Is less truly more? Exploring intimacy and design in small-scale musical theatre

Large-cast, spectacular musical theatre productions require long runs to offset their high production and running costs. Even as the so-called Golden Age of the Musical was peaking in the late 1950s in the United States, musicals in smaller forms were emerging. Changes in American society in the 1960s and 1970s gave rise to changes in both the form and content of what the author calls Intimate Musicals. The author proposes a definition of the Intimate Musical and then analyses a sample of smaller shows from the last 50 years. A brief discourse on certain aspects of performing small-scale shows is interspersed.