Customer Reviews

The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity

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Raymond Knapp's talent is teasing out the underlying socio-political significance of Broadway musicals. His goal with this book was not to provide a history of musicals or a chronology of what happened when and by whom, but rather to explore the ways musicals respond to and reflect cultural issues and tensions. The book provides many thoughtful insights which emerged from solid research and a sound interpretive stance.

One of my favorite aspects of this book is the companion website, which provides audio and some visual examples that greatly enrich the text.

I highly recommend this book as an alternative to so many of the musical theater chronologies out there.

I wanted to like this book. Really, I did. I'm a UCLA alum (he's a UCLA prof); I love musical theatre; and [in all modesty], I'm pretty knowledgeable about it, too. Knapp knows a lot - unfortunately, he's of the view that the more impenetrable the prose, the more important the book. Both this and its companion volume must be important; they are written in the sort of self-important academic-speak that gives the social sciences a bad name. I like that music clips are available to illustrate his points; I just wish his points were expressed more elegantly and accessibly.

Raymond Knapp spends more time peddling his political views than writing about musical theatre. He also fills the book with personal opinions. If there is little information on a playwright and why they wrote the play there would be some understanding as to why Knapp would do this. But Knapp writes his own opinions even though they stand in direct contradiction to the playwrights' own words. For political commentary buy this book, for American musical theatre history look elsewhere.