shaped by the Broadway musical. These newer works have not completely supplanted the familiar narratives of the past but they have contributed to a far more nuanced discourse than existed even five years ago.

Maslon and Kantor's Broadway: The American Musical, a companion volume to the 2004 PBS documentary series, reflects this trend in scholarship as it attempts to bring to the fore the American aspect of the Broadway musical. Within the book's central, chronological narrative, the authors embed discussions of contemporary cultural and historical exigencies, significant productions, and the contributions of influential artists. Chapter one, "A Real Live Nephew of My Uncle Sam's (1893-1919)," begins not with George M. Cohan, but that other Yankee Doodle Dandy, Irving Berlin, and traces the roots of a distinctively American performance style to ethnic variety shows, minstrelsy, and vaudeville. Musicals of the 1920s and 1930s are discussed in chapters two and three, with special attention paid to the rise of the revue in the 1920s and to the political satires of the 1930s, while chapter four examines the contributions of Rodgers and Hammerstein and their contemporaries. In the ironically titled fifth chapter, "Tradition (1960-1979)," the authors address the waning influence of the Broadway musical on popular culture and vice versa. The final chapter examines the rise of the mega-musical and the current state of both the business and the art.

Each of the book's six chapters includes an essay on the relationship of "key allies and adversaries" such as radio, Hollywood, television, and real estate "to the industry of Broadway" (x). The authors also turn the "Spotlight On" a particular show emblematic of (or anomalous in) each period, including the unsurprising The Cradle Will Rock in the 1930s and the unexpected On the Twentieth Century in the 1970s. The "Words and Music" sections include complete lyrics of songs deemed artistically or culturally prototypical of a given period, and the "Who's Who" galleries feature performers whose greatest professional accomplishments came on the Broadway musical stage. Of special interest are the primary documents found in each chapter's "Archives" section, including essays on musical theatre culled from contemporary publications and excerpts from interviews conducted for the television series. In addition, the book is lavishly illustrated with both familiar and unfamiliar production photographs.

While the companion volume closely adheres to the narrative structure of the PBS documentary, the book offers a more complex and detailed discussion of the impact of such influences as racism, patriotism, politics, economics, and globalization on the Broadway musical and the varied ways in which musicals confronted (or failed to confront) these same topics. In particular, the contributions of African American artists are woven more skillfully into the overarching narrative of the book than that of the television series. There are also minor discrepancies between the book and the documentary. For example, the documentary implies that the idea...