Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical by Stacy Wolf (review)

In the first pages of Changed for Good, Stacy Wolf gives the reader a front row seat in the audience of the 2003 hit Broadway musical Wicked as she describes in vivid detail the production’s act one finale. In doing so, she posits Wicked as an exemplary work that both embraces and eschews deeply entrenched conventions of the Broadway musical. Using Wicked as the starting and ending points to her study, Wolf visits five decades of musicals, traces the progression of the representation of women onstage, and questions the ways in which women have disrupted the heteronormative conventions of musical theatre. Culminating with an analysis of the Elphaba/Glinda duet “Changed for Good,” from which she takes her title, Wolf seeks to discover “how musicals moved from a female duet that interrupts the romance narrative to female duets that construct the romantic narrative” (23). A departure from other essential but more general musical theatre histories, Changed for Good looks away from the male/female romantic relationship and toward female relationships and their fantastic ability to disrupt and subvert what is expected on the Broadway stage.

Surveying 19 musicals and delving more deeply into one (Wicked), Wolf presents a substantial study of Broadway musicals’ female relationships. Each of the first five chapters considers a specific decade, from the “golden age” of the 1950s to musicals with a multicultural focus in the 2000s. Associated with each decade is a theatrical stage convention or theme that contextualizes the place of female characters onstage: female duets of the 1950s; the “Single Girl” of the 1960s; ensemble-focused musicals of the 1970s; the relationship of female characters to scenography in megamusicals of the 1980s; and stories of women of color in the 1990s and 2000s. The selected works are accompanied by images of their original Broadway productions, visual reminders of several iconic female-centered moments on Broadway. Wolf pays attention to the context in which these musicals were created by providing a brief but sufficient historical, political, and socioeconomic backdrop for each decade. Several chapters include additional contextualization, such as an overview of the stagecraft and technology used in 1980s megamusicals.

Changed for Good is most provocative in its queer reading of the Elphaba/Glinda relationship in Wicked. In this case, Wolf uses “queer” to “reference intense female homosocialities, friendships, intimacies and kinships that are performed in a given musical” (18), and argues that “two women singing together in a duet, their voices intertwined and overlapping, their attention toward one another, can also signify as queer” (18). In this context and within the framework of the heteronormative conventions of musical theatre, Wolf makes a strong argument for a queer relationship between Elphaba and Glinda, whose connection is the most intense and important in the play. Also fascinating is Wolf’s analysis of female voices and bodies, particularly in her discussion of the “Single Girl” of the 1960s. It is this solo female performer who subverts the typical “I am/I want” musical number (in which the heroine expresses her hopes and desires for the future) and creates an “I will/I can” number, in which she controls her own destiny and often her sexuality, expressed outwardly through choreography. She focuses on the centerpiece of the musical, its score, and in particular the revelation of female relationships through vocal range, specific harmonies, and the intertwining of voices.

One intriguing way Wolf sets her book apart from other musical theatre histories is in her final chapter, which takes as its subject “Internet Girl Fans.” Here, Wolf investigates the impact of Wicked and the cult of the musical theatre diva on teen and preteen girls in the United States. With regard to audience reception, Wolf “tak[es] girls seriously as participants in culture” (222). She draws on internet blogs and fansites (some entries are humorous, others insightful) in which young women discuss and analyze their...