#CBR11Bingo – I love this!
Recently I’ve been enjoying a podcast dedicated to musical theatre and reliving my theatre kid days. So this audiobook seemed a good fit for my “I Love This!” category, as I do indeed love Broadway musicals.
Jack Viertel has been involved in over 50 Broadway productions in various capacities, but mostly as a dramaturg and consultant on the writing end. He teaches a course at NYU about the construction of the American musical, and that is what this book is based on. The title is a little misleading – there aren’t that many “behind-the-scenes” tidbits or much scandalous information as it suggests. Rather, it’s an interesting but academic breakdown of what makes a musical successful. Sort of like a script analysis class dedicated to musicals.
Viertel constructs the book in a way to analyze a show from top to bottom, with each chapter named after each piece of a musical’s framework. Then in each chapter, he uses examples of songs and scenes from different shows to illustrate how those musicals use this framework successfully or unsuccessfully. This includes a lot of song and script analysis, including some lyrics and dialogue (read aloud in the audio by narrator David Pittu, who has a very Mark Evan Jackson sensibility about his narration). Viertel focuses mostly on six or so shows, but brings in a few outsiders to make particular points. But mostly he comes back to Oklahoma!, Carousel, Gypsy, Guys and Dolls, The Book of Mormon, and Hamilton. Various other Sondheim pieces, A Chorus Line, Jerome Robbins work in general, Hello Dolly, and My Fair Lady also get a fair amount of play, and it even includes a reference to the musical of The Wedding Singer which is one of my guilty pleasures. It definitely skews heavily towards the classics and what he considers the “Golden Age” of Broadway which went from Oklahoma! in 1943 to A Chorus Line in 1975. But a decent amount of modern shows get their nods. The book only comments on American musicals, so the big British shows are skipped as well as the Boublil/Schonberg shows. We also get into the influence of rock music and how that changes musicals both for better and for worse.
I’d recommend this to musical theatre enthusiasts, especially fans of the classics who want to dig deeper. I’ve used the terms “analytical” and “academic” which makes it sound a lot drier than it is — it is obvious how much Viertel loves theatre and emotional impact of the shows as well as some personal anecdotes keep it from being a textbook (Pittu’s engaging narration helps too). I did find my mind straying sometimes when he would recount certain scenes or plot points, being very familiar with most of the shows he discusses. But I tried not to get too distracted because I’ve never thought about the script structure of a musical and I really liked his pitch on how it makes or breaks a show. He REALLY digs into Gypsy which is one of my favorites, and I’d love a whole class of his just on that show. He shared some quotes and tidbits from the industry that I had heard before, but an equal amount of information that was new to me.
I did question why Viertel insisted on including Carousel, South Pacific, and The King and I, which to me are shows that have lovely music but should be let go due to the questionable portrayal of domestic violence and issues of race. But mostly Viertel acknowledges these problems and discusses them exclusively in the context of how their song and plot structure make a stirring show.
I love musicals! And I really liked this book.