Jack Viertel is a "dramaturg," an expert called in to help birth Broadway shows, with an encyclopedic knowledge of American musicals from Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein's Show Boat (1927) to Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton (2015). This book is based, in part, on his notes from 10 years of teaching classes on the American musical to students at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, as well as three decades of experience as senior vice president of Jujamcyn Theaters, which owns and operates five Broadway theaters.
In this book he focuses on his personal favorites among the great American musicals and how they are constructed to capture and hold the attention of the audience. He looks back to the roots of the American musical tradition in vaudeville and operattas; the "Golden Age" of American musicals and the dominant influence of people like Richard Rodgers, Hammerstein, Jerome Robbins, Hal Price, and Stephen Sondheim (to name but a few); how the meteor of rock music/pop culture impacted the evolution of Broadway, and much more. Along the way he seasons his tale with wonderful anecdotes (some wellknown, others obscure) about the world behind-the-scenes on Broadway.
If you spent your formative years enthralled at the Muny and the Fox, or sang or danced or worked backstage on high school and college musicals, or collected and sang along to Broadway cast recordings of your favorite shows --- you will enjoy this book.
Click HERE to read the New York Times review.
Click HERE to read the Washington Post review.
Click HERE to read the review from AVclub.com.
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