The Cambridge Companion to the Musical, and: Broadway Musicals: A Hundred Year History (review)

A recurring tension in current musical theatre scholarship exists between works that rely on nostalgic personal accounts or a simplistic recounting of facts and those that seek to examine the musical with a more overtly critical methodology. Both David H. Lewis's Broadway Musicals: A Hundred Year History and The Cambridge Companion to the Musical, edited by William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird, attempt to bridge this divide by wedding critical engagement with older and more conventional approaches.

Lewis's Broadway Musicals concentrates on the history of the musical on the twentieth-century Broadway stage. Focusing on Broadway allows Lewis to chart a decidedly American historical trajectory. Lewis privileges the score as his primary object of analysis and discerns "a landscape of American culture" considering musical scores in chronological order (3). Lewis, like many of his predecessors, positions Rodgers and Hammerstein as the pinnacle of achievement in the American musical theatre. As a result, the book details a history that peaks in the 1950s and early 1960s and then falls into decline. Lewis blames the decline of the Broadway musical on the failure of subsequent generations of composers and lyricists to embrace the legacy of Rodgers and Hammerstein and their contemporaries. While Lewis stops short of actually pronouncing the musical dead, he calls for a "recovery" of the "magic lost, the talent misused, and the greater traditions left insecurely behind" (200).

Though reminiscent of previous musical theatre histories, Lewis's take on the Broadway musical skillfully evades the uncritical personal anecdote commonly found in them. Through his emphasis on the musical score as the historical through line, Lewis presents a straightforward, well-researched history that surveys the major developments of the Broadway musical throughout the twentieth century. He begins in chapter one with vaudeville and the contributions of George M. Cohan and George Gershwin. The book also includes chapters on Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, George Abbott, Stephen Sondheim, Michael Bennett, Andrew Lloyd Webber, the revival, and even the Walt Disney Company.

Lewis also presents a parallel discussion dealing with New York City as a site of musical theatre production. His analysis of the city's relationship to Broadway departs from traditional histories and sets the work apart. Mayor Guiliani's campaign to clean up the city, for instance, figures prominently in later chapters. In the chapter titled "Desperate Openings," Lewis details the "collusion" between the New York City Police and the Walt Disney Company to "shovel Times Square free of sleaze" to promote tourism (161). Lewis's discussion of changing urban conditions in relationship to musical theatre production provides a model for the consideration of material contexts within musical theatre scholarship. Those seeking detailed discussion of specific productions or information on musical theatre produced off Broadway or outside of New York City should look elsewhere.

The Cambridge Companion to the Musical, edited by William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird, challenges the traditional factual approach to the musical by focusing intently on musical rather than theatrical history. The book is comprised of fourteen chapters each concentrating on a specific historical moment and authored by a different scholar of music history or musicology. The editors divide the book into three parts, emphasizing the historical trajectory of music development: "Adaptations and transformations: before 1940"; "Maturations and formulations: 1940 to 1970"; and "Evolutions and integrations: after 1970."

The Cambridge Companion's emphasis on music invites discussion of British as well as American musical theatre. The inclusion of both of these histories results in fascinating overlaps where their developments intersected and influenced one another. John Snelson's chapter titled "British musical theatre, 1935-1960," for instance, details the often overlooked influx of American musicals on...