Studies in Musical Theatre - Volume 7, Issue 3, 2013

This article argues that Lloyd Webber’s megamusical The Phantom of the Opera, and specifically Michael Crawford’s original performance of the title role in London, New York and Los Angeles, combined sound, voice, gesture and technology in a unique physical expression of desire that reinscribed, exceeded and even redefined spectacle at the level of both the visual and the aural realms (paradoxical as that may seem). This argument runs counter to existing arguments about the separation of scopophilia and audiophilia in the theatre and also departs from some of the arguments about the narrative in different forms which is often discussed as privileging sound and hearing over image and sight.

This article argues that the ocean-liner setting of the 1934 Broadway musical Anything Goes provides a rich place from which to explore how such seemingly frivolous musical comedy can otherwise be viewed as socially discursive and critical. It explores the way Anything Goes represents a typical product of the Great Depression and suggests its function in re-envisioning identities in the face of the apparent failure of the ‘American Dream’. The nature of the carnivalistic comedy offered in the shipboard narrative of Anything Goes further suggests that it offers an important salve for Depression-era anxiety. From this Bakhtinian perspective, Anything Goes is figured as a subversive space for the performance of social deviance of one sort or another. Bakhtin’s vision of carnival spaces suggests that musical comedy has an important function in social renewal but it also might be too utopian to articulate to ‘real’ society. However, Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopias allows for a reconnection of Bakhtin’s utopianism with the ‘real’ world and thus serves to show that Anything Goes and, indeed, musical comedy more generally might be as vital a location as passenger ships for functional socio-critical discourse.

In 2007, the distinguished scholar of musical theatre Bruce Kirle died unexpectedly. In tribute to his contribution to this field of scholarship, the Music-Theatre-Dance focus group of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) established a competition for new scholars researching in the field. This is now the fifth season in which three prize-winning entries to this competition have been presented both as conference papers (at the 2013 ATHE Conference in Orlando), and as written articles in Studies in Musical Theatre. William A. Everett, respondent to the papers at the ATHE Conference, introduces them in this short introduction.

In 2005, two high-school seniors from Glenelg Country Day School in Maryland were denied permission to perform the song ‘Muddy Water’ from the musical Big River on the C-SPAN television programme, Close Up (Close Up Foundation 2005). The broadcasting licence was not granted by the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization because Jay Frisby, who played Huckleberry Finn, is African American, and Nick Lehan, a caucasian, played slave Jim. This article explores the event from numerous angles, detailing the media firestorm that followed. The author discusses the complexities of casting a musical about race and questions the terminology often used to describe casting practices. Are terms such as ‘colour-blind’ and ‘non-traditional casting’ accurate? More importantly, what ideology do these terms support?

The creative team of Spring Awakening (2006) never anticipated the musical becoming a commercial success. Librettist Steven Sater, composer Duncan Sheik and director Michael Mayer all hoped that the musical would enjoy a modest off-off-Broadway run, but they never imagined it would find a home on the Great White Way. Rather, the creators sought to eschew musical theatre conventions and incorporate avant-garde theatricality in an effort to present an anti-Broadway (and therefore anti-establishment) mentality. This article examines Spring Awakening’s place within the avant-garde tradition against its success within the commercial sphere of Broadway. Can a commercially successful musical ever truly be thought of as avant-garde?

The unique duality of ‘authentic performance’ and ‘polished art’ in the Broadway musical Fela! recalls and embodies the interplay that, as Friedrich Nietzsche asserts, ‘eventually generate[s] the art-product, equally Dionysian and Apollonian, of Attic tragedy’. This article investigates the elements that constitute this duality and how they function both within the context and content of the musical. Specifically, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s connection to Greek tragedy, choreographic styles and the structural implications of the Broadway musical are analysed in light of Nietzsche’s duality.

Jess Goldstein has been the costume designer for a number of Broadway productions, including Love! Valour! Compassion! (1995), Jersey Boys (2005), The Apple Tree (2007) and Newsies (2012). He won a Tony Award for his work on The Rivals (2005). In addition to designing for Broadway, Goldstein has designed for the Woodland Opera, regional theatre, and a number of off-Broadway productions. He also teaches at the Yale School of Drama. Below are excerpts from a conversation among Goldstein (JG), Princeton undergraduate students Marjorie Kroll (MK), Gaku Liu (GL), and Nora Sullivan (NS), and members of a general public audience about the process of designing costumes for Broadway and Goldstein’s work on Newsies in particular. This conversation took place as a part of the Making Broadway Musicals: Artists and Scholars in Conversation symposium at Princeton University on 21 April 2012.

Hard Times: The adult musical in 1970s New York City, Elizabeth L. Wollman (2013) Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 271 pp., ISBN: 978-0-19-974748-1, h/bk, $27.95

Richard Wagner’s Women, Eva Rieger, trans. Chris Walton (2009) Woodbridge, NY: The Boydell Press, 239 pp., ISBN: 9781843836858, h/bk, £30.00

Verdi in America: Oberto through Rigoletto, George W. Martin (2011) Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press (Eastman Studies in Music), 4782 pp., ISBN:10 1580463886, ISBN:13 9781580463881, h/bk, £45

Verdi’s Il Trovatore, the Quintessential Italian Melodrama, Martin Chusid (2012) Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 161 pp., ISBN: 13: 9781580464222, h/bk, £31.00