Young Will Shakespeare has writer's block... the deadline for his new play is fast approaching but he's in desperate need of inspiration. That is, until he finds his muse - Viola. This beautiful young woman is Will's greatest admirer and will stop at nothing (including breaking the law) to appear in his next play. Against a bustling background of mistaken identity, ruthless scheming and backstage theatrics, Will's love for Viola quickly blossoms and inspires him to write his greatest masterpiece.

Before Fiddler on the Roof, before The Jazz Singer, there was Deborah, a tear-jerking melodrama about a Jewish woman forsaken by her non-Jewish lover. Within a few years of its 1849 debut in Hamburg, the play was seen on stages across Germany and Austria, as well as throughout Europe, the British Empire, and North America. The German-Jewish elite complained that the playwright, Jewish writer S. H. Mosenthal, had written a drama bearing little authentic Jewish content, while literary critics protested that the play lacked the formal coherence of great tragedy. Yet despite its lackluster critical reception, Deborah became a blockbuster, giving millions of theatergoers the pleasures of sympathizing with an exotic Jewish woman. It spawned adaptations with titles from Leah, the Forsaken to Naomi, the Deserted, burlesques, poems, operas in Italian and Czech, musical selections for voice and piano, a British novel fraudulently marketed in the United States as the original basis for the play, three American silent films, and thousands of souvenir photographs of leading actresses from Adelaide Ristori to Sarah Bernhardt in character as Mosenthal's forsaken Jewess. For a sixty-year period, Deborah and its many offshoots provided audiences with the ultimate feel-good experience of tearful sympathy and liberal universalism. With Deborah and Her Sisters, Jonathan M. Hess offers the first comprehensive history of this transnational phenomenon, focusing on its unique ability to bring Jews and non-Jews together during a period of increasing antisemitism. Paying careful attention to local performances and the dynamics of transnational exchange, Hess asks that we take seriously the feelings this commercially successful drama provoked as it drove its diverse audiences to tears. Following a vast paper trail in theater archives and in the press, Deborah and Her Sisters reconstructs the allure that Jewishness held in nineteenth-century popular culture and explores how the Deborah sensation generated a liberal culture of compassion with Jewish suffering that extended beyond the theater walls.

In a small town in the Old West, the mayor can't keep his people from running away or dying at the hands of the local brute. And just when things can't get any worse, an omen predicts that a demon ghost might soon return to possess one of the town's few remaining people, and then to ravage the rest. Which tyrant will be more awful, the demon or the brute? And assuming the mayor can't save the day - for it seems he can't do much - will Catalina, the town vagrant, be the one who steps up? Tumacho considers hope in the face of evil, the community struggle to act, and demon cuisine, all in a deadpan ode to comedies of yore.

Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden defined beauty standards for the first half of the twentieth century. Brilliant innovators with humble roots, both were masters of self-invention who sacrificed everything to become the country's first major female entrepreneurs. They were also fierce competitors whose fifty-year tug-of-war would give birth to an industry. From Fifth Avenue society to the halls of Congress, their rivalry was relentless and legendary - pushing both women to build international empires in a world dominated by men.

Set in a little north woods Minnesota town, the host of a radio show devoted entirely to ice fishing loses his only advertiser while his wife, a popular host of a book show, has all the advertisers, putting the competitive couple at odds. Their marital problems are compounded when two fish-out-of-water Brooklyn Italians come to the rural Minnesota town, buy the radio station, and turn everything upside down.

An unprecedented collection of songs originally performed by children on the Broadway stage. A terrific and much-needed publication for the thousands of children studying voice. Includes 18 songs for boys and girls, including: Gary, Indiana (The Music Man) * Castle on a Cloud (Les Miserables) * Where Is Love? (Oliver!) * Tomorrow (Annie) * and more.

