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(More customer reviews)I am post-Grad theater student with a focus on musical theater. This book has been so helpful in writing my thesis and other papers. The theory discussed in this book distinguishes musical theater as a relevant art. Despite MacMillan's profession as an English professor, he is well versed in the art of performance studies. Just because he has a degree in one thing does not mean he is unqualified or uneducated in others. He discusses the book and score in sections of this book, but also pays close attention to audience experience and perception. He discusses certain staples of the American musical catalog as examples of the theory he is proposing, but discusses a wide array of past and present work from Lady in the Dark to Hedwig and the Angry Itch. I recommend this book to anyone interested in theater theory.
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Derived from the colorful traditions of vaudeville, burlesque, revue, and operetta, the musical has blossomed into America's most popular form of theater. Scott McMillin has developed a fresh aesthetic theory of this underrated art form, exploring the musical as a type of drama deserving the kind of critical and theoretical regard given to Chekhov or opera. Until recently, the musical has been considered either an "integrated" form of theater or an inferior sibling of opera. McMillin demonstrates that neither of these views is accurate, and that the musical holds true to the disjunctive and irreverent forms of popular entertainment from which it arose a century ago.
Critics and composers have long held the musical to the standards applied to opera, asserting that each piece should work together to create a seamless drama. But McMillin argues that the musical is a different form of theater, requiring the suspension of the plot for song. The musical's success lies not in the smoothness of unity, but in the crackle of difference. While disparate, the dancing, music, dialogue, and songs combine to explore different aspects of the action and the characters.
Discussing composers and writers such as Rodgers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, Kander and Ebb, Leonard Bernstein, and Jerome Kern, The Musical as Drama describes the continuity of this distinctively American dramatic genre, from the shows of the 1920s and 1930s to the musicals of today.
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