About Musicals (Teach Yourself)

By Susan Sutherland

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0844202762
• ISBN13: 9780844202761
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Teach Yourself
• Length: 242 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.8" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Interesting and informative, but lacks detail and old faves

This is a really great book for any musical theater-lover to read. It offers a history of the modern musical, and how it slowly evolved to what it exists as in the present day. It gives interesting trivia and facts about the works of great composers, from Rodgers and Hammerstein to Sondheim to Webber. It summarizes the plot and stage history (openings, actors, revivals, etc.) of well-known shows and even some that "got away"-- shows that turned out to be flops that youd never have heard of. It goes into greater detail about several more popular musicals such as The Sound of Music and Les Miserables. At the conclusion of each chapter there are self-test questions (the answers are in the back) so you can test your own knowledge. While almost every musical you can think of can be found in this book, it fails to so much as mention some of the best ones ever made, for example, The Music Man and Bye Bye Birdie-- this seems odd and is surpising. Plus, it was published in 1998 so there are few mentioned that are even fairly current. Also, it would've been nice to see more detail about ALL of the musicals, instead of a brief paragraph for most and than expanding on just a select few. But overall, I reccommend this book to musical theater fans everywhere and especially those intersted in learning a little- no, a LOT more about a truly fascinating subject.

Remarkably good for its size

Considering how massive a subject the history of musical theatre is, this little book does a surprisingly good job of giving the reader an overview. The major trends and names are covered with intelligence and insight - some get minimized coverage, but that was inevitable in anything smaller than an encyclopedia. Considering that most books take several times as much space to say as much or less, this makes an excellent and affordable introduction to the history of the musical.