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The Art of the American Musical: Conversations with the Creators | 
 enlarge | Creators: Jackson R. Bryer, Richard Allan Davison
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $14.86
You Save: $10.09 (40%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 389974
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 308
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 0.9
ISBN: 0813536138
Dewey Decimal Number: 782.14092273
EAN: 9780813536132
ASIN: 0813536138
Publication Date: September 25, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Musical theater has captivated American audiences from its early roots in burlesque stage productions and minstrel shows to the million-dollar industry it has become on Broadway today. What is it about this truly indigenous American art form that has made it so enduringly popular? How has it survived, even thrived, alongside the technology of film and the glitz and glamour of Hollywood? Will it continue to evolve and leave its mark on the twenty-first century? Bringing together exclusive and previously unpublished interviews with nineteen leading composers, lyricists, librettists, directors, choreographers, and producers from the mid-1900s to the present, this book details the careers of the individuals who shaped this popular performance art during its most prolific period. The interviewees discuss their roles in productions ranging from On the Town (1944) and Finian's Rainbow (1947) to The Producers (2001) and Bounce (2003). Readers are taken onto the stage, into the rehearsals, and behind the scenes. The nuts and bolts, the alchemy, and the occasional agonies of the collaborative process are all explored. In their discussions, the artists detail their engagements with other creative forces, including such major talents as Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Jule Styne, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, Alan Jay Lerner, Zero Mostel, and Gwen Verdon. They speak candidly about their own work and that of their peers, their successes and failures, the creative process, and how a show progresses from its conception through rehearsals and tryouts to opening night. Taken together, these interviews give fresh insight into what Oscar Hammerstein called "a nightly miracle" - the creation of the American musical.
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Delights and Duds May 14, 2006
6 out of 11 found this review helpful
I've resd lots of Conversations books over the years. Usually the interviewers uncover some sharp talkers as well as some duds. Here the unpleasant event is Jason Robert Brown, who seems like an egomaniacal nitwit with nothing good to say about anybody, who blames the failure of PARADE on the stupidity of American theater audiences, yet allows that there's no reason really for anyone to have a good time while seeing it.
Tommy Tune wins the Congeniality Award for admitting that the later Antonio Banderas revival of NINE was at least as good as the production he had pioneered himself way back when. That took a lot of balls I think, for anyone else might have merely sniffed and indicated otherwise. Some of the participants have been around in musical theater for only five minutes and yet they are the ones who yammer on and on just as fully as if their careers had lasted back into the 1920s. Speaking of lengthy careers, Burton Lane is very mysterious about his problems with Alan Jay Lerner in ON A CLEAR DAY, and the focus is on his Broadway work which precludes him from talking much about his wonderful work with the Freed Unit.
Arthur Laurents seems more balanced here than he did in his memoir, while I felt sad for Betty Comden and Adolph Green who it seems never got over the failure of their DOLLS LIFE musical. They seem stuck on it, like the lion with the thorn in his paw he just can't seem to get out.
The interviewers seem sharp and pretty well prepared. In a couple of cases I felt they had been warned not to discuss certain sensitive issues with their subjects, for there are some gaping holes in the narratives of, say, Sheldon Harnick and Tommy Tune. The biggest laugh? Charles Strouse's insistence that ANNIE WARBUCKS is as great a musical treat as ANNIE. He just doesn't leave it alone. It's his King Charles' head as Dickens used to say.
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