Product Description

Like every art form, musical theatre has been changing and evolving since its inception more than 2000 years ago. Musical Theatre: A History presents a comprehensive history of stage musicals from the earliest accounts of the ancient Greeks and Romans, for whom songs were common elements in staging, to Jacques Offenbach in Paris during the 1840s, to Gilbert and Sullivan in England, to the rise of music halls and vaudeville traditions in America, and eventually to "Broadway's Golden Age" with George M. Cohan, Victor Herbert, Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, Leonard Bernstein, and Andrew Lloyd Webber. The 21st century has also brought a popular new wave of musicals to the Broadway stage, from The Producers to Spamalot, and Mamma Mia! to The Drowsy Chaperone.

Musical Theatre: A History covers it all, from the opening number to the curtain call, offering readers the most comprehensive and up-to-date history of the art form. As informative as it is entertaining, Musical Theatre is richly illustrated with anecdotes of shows and show people. It is cause for celebration for those working in the theatre as well as its legion of devoted fans.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #154904 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 408 pages

Review
"A whirlwind play-by-play of the history of musical theater." -- Library Journal

About the Author
A native New Yorker and life-long fan of the Musical, John Kenrick is in great demand as an expert on the subject. His Web site www.musicals101.com gets more than 150,000 hits a month.

Customer Reviews

An Indispensable Guide For Those Who Love Musicals!
I've been hooked on musicals since I saw my first one on Broadway back in the 1960's. It's obvious that John Kenrick is even more so. His knowledge and expertise on this art form clearly comes through in his conversational writing style. The who, when, where, what, why and how of the various musicals through the ages are truly informational gems. This is a great book that allows the reader to peek behind the curtain while studying musical theatre's evolution. It is a great source book for those of us who aren't in musical theatre and wish to test our knowledge of what we have seen or know; as well as to track down totally unfamiliar musicals and discover what's been missed. I always thought of the musical as having come into existence in the last 100 or so years. Boy was I wrong! "Musical Theatre-A History" is an excellent read and reference!

A Little Too Overblown
Okay so there's a thousand books on the history of musicals out there and this is basically the same thing you'll learn there except it takes you back to anicent Greek theater. Most of the later part of the book is taken off the author's website and the biblography is a little too much.
I think he is a little hard on recent musicals but I am glad that he loathed Ben Brantley's horrible NY Times article proclaiming the "death"
of musicals.

Good for the teacher/prof.
The author was unpleased with my initial review so I removed it. However, I do hope this book finds its way on to all teachers/professors desks who teach the history of the American Musical. The book however is probably unusable for today's college students as it is almost all ink...(and sadly, most students can't read...). There are few pictures, due to budget, publisher and time constraints, so I was told, and there is not a DVD or CD which probably would have made this cost prohibitive. The website of Mr. Kenrick's, [...], remains marvelous and user friendly for the computer generation of students.