"Over the Rainbow" exploded into worldwide fame upon its performance by Judy Garland in the MGM film musical The Wizard of Oz (1939). Voted the greatest song of the twentieth century in a 2000 survey, it is a masterful, delicate balance of sophistication and child-like simplicity in which composer Harold Arlen and lyricist E. Y. "Yip" Harburg poignantly captured the hope and anxiety harbored by Dorothy's character. In Arlen and Harburg's Over the Rainbow, author Walter Frisch traces the history of this song from its inception during the development of The Wizard of Oz's screenplay, to its various reinterpretations over the course of the twentieth century. Through analysis of the song's music and lyrics, this Oxford Keynotes volume provides a close reading of the piece while examining the evolution of its meaning as it traversed widely varying cultural contexts. From its adoption as a jazz standard by generations of pianists, to its contribution to Judy Garland's role as a gay icon, to its reemergence as a chart-topping recording by Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, "Over the Rainbow" continues to engage audiences and performers alike in surprising ways. Featuring a companion website with audio and video supplements, this book leaves no path unexplored as it succeeds in capturing the extent of this song's impact on the world.

Carousel (1945), with music by Richard Rodgers and the book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, was their second collaboration following the surprising success of Oklahoma! (1943). They worked again with Theresa Helburn and Lawrence Langner of the Theatre Guild (producers), Rouben Mamoulian (director), and Agnes de Mille (choreographer). But with Oklahoma! still running to sell-out houses, they needed to do something quite different. Based on a play, Liliom (1909), by the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar, Carousel took Broadway musical theater in far darker directions because of its subject matter-the protagonist, Billy Bigelow, is wholly an anti-hero-and also given its extensive music that some claimed came close to opera. The action is shifted from a gritty working-class suburb of Budapest to the New England coast (Maine), but the themes remain the same as two social misfits try to survive harsh economic times. Billy Bigelow is unemployed, prone to domestic violence, and dies in the course of committing a robbery; Julie Jordan sticks by him through thick and thin; and the show seeks some manner of redemption for both of them as Billy is given a day back on earth to do some good for his wife and their daughter. Troubling though these matters are nowadays, they fit squarely in the context of a country moving through the end of World War II to an uncertain future. Not for nothing had composers such as Giacomo Puccini and Kurt Weill already tried to persuade Molnar to release his play. It also led Rodgers and Hammerstein to new heights: songs such as "If I Loved You," Billy's "Soliloquy," and "You'll Never Walk Alone" transformed the American musical. In this book, we discover how and why they came about, and exactly what Carousel was trying to achieve.

Musical theatre is often perceived as either a Broadway based art form, or as having separate histories in London and New York. Musical Theatre Histories: Expanding the Narrative, however, depicts the musical as neither American nor British, but both and more, having grown out of frequent and substantial interactions between both centres (and beyond). Through multiple thematic 'histories', Millie Taylor and Adam Rush take readers on a series of journeys that include the art form's European and American origins, African American influences, negotiations arounddiversity, national identity, and the globalisation of the form, as well as revival culture, censorship and the place of social media in the 21st century. Each chapter includes case studies and key concept boxes to identify, explain and contextualise important discussions, offering an accessible study of a dynamic and ever evolving medium. Written and developed for undergraduate students, this introductory textbook provides a newly focused and alternative way of understanding musical theatre history.

A captivating full account of a vital, exciting, and turbulent cultural moment: the making of ground-breaking classic West Side Story (1961).A major hit on Broadway, on film West Side Story became immortal. Unforgettable songs, an urgent love story, audacious choreography in real New York locations: West Side Story was a movie different from anything that had come before, but this cinematic victory came at a price.The film's enormous budget and complicated logistics made it a difficult production, and massive overruns in both cost and schedule led to tension between co-directors Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins. The result was Robbins being fired midway through the filming, a termination devastating to the film's star, Natalie Wood, who was also shattered upon discovering that she would not be permitted to do her own singing.Over nearly six decades, West Side Story has endured, past its off-screen dramas, as a classic. What other film makes such intrinsically powerful and brilliant use of dance? How many have been so emotionally meaningful, as set to Leonard Bernstein's music and Stephen Sondheim's lyrics? Plus, given its Shakespearean roots (Romeo and Juliet), how often is any film -- let alone a musical -- so simultaneously timeless and current? Small wonder that the film continues to be a favorite.The production and impact of this classic have been recounted, so far, only in vestiges. As written by film historian Richard Barrios, this book is a captivating account of a crucial and exciting cultural moment. West Side Story was a triumph that appeared to be very much of its time; over the years, and especially in this text, it has shown itself to be eternal.

