Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #247872 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 248 pages

Elizabeth A. Wells, Notes
"McMillin successfully argues for a more subtle reading of musical theater works as products of a collaborative process."

Review
A scholarly work, with good supporting bibliographic footnotes, this book merits serious study. . . . Highly recommended.
(Choice )

Scott McMillin is giving musicals the respect they deserve. If you want to know how a car is constructed, you might consult a Chilton's vehicle manual. If you want to know how a pie is constructed, you might consult the Fanny Farmer Cookbook. If you want to know how a musical is constructed, you might consult The Musical as Drama by Scott McMillin. This adoring yet studious book dissects familiar musicals as if they were biology frogs and academically discusses their skeletal and muscular systems.
(Eve Lichtgarn Westside Chronicle )

Rarely does a book come along that seems to elegantly summarize what has come before while taking its subject to the next level. The Musical as Drama is just such a book. ...This volume encapsulates an entire career's reflection on the nature and structure of musical theater....This well-written, lucid, and effective book should serve as a fine addition to the expanding scholarship on America's musical theater.
(Elizabeth A. Wells Notes )

Staunchly defending a much-maligned genre, McMillin sets his sights high.... Even if one disagrees with some of his tastes and arguments, his defense of the musicals of the last half-century is convincing and, appropriately, an entertaining one.
(Heather Heckman Screening the Past )

Review
This is a lovely book, and it blows in like a breath of fresh air. After the theory, the apologetics, the cultural guilt, the special interests--here comes a book that tells you it's OK to like musicals, whoever you are.
(Stephen Banfield, University of Bristol, author of "Jerome Kern and Sondheim's Broadway Musicals" )

Customer Reviews

A mixed bag...
McMillin may have been a fine English professor, but that doesn't mean he's adequately equipped to talk about live theatre intelligently. Theatre is not literature. A script and score are not a show; they are merely blueprints. The show only exists live in performance, with the collaboration of a director, actors, designers, musicians, and an audience. McMillin (like too many others) doesn't get that.

Too much of this book is spent on interesting theories that don't really make sense when applied to actual musical theatre pieces. And though the book is new, it assumes musicals are pretty much the same as they were mid-century, apparently unaware of the profound evolution the art form has been going through since the mid-1990s. So, sadly, many of his conclusions have no relevance whatsoever to musical theatre today. And, as often happens when people who don't work in the theatre try to write about it, there are just too many factual errors and misunderstandings of the art form throughout the book.