Magazine - Book Review

Apparently the majority of theatre related academic journals you have to subscribe to or pay for, and it seemed all the magazine I looked at have such a wide variety (by wide variety of topics I mean there were articles on all this random everything that I think only someone who has been in theatre a while or is very knowledgeable, such as a scholar in the subject, would know about) of topics abound that it was very difficult to find the sort of thing I was looking for.

The article is a review of the book The American Musical, by Raymond Knapp, the article by Alan Gomberg. He explains the book is written in three parts, in which Knapp discusses "a limited number of musicals in moderate but not exhaustive detail, exploring the aspects that relate to his theme," which is how the American musicals have helped to create the image of America as a nation of people separate from the rest of the world by their differences. Knapp covers the history and creation of musicals such as The Black Crook and H.M.S. Pinafore, the opinions of what they might or might not and did represent. There is a part about the "'wide variety of staged entertainments... of costumed singing, dancing, instrumental music, humour, and drama' that were popular in the late 19th century", which is what I thought musicals had always been popular for, but then apparently there are sections on "minstrelsy, extravanganza, pantomime, burlesque, and vaudeville" which I have not heard of but sound interesting. The rest of the book goes on to define exactly what defined musicals in America, with "Knapp proposing that these musicals suggested a definition of America "that departed substantially from European concepts of nationhood and nationalism". The article writer then goes on to detail that the writing can be mostly followed with ease, as it was originally written for a class the author was teaching at UCLA. It intends to pander to a rather large audience, since his students had varying degrees of prior knowledge, which is perhaps why the writing is a bit bland, though Gomberg feels the slog was worth the information gained. There are also a fair number of errors, though there is "a higher standard than can be found in many recent books on musical theatre". There is also no side taken on anything really, just a lot of political correctness. Except when he's wrong.


From what is inferable from the article, musicals seem to have been a tool in defining what Americans saw themselves to be. They were not British, not Arabic, Italian, Asian, and so they developed their own style that clearly said what they thought of themselves. It was also a place to make record of important social issues that were occurring at the time through song and dance, as when a black chorus hired for the recording of the score for John McGlinn's 1988 recording of Show Boat refused to sing the first word "Niggers."


With that being said:
1) How else could musicals have been used to make statements about the ongoings of the times when they were created?
2) Though it could have been used to make statements about issues that were current at the time, were they necessarily very effective? 


Gomberg, A. (2006, December 27). The american musical and the formation of national identity.What's New on the Rialto?, Retrieved from http://www.talkinbroadway.com/rialto/past/2005/04_15_05.html