The critically-acclaimed sequel to the hit musical revue A...My Name Is Alice is similar in format. Written by a wide variety of writers, lyricists, and composers, this lively entertainment continues to explore contemporary women - this time in the 1990s. The music ranges from gospel to country western to rock to some glorious pop ballads.

The cult film classic has new life as a zany musical. The Blands want to open a restaurant, but they need cash. Suppose they lure weirdos to their apartment to kill and rob them?

Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart are one of the defining duos of musical theater, contributing dozens of classic songs to the Great American Songbook and working together on over 40 shows before Hart's death. With hit after hit on both Broadway and the West End, they produced many of the celebrated songs of the '20s and '30s--such as "Manhattan," "The Lady is a Tramp," and "Bewitched"--that remain popular favorites with great cultural resonance today. Yet the early years of these iconic collaborators have remained largely unexamined.
We'll Have Manhattan: The Early Work of Rodgers & Hart provides unprecedented insight into the first, formative period of Rodgers and Hart's collaboration. Author Dominic Symonds examines the pair and their work from their first meeting in 1919 to their brief flirtation with Hollywood in the early 1930s as they left the theater to explore sound film. During this time, their output was prodigious, progressive, and experimental. They developed their characteristic style and a new approach to musical theater writing that provided the groundwork for the development of the Broadway musical. Symonds also analyzes the theme of identity that runs throughout Rodgers and Hart's work, how the business side of the theater affected their artistic output, and their continued experimentation with a song's dramatic role within a narrative.
We'll Have Manhattan goes beyond a biographical or historical look at Rodgers and Hart's early years--it's also an accessible but authoritative study of their material. Symonds documents their early shows and provides deft critical and analytical commentary on their evolving practice and its influence on the subsequent development of the American musical. Fans of musical theater and devotees of Rodgers and Hart will find this definitive exploration of their early works to be an essential addition to their Broadway library.

In Strategies for Success in Musical Theatre, veteran musical director and teacher Herbert Marshall provides an essential how-to guide for teachers or community members who find themselves in charge of music directing a show. Stepping off the podium, Marshall offers practical and often humorous real-world advice on managing auditions; organizing rehearsals; working with a choir, choreographer, and leads; how to run a sitzprobe, a technical rehearsal, and a dress rehearsal; how to manage the cast and crew energy for a successful opening night; and ways to end the experience on a high note for all involved. Throughout the book, Marshall emphasizes the importance of learning through performance and the beauty of a group united in a common goal. In doing so, he turns what can appear as a never-ending list of tasks and demand for specialized knowledge into a manageable, educational, and ultimately engaging and fun experience for all. Because the techniques in Marshall's book have been thoroughly workshopped and classroom tested, they are based in proven pedagogy and will be of particular use for the music director in acting as a teaching director: someone imparting theatrical knowledge to his or her cast and production staff. Marshall provides both extended and abbreviated timelines, flexible to fit any director's needs. Marshall's book is a greatly beneficial resource for music education students and teachers alike, giving an insightful glimpse into the range of possibilities within a music educator's career. Musicians and actors with varying levels of skill and experience will be able to grow simultaneously through Marshall's innovative teaching plans. Through collaborative techniques, steps in the book serve to educate both director and student. Thoroughly illustrated with charts, diagrams, and scores, Strategies for Success in Musical Theatre is an ideal companion for all who work with school and community based musical theater productions.

