{"title":"Momma Rose: An Aristotelian heroine in the mother of all musicals","authors":"Denise A. Walen","doi":"10.1386/SMT_00042_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/SMT_00042_1","url":null,"abstract":"The character of Rose from Gypsy has been compared to tragic characters such as Medea, King Lear and Willy Loman. She has been credited as one of the most psychologically complex characters in musical theatre history and is a role coveted by performers. Equally appalling and\u0000 compelling, Rose, like characters in ancient Greek tragedies, is an imperfect human struggling to do her best in difficult situations but is ultimately misguided and suffers a tragic reversal of fortune. This article applies dramatic theory from Aristotle’s Poetics and Arthur\u0000 Miller’s article ‘Tragedy and the common man’ to discover the dramaturgical practices the authors of Gypsy used to structure Rose, a figure from musical comedy, within the theoretical constructs of a tragic heroine.","PeriodicalId":41759,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Musical Theatre","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44108004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Back to child, back to husband’: Containing transgressive mothers in Into the Woods","authors":"Trystan Loustau","doi":"10.1386/SMT_00046_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/SMT_00046_1","url":null,"abstract":"Traditional American musicals have often portrayed women in conventional, domestic roles like wives and mothers. Sondheim and Lapine’s Into the Woods (1987) abounds with maternal figures who, at first, appear musically and lyrically complex. The musical’s mothers\u0000 transgress the confines of housekeeping and childrearing to pursue sexual fantasies, provide for and protect their children and explore their personal and emotional bonds. However, the actions of such transgressive mothers, including the Baker’s Wife, Jack’s Mother and the Witch,\u0000 are narratively renounced, their agency contained and their stories cut short with fatal punishments. In contrast, Cinderella, the epitome of the pure good woman, prevails as the solitary mother figure of the show’s concluding family. This article argues that despite its overtures towards\u0000 something more complex, Into the Woods’ depiction of motherhood merely reinforces reductive, patriarchal genre standards.","PeriodicalId":41759,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Musical Theatre","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45100799","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Expresso Bongo and Make Me an Offer: The ‘Angry Young Musical’ in the 1950s","authors":"E. Wells","doi":"10.1386/smt_00030_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/smt_00030_1","url":null,"abstract":"Following on from John Osborne’s infamous play Look Back in Anger of 1956, London’s stage saw the emergence of the ‘Angry Young Man’, realistic portrayals of working-class men in a difficult age. Expresso Bongo and Lily White Boys, works of the mid-to-late 1950s, demonstrate that the angry young man was also present in London’s musicals, previously an upper- and middle-class genre. Featuring the Soho district, gangsters, prostitutes and rock music, this unique era of musical theatre changed expectations of what musical theatre could and would offer to a jaded urban audience. These astonishing musical theatre works offer potent commentary on British society, British identity and particularly disenfranchised young British men, and offer insights into American and British relations, gender roles and expectations, and the complicated role of working-class men in the new Elizabethan era.","PeriodicalId":41759,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Musical Theatre","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47926897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Imitation Artist: Gertrude Hoffmann’s Life in Vaudeville and Dance, Sunny Stalter-Pace (2020)","authors":"S. Courtis","doi":"10.1386/smt_00036_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/smt_00036_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: Imitation Artist: Gertrude Hoffmann’s Life in Vaudeville and Dance, Sunny Stalter-Pace (2020)\u0000Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 280 pp.,\u0000ISBN 978-0-8101-4191-9, p/bk, $34.95","PeriodicalId":41759,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Musical Theatre","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48885309","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"America in the Round: Capital, Race, and Nation at Washington, DC’s Arena Stage, Donatella Galella (2019)","authors":"Barrie Gelles","doi":"10.1386/smt_00035_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/smt_00035_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: America in the Round: Capital, Race, and Nation at Washington, DC’s Arena Stage, Donatella Galella (2019)\u0000Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, ix + 303 pp.,\u0000ISBN 978-1-60938-625-2, p/bk, $99.00","PeriodicalId":41759,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Musical Theatre","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45743793","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Salute to Radio’: The self-reflexive artistry of Betty Comden and Adolph Green in Fun with the Revuers","authors":"Sahoko Tsuji","doi":"10.1386/smt_00029_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/smt_00029_1","url":null,"abstract":"Betty Comden and Adolph Green are well-known librettists and lyricists of stage musicals and musical films; their artistic style and verbal expression are considered to bear urban witness to a period understanding of the 1940s and 1950s. Nonetheless, previous studies have scarcely investigated the aesthetic features of their dramaturgy, especially with regard to linguistic expression. This article focuses on the radio comedy Fun with the Revuers, for which they wrote scripts and lyrics. Through a close look at the scripts and sound recordings, it analyses the ‘interruptive sound and voice’ functions that construct the show, and examines how these satirize the conventions of the format, as well as the essential features of the medium. This article will offer a new perspective on the generational dynamics of Comden and Green’s artistry.","PeriodicalId":41759,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Musical Theatre","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42228974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The dithyrambic dramatist: A Nietzschean musical-performative conception","authors":"Mario Frendo","doi":"10.1386/smt_00032_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/smt_00032_1","url":null,"abstract":"The concept of the dithyrambic dramatist – introduced by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in the fourth essay of his Untimely Meditations of 1873–76 – is one of the most performance-oriented concepts to emerge out of the nineteenth century in which theatre was often associated with dramatic literature. This article investigates the nature of the dithyrambic dramatist by tracing, in the first instance, the underlying musical perspectives – already evident in The Birth of Tragedy of 1872 – which led Nietzsche to develop the concept. In the second instance, the author articulates what may be considered as its key conditions, namely the visible–audible and individual–collective relationalities. In view of the arguments brought forward, the concept of the dithyrambic dramatist is located as an interdisciplinary element that emerged out of an art form – music – to which Nietzsche was intimately associated in his youth as a composer. The author further proposes that, rather than a metaphor to philological tropes, the dithyrambic dramatist is a concrete manifestation of interdisciplinary and performative foundations that inform Nietzsche’s analytic perspectives.","PeriodicalId":41759,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Musical Theatre","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42344333","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How far does the sound of a Pipa carry? Broadway adaptation of a Chinese classical drama","authors":"Josh Stenberg","doi":"10.1386/smt_00031_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/smt_00031_1","url":null,"abstract":"The 1946 Broadway premiere of Lute Song represents a milestone in reception of the Chinese dramatic tradition in the United States. Despite its yellowface and ‘Oriental pageantry’, it must be situated at the beginnings of a more respectful relationship to China and Chinese people, as the American stage began to move beyond treatments of China dominated by racist vaudeville or fantastical fairy tales. Instead, Lute Song emerged from a classic text, the long drama Pipa ji – even as its own casting and staging inherited some of the same problematic habits of representing Asia. Lute Song, one of several indirect adaptations of Chinese dramas in the American mid-century, represents a milestone as the first Broadway show inspired by American immigrant Chinatown theatre and the first Broadway musical to be based on Chinese classical drama, mediated through European Sinology. Chinese musical theatre has flourished in the United States since the 1850s (Lei 2006; Ng 2015; Rao 2017). Until very recently, its principal expression was KEYWORDS","PeriodicalId":41759,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Musical Theatre","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42506817","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}