The Musical as Drama

With actual shepherd On top. Sondheim’s superb sense of rhyme makes it certain that the versifying of Ira Gershwin, E. Y. Harbur ...

The film musical is now gaining a valid aesthetic form of its own. Through most of its history it has served a long appren- tice ...

a bit uncomfortable, looking at a stage, which is sometimes said to be “all the world,” but there it is anyhow, a stage. Every- ...

because they define a dance space to be transgressed and come as close as possible to transgressing it without losing a step. Th ...

musical Chicagooccurs, while it may from time to time seem to be Roxie’s apartment or a law court, is really the stage of a nigh ...

make movie performers appear to be singing (they aren’t). There is nothing odd about this in a film. On a stage, however, lip-sy ...

Chapter Eight WHAT KIND OF DRAMA IS THIS? Releasing the Demon: Kierkegaard on Repetition S TAGE musicals depend on such incongru ...

and Langston Hughes in Street Scene(the young lovers break apart at the end, after the girl’s mother is murdered by her husband) ...

of the illegitimate theatre, the Broadway posse. Teenagers in America testify to this experience, as can be seen in recent ret- ...

The release of the demon in the time of dance catches one’s eye. (The “musical comedy” episode of the television series Buffy th ...

the lyric of “A Little Priest.” I am using mirroring as a meta- phor here, but the metaphor has examples of real mirrors in musi ...

moments of book dialogue. In the book, Cassie is talking with Zach about their previous relationship, but she is thinking of her ...

the show and spent the rest of the evening backstage.^3 The point is that the people on stage in the final number are un- counta ...

the one in this musical is a faux mirror, really a portal into the Phantom’s magic, which is appropriate to a musical that in- c ...

lets mirroring happen. But the recognition that can result from mirroring can be complex and disturbing.^6 Follies:Who’s That Wo ...

and a book show, a sort of experiment in the possibility of combining the two formats. The four main characters spend much of th ...

dance behind the veterans at the party, then move into line with them so that the two groups can dance together. At the end, the ...

sang in one of her numbers, “I’m Still Here”). There is a shadow of difference between the celebrated actress and her role. Ther ...

the past selves of Stella and the Weissman girls, dancing a re- flection of their every step. Another dimension is middle-aged a ...

to the ensemble quality of the musical than “who am I?” but the answer is not going to come in the form of psychological expla- ...