Studies in Musical Theatre - Volume 9, Issue 2, 2015

While the global explosion of commercial West End hits in the 1980s and 1990s has seen a surge in performer training outside the United States, the same is not true for aspiring writers. However, the past decade or so has seen the beginnings of a new infrastructure in the United Kingdom, not least due to the 2010 Arts Council funding designed to nurture partnerships and connections between writers, theatres and producers that have started to change this situation. This article investigates the training opportunities for writers based in the United Kingdom as a case study for possible approaches to nurturing musical theatre writers outside the United States. To this end, the article explores four key aspects of musical theatre writer development – the available literature, professional mentorship, industry training and development opportunities, and formal higher education courses – to identify current opportunities and assess ways in which industry leaders and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) might build on these to create a more robust and sustained infrastructure that can nurture a diverse range of high-quality new musical theatre.

The allure of the British cellist Jacqueline du Pré (1945–1987) is the subject of this article, which examines the spectacle of her playing and the drama of her biography. What motivated the popular and critical responses to du Pré as a performer? What can accounts and depictions of her tell us about how the public personae of classical musicians, and especially female classical musicians, have been constructed? Du Pré’s career and legacy provide insight into multiple discourses including celebrity, classical music, gender, social propriety and disability. I query the operation of apparently ‘extra-musical’ significations that become attached to musicians and affect how they are perceived and understood, both in their lifetimes and afterward. I correlate various accounts of du Pré, drawing on newspaper reviews and magazine articles, observations made by those who knew her, audio-visual documentation and dramatizations of her life – principally the biopic Hilary and Jackie, directed by Anand Tucker (1999). I analyse how du Pré was characterized in dramatic form and portrayed on film. I argue that her persona is multi-layered, collectively authored, and informed by her gender, performance style, and artistic interpretations (or distortions) of her biography. Furthermore, I propose that du Pré’s allure highlights the fascination and anxieties the cello can provoke as a potentially sensual, erotically charged musical instrument.

This article examines the productions of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide (1774) and Iphigénie en Tauride (1779), which Pierre Audi staged in Amsterdam in 2011; they were released as a set of two DVDs in 2013. These productions present a radical new vision of Gluck’s last Greek-based operas; far from their being works of neo-classical serenity, Audi encourages us to read them as startlingly modernist psychological dramas of an intensity which is far ahead of its time, and suggests that they are true precursors of Strauss’ Elektra (1909) and Henze’s The Bassarids (1966). The argument is grounded in detailed analysis of Audi’s staging of several crucial scenes in each opera, with particular attention to the two Finales, in which Audi opposes the lieto fine that French operatic convention forced Gluck to adopt.

Savran posits that the genre of the ‘Broadway-style’ musical should be approached from a transnational perspective that ‘emphasizes interconnectedness and the crossborder fluidity of cultures’. South Africa has a long history of importing theatre forms as well as of localizing or ‘transplanting’ American and European playtexts in productions produced on local stages in both pre- and post-apartheid contexts, and the Broadway-style musical proved no exception. The ‘township musical’ used the format of the Broadway-style musical to tell South African stories and became a specific and influential form of hybrid theatre. This article reflects on the directorial process that was followed in order to translate the American source playtext of Bat Boy – the Musical to the South African context, and the playtext was explored within the cross-cultural – and, more specifically, the intercultural – theatrical framework. In order to substantiate the translation, the distinctions between theatrical translation, adaptation and variation were contemplated and the adoption of a twotiered, translation approach was advocated. In the first tier of translation, relevant dynamics in theatrical semiotic processes were used to analyse the playtext of Bat Boy – the Musical, taking cognizance not only of the ideological and aesthetic codes found within the source text but also of the corresponding social and textual codes within the sociocultural domain to which the playtext was translated. The second tier of translation occurred at the level of the mise-en-scène as the multicultural and multilingual cast sourced their diverse, cultural backgrounds and unique social codes as well as South African theatrical codes in order to place the musical in the South African context. Whilst this article endeavours to report on the translation of a musical theatre playtext from one cultural context to another, the motivation behind the project was to contribute to knowledge creation in the field of South African musical theatre by exploring the ways in which the Broadway-style musical articulates within the multicultural and multilingual, post-apartheid South African context.

The creators of Mamma Mia! use the music of the 1970s pop group ABBA to create a cheeky response to the postfeminist culture of the 1990s and 2000s. Although most nostalgic culture of that era indicates a yearning for a prefeminist era, by reimaging the culture of the 1970s – the heyday of women’s liberation – the show evinces a nostalgia for the feminist sisterhood of pre-Reagan years, harnessing an emotion normally put to conservative purposes for a progressive cause. The focus on three over-40 female leads who are professional, sexual and unashamed of their feminist pasts, Mamma Mia! participates in ongoing conversations about single motherhood and ageing female bodies within a culture that implicitly holds women increasingly responsible for providing pleasant domestic experiences and pleasing appearances within traditional patriarchical family structures.

Oliver! A Dickensian Musical, Marc Napolitano (2014) New York: Oxford University Press, 304 pp., ISBN: 9780199364824, h/bk, $38.50

Alan Jay Lerner: A Lyricist’s Letters, Dominic McHugh (ed.) (2014) New York: Oxford University Press, 336 pp. ISBN: 9780199949274, h/bk, $35.96

Who Should Sing ‘Ol’ Man River’?: THE LIVE S OF AN AMERICAN Song, Todd Decker (2015) New York: Oxford University Press, 256 pp. ISBN: 9780199389186, h/bk, £19.99/$29.95