Studies in Musical Theatre - Volume 9, Issue 3, 2015

This article examines how Dolly Parton’s and Patricia Resnick’s musical 9 to 5 breaks down women’s humour stereotypes in various ways, showing the many facets of each character’s personality and thereby illustrating that real women’s personalities are multifaceted. Through a textual analysis of 9 to 5’s libretto, this article suggests that 9 to 5 offers a general empowerment message that is rooted in feminist principles but appeals to a broader audience.

This article analyses the opera The Tempest, composed by Thomas Adès to a text written for him by Meredith Oakes (after Shakespeare); it was first staged at The Royal Opera House in London in 2004. The text is first examined for its relationship with Shakespeare’s original play; the plot, cuts, transpositions and significant additions are all examined; then the relationship between the dramatic themes of the opera and those of the source text, and the ways in which direct quotations from Shakespeare are used and reworked, are also considered. In these last two sections the music of the opera begins to feature in the analysis, and text and music are examined as an integrated whole in the sections that follow, which discuss in turn the four principal characters Prospero, Caliban, Miranda and Ariel. Two closing sections consider aspects of the structure and style of the music that have not been explored earlier in the article. There are numerous quotations from the libretto, three plates and five music examples.

For over a decade, the Music Theater and Dance Focus Group of the Association for Theater in Higher Education has sponsored the competitive Bruce Kirle Memorial Emerging Scholars panel in Music Theater/Dance at its annual conference. Each year, the winning panellists present their work at the ATHE conference, which was held this year in Montreal, Canada, in August 2015. This year’s panellists, Michelle Bernier, Shiraz Biggie and Phoebe Rumsey, presented their papers in Montreal, and have revised them for publication as articles in Studies in Musical Theatre. Bud Coleman, the respondent to the papers at the ATHE conference, introduces them in this short article.

This article examines the choreography of three film musical numbers choreographed by Fred Astaire, and makes a case for viewing his work as site-specific. The particular definition of site-specific for this argument is assembled from various sources, and pertains to drawing attention to a new way of looking at a space, and whether or not the choreography’s meaning and effect are intrinsically linked with viewers’ impressions of the space. It then goes on to explain how this lens allows us to focus on Astaire’s films’ propensity for bridging the gap between high and low art, by simultaneously appealing to both types of audiences and appearing ambiguously split between the two himself.

In the mid-1960s the first two original Israeli musicals based on a Broadway model, Shlomo HaMelech v’Shalmai HaSandlar (1964) and Kazablan (1966), were mounted. This article argues that the imported musical form was adopted by Israeli creators and audiences as a way of continuing a theatrical push for a unified single ‘Israeli’ culture. The musical form offered an image of a culture to which one could aspire to belong, even as that reality was being challenged by changing demographics and questioning of this prevailing mentality.

This article investigates John Doyle’s 2014 revival of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s 1947 musical Allegro. Specifically, this discussion considers how the choice to have all actors in a musical play an instrument creates choreographic material that becomes ripe with dramatic opportunities. The discussion explores how Doyle’s move away from dance and towards musicianship as a way of defining character makes Allegro’s themes resonate in a way that escaped director and choreographer Agnes DeMille in the original. Through an analysis of the movements required to play a musical instrument, this article poses the dramaturgical question, how does a new choreography emerge out of the shift of musicianship to the actors, and how does this movement provide a new way of synthesizing the piece? Given that this choreographic substance inevitably becomes part of the dramatic action, this article probes how the production is mediated through the physical. Reckoning with how the body is rethought onstage by the playing of an instrument, the Doyle staging presents alternative modes of expression of choreographic material. Finally, an analysis of the dramatic opportunities that open up when actors take on the orchestration, illustrates how this ‘new choreography’ impacts the form and interpretation of the piece.

BUILDING THE OPERATIC MUSEUM: EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY OPERA IN FIN-DE-SIÈCLE PARIS, WILLIAM GIBBONS (2013) Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, xii+267 pp., ISBN: 9781580464000, h/bk, $85.00

ACTING THROUGH SONG: TECHNIQUES AND EXERCISES FOR MUSICAL-THEATRE ACTORS, PAUL HARVARD (2013) London: Nick Hern Books, 275 pp., ISBN: 9781848422292, p/bk, £12.99

WE’LL HAVE MANHATTAN: THE EARLY WORK OF RODGERS AND HART, DOMINIC SYMONDS (2015) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 332 pp., ISBN: 9780199929481, h/bk, $ 34.95