Customer Reviews

A Chronology of American Musical Theater

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You will not find anything as comprehensive and thorough as these three volumes. If you want a definitive chronology of "Broadway" and the American musical, this is your guide. The indexes are easy to use and early information is invaluable. I work on Broadway and can tell you that everyone that comes through our office takes the time to look themselves or their favorite personalities up and are astonished at the breadth of detail. (Also, rumor has it that PLAYBILL magazine uses it as a reference.)

As this is a first edition there are a handful of mistakes, but most of them are easily identifiable, and I am sure that if there is a second edition they will be cleaned up. Also, the omission of the Off-Broadway scene is a shame, but as Mr. Norton explains in the introduction, he had to draw the line somewhere (after all it took him nine years to compile just these three volumes!). Only the first casts, or cast replacements who were the first to perform new songs are listed, so don't expect to find the complete list of everyone who performed in CATS. Also note that this is a chronology of lists and synopses NOT a narrative.

This is vital for any performing arts library, or the true Broadway die-hard. Well worth the price.

This book is an astounding work of scholarship and an invaluable resource for all those interested in the history of American musicals. I have been using it frequently, and the amount of careful work and detailed information constantly overawes me. Although previous reference works gave vaulable information on those shows judged by earlier generations of scholars as "important," these volumes reveal much more of the big picture: the many long-running successes ignored by most historians; the numerous shows (particularly in the earlier years of American theatre history) who made only brief stop-overs in New York, but that had a lively history of touring the nation; the simultaneous presence on Broadway of shows of many types using music (many of them difficult to define in terms of genre); etc., etc. As in all reference works of this scope, there are slight errors, ommissions or inconsistencies in formatting the information, but these are negligble in light of the scope, detail and accuracy of the entries. This takes its place as the single most important reference work on the Broadway musical -- the one that we have been long awaiting.

I paid a fortune for these books and was very disappointed. First, I've had these books two months, and I've already discovered six factual errors. Interestingly, one show opened in 1978 and closed in 1976 -- quite a neat trick! Second, the ads claimed it chronicled EVERY musical produced in New York -- in fact, it includes very few off Broadway shows, even famous ones.