"Wonderful"-The New York Times. "Provocative, opinionated, and never dull"-Down Beat. "A singular book."-Studs Terkel. When it was first published, Alec Wilder's American Popular Song quickly became a classic and today it remains essential reading for countless musicians, lovers of American Song, and fans of Alec Wilder. Now, in a 50th anniversary edition, popular music scholar Robert Rawlins brings the book fully up-to-date for the 21st century. Whereas previous editions featured only piano scores, the format has been changed to lead sheet notation with lyrics, making it accessible to a wider readership. Rawlins has also added more than sixty music examples to help complete the chapter on Irving Berlin. One of the most fascinating features of the original edition was Wilder's inventive use of language, often revealing his strong and sometimes irreverent opinions. Wilder's prose remains relatively unaltered, but footnotes have been provided that clarify, elucidate, and even correct. Moreover, a new chapter has been added, discussing fifty-three songs by numerous composers that Wilder might have well included but was not able to. Songs by Ann Ronnell, Fats Waller, Jule Styne and many others are capped off with an examination of ten of Wilder's own songs.

'... love creates something that was not there before.' - Hedwig John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask's Hedwig and the Angry Inch opened on Valentine's Day,1998, in New York City, and ever since, it and its genderqueer heroine have captivated audiences around the world. As the first musical to feature a genderqueer protagonist as its lead, the show has had an extraordinary life on film, Broadway and in the music field. A glam rock musical with a complex relationship to issues related to art, eroticism and matters of identity formation, Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a darkly exuberant fairy tale about a child that discovers she is one of a kind, but also potentially among her own kind, if she dares travel past borders that confine and try to stabilise her being and identity. Caridad Svich examines this exhilarating work through the lenses of visual and vocal rock 'n' roll performance, the history of the American musical, and its positioning within LGBTIQ+ theatre.

Singin' in the Rain, The Sound of Music, Camelot-love them or love to hate them, movie musicals have been a major part of all our lives. They're so glitzy and catchy that it seems impossible that they could have ever gone any other way. But the ease in which they unfold on the screen is deceptive. Dorothy's dream of finding a land "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" was nearly cut, and even a film as great as The Band Wagon was, at the time, a major flop. In Dangerous Rhythm: Why Movie Musicals Matter, award winning historian Richard Barrios explores movie musicals from those first hits, The Jazz Singer and Broadway Melody, to present-day Oscar winners Chicago and Les Miserables. History, film analysis, and a touch of backstage gossip combine to make Dangerous Rhythm a compelling look at musicals and the powerful, complex bond they forge with their audiences. Going behind the scenes, Barrios uncovers the rocky relationship between Broadway and Hollywood, the unpublicized off-camera struggles of directors, stars, and producers, and all the various ways by which some films became our most indelible cultural touchstones - and others ended up as train wrecks. Not content to leave any format untouched, Barrios examines animated musicals and popular music with insight and enthusiasm. Cartoons have been intimately connected with musicals since Steamboat Willie. Disney's short Silly Symphonies grew into the instant classic Snow White, which paved the way for that modern masterpiece, South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut. Without movie musicals, Barrios argues, MTV would have never existed. On the flip side, without MTV we might have been spared Evita. Informed, energetic, and humorous, Dangerous Rhythm is both an impressive piece of scholarship and a joy to read.

