The Musical as Drama

the musical has no trouble showing. But the aesthetic of dis-
unification also has the potential for resisting structures of
wealth and power. It is a tough aesthetic, originally rooted in
black and immigrant culture and capable of turning the estab-
lished pieties into song-and-dance routines fraught with social
criticism.
The chapters that follow are not about Brecht and political
drama until the end of the book. I am concerned with the aes-
thetics of the form, and I want to base my argument on specific
examples from the leading musicals themselves. First I turn at-
tention to a well-known scene from Oklahoma!, a scene that
possesses the attributes of integration, to show that the differ-
ence between book and number is clear-cut and decisive. Then
I consider another well-known scene from Oklahoma!that has
none of the attributes of integration in order to show that the
book-and-number aesthetic is working there, too. I look at
several turning point or recognition scenes from good musicals
in which the book-and-number disjunction is again what
counts. Subsequent chapters take up the most obvious phe-
nomena of musical theatre—the characters break into song,
they often sing in ensembles, there is an orchestra, the crowd
applauds, there is a set—for it is in the conventions we take for
granted that the aesthetics of theatre are most firmly rooted. I
compare a famous show by Andrew Lloyd Webber and one by
Stephen Sondheim, because the aesthetic perspective I offer
suggests that Sondheim is doing the kind of theatre work that
promises an innovative future for the musical genre, while
Lloyd Webber is doing another kind of work. There is little if
anything of Wagner and Brecht in these chapters, but the con-
trast between their theories that I have sketched here is in the
background. Then, when the aesthetic work is done, a final
chapter asks, What kind of drama is this? and taps into political
theatre for a final remark. Sondheim will be prominent there,
for I believe Sondheim opens the way to political drama, al-
though he makes no claims to that kind of writing himself. And
with Sondheim, Brecht returns to the picture. Sondheim has
little time for the Brechtian, but theory makes for interesting
alliances, and Sondheim and Brecht are an attractive pair, no

INTEGRATION AND DIFFERENCE 29