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{ 286 } Book Reviews \ \ Directors and the New Musical Drama: British and Ameri­ can Musical Theatre in the 1980s and 90s. By Miranda Lundskaer-­ Nielsen. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 244 pp. $74.95 cloth. In recent years, musical theatre scholars have invoked the term megamusical to categorize the musical behemoths that emigrated from London’s West End to Broadway in the late 1970s and their later Ameri­ can imitators. Megamusicals deal in economies of scale—large casts, lavish sets, aggressive and enduring market campaigns, amplified emotions, sweeping orchestrations, and a generally sung-­ through score. Jessica Sternfield’s The Megamusical (2006) helped not only to define but also to solidify the term as it examined how many of Broadway ’s more recent commercial successes—Cats, Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera—fit into this category. However, as Miranda Lundskaer-­ Nielsen notes in her new study, Directors and the New Musical Drama, the term mega­ musical is categorically reductive, as it refers to the musical’s size rather than its form or content. What is of interest to Lundskaer-­ Nielsen is not how or why these musicals won the praise of audiences or the scorn of critics—although both would make for fascinating studies—but rather the dramaturgical methods and staging vocabularies employed by a new genus of Broadway-­ musical director. The gradual shift away from the director-­ choreographer—a staple on Broadway for most of the 1960s and 1970s—precipitated the introduction of the director-­ dramaturge or director-­ playwright in the 1980s. Having emerged from text-­ based traditions, directors like Harold Prince, Trevor Nunn, Nicholas Hytner, and James Lapine crafted unsentimental musicals that addressed serious issues and sophisticated themes—a stark contrast to the musicals produced during Broadway’s golden age. For Lundskaer-­ Nielsen, these directors have worked to expand the definition of the Broadway musical. Determining how they helped accomplish this feat is the focus of her work. She achieves this goal through analyzing representative productions by these directors, offering a careful examination of the contexts into which these musicals were born and chronicling their respective journeys to Broadway. The author uses the term musical drama to classify these productions. Musical dramas draw upon Broadway-­ musical traditions established by the likes of Rodgers and Hammerstein, but they apply techniques for dramaturgy and staging normally found in straight plays. These musicals treat sober themes and often { 287 } Book Reviews manifest a sociopolitical slant. They have more to do with Wagnerian opera or the Brecht-­ Weill collaborations than with Mame. Helicopters and falling chandeliers appear alongside songs about murder, abortion, poverty, debauchery, and revolution. Historical context is prized above the production number, and authorship is a joint effort—the director, working in concert with the librettist, effectively coauthor the musical’s book. Lundskaer-­ Nielsen identifies four major agents that occasioned the rise of musical drama (and organizes her volume accordingly): the work of Harold Prince,the directing tradition in Great Britain,the rise of the nonprofit musical, and the emergence of the reimagined revival. After a brief history lesson to establish context, she segues into case analyses and close readings of major musical dramas. Her examination of both libretto and production history proves quite useful and helps to situate these plays in the musical theatre of the decades in question. Citing Harold Prince as a provocateur of musical drama, the author dedi­ cates her first two chapters to his methodology and his production catalog. Noting his penchant for history, social issues, avant-­ garde traditions, and implicating audiences, Lundskaer-­ Nielsen suggests that Prince’s dramaturgically based treatment of Cabaret, Company, Evita, and Sweeney Todd paved the way for the likes of Trevor Nunn and Nicholas Hytner, whose methods are addressed in the book’s third and fourth chapters. Having trained in the world of Britain ’s subsidized theatre, these directors offered a text-­ based staging vocabulary that effectively transformed Les Misérables and Miss Saigon into operatic tragedies . Helicopters notwithstanding, these productions were relatively simple in design. Their true scale therefore lies in their respective librettos and scores. These British directors treat the musical as serious drama rather than lighthearted entertainment or sentimental hokum. Chapters 5 and 6 are dedicated to...

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