A composer and lyricist of enormous innovation and influence, Marc Blitzstein remains one of the most versatile and fascinating figures in the history of American music, his creative output running the gamut from films scores and Broadway operas to art songs and chamber pieces. A prominent leftist and social maverick, Blitzstein constantly pushed the boundaries of convention in mid-century America in both his work and his life. Award-winning music historian Howard Pollack's new biography covers Blitzstein's life in full, from his childhood in Philadelphia to his violent death in Martinique at age 58. The author describes how this student of contemporary luminaries Nadia Boulanger and Arnold Schoenberg became swept up in the stormy political atmosphere of the 1920s and 1930s and throughout his career walked the fine line between his formal training and his populist principles. Indeed, Blitzstein developed a unique sound that drew on everything contemporary, from the high modernism of Stravinsky and Hindemith to jazz and Broadway show tunes. Pollack captures the astonishing breadth of Blitzstein's work-from provocative operas like The Cradle Will Rock, No for an Answer, and Regina, to the wartime Airborne Symphony composed during his years in service, to lesser known ballets, film scores, and stage works. A courageous artist, Blitzstein translated Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera during the heyday of McCarthyism and the red scare, and turned it into an off-Broadway sensation, its "Mack the Knife" becoming one of the era's biggest hits. Beautifully written, drawing on new interviews with friends and family of the composer, and making extensive use of new archival and secondary sources, Marc Blitzstein presents the most complete biography of this important American artist.

Judge Jackie Justice rules over her reality television courtroom with an iron fist, presiding over a three-ring circus of America's most chaotic civil cases. But, when a drop in ratings brings her face to face with the liability of her own love life, the judge must learn to navigate the ludicrous laws of love in this over-the-top courtroom comedy.

Full-page newspaper ads announced the date. Reserved seats went on sale at premium prices. Audience members dressed up and arrived early to peruse the program during the overture that preceded the curtain's rise. And when the show began, it was-a rather disappointing film musical. In Roadshow!, film historian Matthew Kennedy tells the fascinating story of the downfall of the big-screen musical in the late 1960s. It is a tale of revolutionary cultural change, business transformation, and artistic missteps, all of which led to the obsolescence of the roadshow, a marketing extravaganza designed to make a movie opening in a regional city seem like a Broadway premier. Ironically, the Hollywood musical suffered from unexpected success. Facing doom after its bygone heyday, it suddenly broke box-office records with three rapid-fire successes in 1964 and 1965: Mary Poppins, My Fair Lady, and The Sound of Music. Studios rushed to catch the wave, but everything went wrong. Kennedy takes readers inside the making of such movies as Hello, Dolly! and Man of La Mancha, showing how corporate management imposed financial pressures that led to poor artistic decisions-for example, the casting of established stars regardless of vocal or dancing talent (such as Clint Eastwood in Paint Your Wagon). And Kennedy explores the impact of profound social, political, and cultural change. The traditional-sounding Camelot and Doctor Dolittle were released in the same year as Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, representing a vast gulf in taste. The artifice of musicals seemed outdated to baby boomers who grew up with the Cuban missile crisis, the Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations, race riots, and the Vietnam War. From Julie Andrews to Barbra Streisand, from Fred Astaire to Rock Hudson, Roadshow! offers a brilliant, gripping history of film musicals and their changing place in our culture.

Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical tells the full story of the making and remaking of the most important musical in Broadway history. Drawing on exhaustive archival research and including much new information from early draft scripts and scores, this book reveals how Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern created Show Boat in the crucible of the Jazz Age to fit the talents of the show's original 1927 cast. After showing how major figures such as Paul Robeson and Helen Morgan defined the content of the show, the book goes on to detail how Show Boat was altered by later directors, choreographers, and performers up to the end of the twentieth century. All the major New York productions are covered, as are five important London productions and four Hollywood versions. Again and again, the story of Show Boat circles back to the power of performers to remake the show, winning appreciative audiences for over seven decades. Unlike most Broadway musicals, Show Boat put black and white performers side by side. This book is the first to take Show Boat's innovative interracial cast as the defining feature of the show. From its beginnings, Show Boat juxtaposed the talents of black and white performers and mixed the conventions of white-cast operetta and the black-cast musical. Bringing black and white onto the same stage - revealing the mixed-race roots of musical comedy - Show Boat stimulated creative artists and performers to renegotiate the color line as expressed in the American musical. This tremendous longevity allowed Show Boat to enter a creative dialogue with the full span of Broadway history. Show Boat's voyage through the twentieth century offers a vantage point on more than just the Broadway musical. It tells a complex tale of interracial encounter performed in popular music and dance on the national stage during a century of profound transformations.

