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    The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built
    The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built
    The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built

    Written by Jack Viertel

    Narrated by David Pittu

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    For almost a century, Americans have been losing their hearts and losing their minds in an insatiable love affair with the American musical. It often begins in actors, and reaches its passionate zenith when it comes time for love, marriage, and children, who will start the cycle all over again. Americans love musicals. Americans invented musicals. Americans perfected musicals. But what, exactly, is a musical?

    In The Secret Life of the American Musical, Jack Viertel takes them apart, puts them back together, sings their praises, marvels at their unflagging inventiveness, and occasionally despairs over their more embarrassing shortcomings. In the process, he invites us to fall in love all over again by showing us how musicals happen, what makes them work, how they captivate audiences, and how one landmark show leads to the next-by design or by accident, by emulation or by rebellion-from Oklahoma! to Hamilton and onward.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 1, 2016
    ISBN9781494587840
    The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built
    Author

    Jack Viertel

    Jack Viertel is the senior vice president of Jujamcyn Theaters, which owns and operates five Broadway theaters. He has been involved in dozens of productions presented by Jujamcyn since 1987, including multiple Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winners, from City of Angels to Angels in America. He has also helped shepherd six of August Wilson’s plays to Broadway. He is the artistic director of New York City Center’s acclaimed Encores! series, which presents three musical productions every season. In that capacity he has overseen fifty shows, for some of which he adapted the scripts. He conceived the long-running Smokey Joe’s Cafe and the critically acclaimed After Midnight and has been a creative consultant on many shows, including Hairspray, A Christmas Story, and Dear Evan Hansen. He was the Mark Taper Forum’s dramaturg and the drama critic and arts editor of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and he has spent a decade teaching musical theater at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

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    Reviews for The Secret Life of the American Musical

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      An analysis of the evolving structure of the American musical theater and a warm appreciation of its various writers, lyricists, composers, vocal arrangers, orchestrators, directors, choreographers, stars and featured performers as told by a wise and informed Broadway practitioner who has an obvious love for good musical theater.
    • 5/5
      Jack Viertel is well versed in musical theater. A senior V.P at Jujamcyn Theaters, he is a Dramaturg, producer, and teaches musical theater at NYU’s Tisch School. Despite “being a man of limited imagination but a certain dulling cunning,” (self-described) this knowledge and love of theater is infused in this book. Viertel uses some of his favorite shows as examples of how a musical is created, structured, and tweaked, what works and doesn’t. It should be no surprise that there are certain conventions and similarities shared by successful musicals, and less successful ones. Viertel analyzes shows and provides insight that will enrich the musical experience of anyone that loves the form.
    • 5/5
      Amazing book that’s a love letter, history , behind the scenes and the psychology why we love musicals.
    • 3/5
      A scene by scene, song by song, breakdown of the structure of the classic Broadway musical. Fascinating but, in my opinion, flawed.

      I spent most of my time while I was reading this book wondering why I wasn't enjoying it more. I love Broadway musicals -- my Mom didn't do nursery rhymes or Dr Seuss, she did Broadway Original Cast albums, and by the time I was 7 years old, I could sing most of the songs from her favorites off by heart. And would, with little or no encouragement.

      And Viertel is knowledgeable and passionate about his topic -- like me, he was clearly raised on musicals (Peter Pan with Mary Martin at aged 6), and he's been involved in many productions as dramaturge and producer. Viertel structures his material in a way that allows him to dissect each play he considers -- focusing on a few acknowledged greats from the classic era (such as Oklahoma!, Carousel, Gypsy, Guys and Dolls), and a few modern twists on the musical format (The Producers, The Book of Mormon, Sweeney Todd, Hamilton, Hairspray, among others). Each song is analyzed for its place in setting the scene, creating character, moving the plot along, or just contributing to a rollicking good time. Almost everything that Viertel says made me want to watch the classics again, and at least try the plays I haven't had the pleasure of seeing.

      Perhaps it's because, in spite of Viertel's confidence in his analysis, I can't help feeling that, like the bamboozled investors in The Producers, we are being sold a pup. That Viertel is trying to persuade us that when the magic works, it's obvious why -- but when you do the exact same things, in the exact same order and your show flops, well .. that's obvious too. As a way of understanding individual musicals better, this is great -- In the end, I'm just not convinced of its usefulness as a "key to all mythologies."

      It was only on page 207 that, I think, I understood a little better why I didn't feel that this book was as good, or as helpful as it might have been. On page 2087, regarding the Broadway musical version of The Producers, Viertel says ...

      It was clear that the book for the musical was a very substantial improvement on the original film in a number of respects ...

      No. Just no.

      More than just seriously wrong-headed, I think this statement demonstrates a problem with Viertel's analysis -- that he doesn't recognize that that all "hits" are not created equal. and that sometimes a mediocre production can survive and achieve "hit" status because it's in the right place at the right time. He comes very close to admitting this when he mentions (reluctantly) Wicked which, he admits, ignores all of his structural bullet points, and yet is a big hit.

      What I liked about this book is that it gave me a way of thinking about the "beats" in musicals that I know and love, and understanding why the songs are where they are, and what they accomplish. And it will give me a way of understanding future musicals that I see (I hope ...) little better. But the magic that sometimes happens, that creates a Hamilton from the most unlikely combination of imagination and talent is, as Philip Henslowe says in Shakespeare in Love, a mystery ...
    • 4/5

      - Really liked the chapter structure that follows a show's structure
      - Very easy to read
      - My to watch/to listen list got huge! :P
      - Being a newbie to musicals, I had to stop a lot and go look for a specific song/scene mentioned so I could understand the author's points better. I wish there were a documentary version of this book :)

    • 5/5
      LOVE LOVE LOVE! How much fun for any fan of the Broadway musical!
    • 5/5
      I will look at musicals in a new way!