The Musical Man

I just read Musical!: A Grand Tour by Denny Martin Flinn.  It reads more like two books on the same topic, smushed together.

The first two-thirds of the book start with early influences on musicals--and I mean early, like the Ancient Greeks--and takes us up to modern times with The Black Crook, George M. Cohan and the Princess musicals, and finally through major shows such as Show Boat, Porgy And Bess, Oklahoma!, West Side Story and A Chorus Line.  After that, as far as Flinn is concerned, the musical goes to hell.

Then, in the final third of the book, he once again goes through the "Golden Age"of musicals, piecemeal, concentrating in different chapters on directors and choreographers, lyricists, bookwriters, and composers with some detours investigating black musicals, British musicals, rock musicals, off-Broadway musicals and classic musicals.  Then he goes on to the most recent awful years (which go up to the mid-90s, when the book was written).

The odd effect of this is to go over certain careers, such as, say, Alan Jay Lerner's, three or four times in some detail.  It doesn't make much sense.  Furthermore, the book--or editing--sometimes gets sloppy. Examples: "Please Hello!" is called a Gilbert and Sullivan parody when that's ony a portion of it; "Just One Of Those Things" is called a bouncing refrain of cheerfulness; My Fair Lady at one point is called a 1955 show; Alice Faye is misspelledl; it's claimed Fred Astaire sings the title song in Blue Skies; even the index has mistakes.

But the book is still fun, and obviously written by a guy who loves musicals.  Despite the odd mistake he's knows his stuff and, in his chatty and catty way, has no trouble calling it as he sees it.  He'll say something is the greatest in one sentence, and say some big name stinks in the next.  I don't always agree (though I usually do), but it's good to see even popular artists and productions condemned for not living up to Flinn's standard.  It's a worthwhile volume to add to your library, but perhaps shouldn't be used as objective research.