The Disney Musical: Critical Approaches on Stage and Screen is the first critical treatment of the corporation's hugely successful musicals both on screen and on the stage. Its 13 articles open up a new territory in the critical discussion of the Disney mega-musical, its gender, sexual and racial politics, outreach work and impact of stage, film and television adaptations. Covering early 20th century works such as the first full-length feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), to The Lion King - Broadway's highest grossing production in history, and Frozen (2013), this edited collection offers a diverse range of theoretical engagements that will appeal to readers of film and media studies, musical theatre, cultural studies, and theatre and performance. The volume is divided into three sections to provide a contextual analysis of Disney's most famous musicals: * DISNEY MUSICALS: ON FILM * DISNEY ADAPTATIONS: ON STAGE AND BEYOND * DISNEY MUSICALS: GENDER AND RACE The first section employs film theory, semiotics and film music analysis to explore the animated works and their links to the musical theatre genre. The second section addresses various stage versions and considers Disney's outreach activities, cultural value and productions outside the Broadway theatrical arena. The final section focuses on issues of gender and race portraying representations of race, hetero-normativity, masculinity and femininity in Newsies, Frozen, High School Musical, Aladdin and The Jungle Book. The various chapters address these three aspects of the Disney Musical and offer new critical readings of a vast range of important works from the Disney musical cannon including Enchanted, Mary Poppins, Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Lion King and versions of musicals for television in the early 1990s and 2000s. The critical readings are detailed, open-minded and come to surprising conclusions about the nature of the Disney Musical and its impact.

This girl-loves-ghoul rock and roll Off Broadway musical is set in the atomic 1950s at Enrico Fermi High, where the law is laid down by a zany, tyrannical principal. Pretty senior Toffee has fallen for the class bad boy. Family pressure forces her to end the romance, and he charges off on his motorcycle to the nuclear waste dump. He returns glowing and determined to reclaim Toffee's heart. He still wants to graduate, but most of all he wants to take Toffee to the prom. The principal orders him t

The Wizard of Oz, Gigi, Top Hat, High Society - some of the most popular movie musicals ever made were written by Broadway songwriters. The Sound of Music, Chicago, West Side Story, The Music Man, Grease - some of the other most popular movie musicals were adaptations of Broadway shows. From the very first talkies to the present, Broadway's composers and lyricists have given much of their best work to the movies - but with varying results. In the 1930s, Rodgers and Hart's Love Me Tonight, with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald at their sexiest, is a masterpiece of fairytale sophistication. But Hallelujah, I'm a Bum, an Al Jolson vehicle about tramps in Central Park, is one of the outstanding flops, partly because Rodgers and Hart wrote it as a kind of opera that is spoken instead of sung. Or take the big films based on Broadway shows in the 1960s. After The Sound of Music, Hollywood sought to fill the screen with lots of scenery, lots of drama, and lots of Julie Andrews. But Camelot and Hello, Dolly! had too much scenery, Paint Your Wagon was the hippie musical, and Song of Norway was simply loony. Even Julie Andrews couldn't save the Broadway bio film called Star!, all about the adventures of Gertrude Lawrence. Who? As historians have begun to consider the movie musical along with the stage musical, Ethan Mordden explores just how influential such writers as Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, and Stephen Sondheim have been when they moved from Broadway to Hollywood. Are the welcomed? Do they get to experiment, using the freedom of the camera to expand the very geography of song? Or do movie producers resent that New York sophistication? Broadway excels in the bittersweet "Send in the Clowns." But Hollywood wants it simple: "White Christmas." With his usual combination of scholarship and wicked wit, Ethan Mordden tantalizes us with anecdotes and fresh observations. He discusses many unusual titles as well - Viennese Nights, The Boys From Syracuse, Anything Goes, with Ethel Merman preserving her classic stage part as Reno Sweeney, the swinging evangelist. The first of its kind, this book is made for the moviegoer and theatre buff alike.