Musical Theatre History Reading List, Part One: The Videos

I really enjoy reading about musical theatre history. At first I thought I was just a junkie for useless trivia, but it has become abundantly clear how useful this information actually is. So, I’m start a little set of resources for MT junkies like me. Over the course of a couple of posts I’m going to take you on a brief journey of my library. Just a few notes on some of what I consider to be the best or most useful books on the subject.

We’re going to start with videos. Mainly ‘cuz it’s a really easy list to make. And I do think it’s important to “see” what we’re talking about sometimes. The first few a some simple must-haves. You just gotta own these videos and watch them at least once a year. Then, I thought it might be useful to have a list of what videos of productions are available for “official” purchase. Obviously, a quick Amazon search will pull these up, but some may be a little hidden in the list.

As always, leave a comment and let me know what you think. Have I made some major errors? Something left off? Let me know and I’ll correct the mistake!

Reading List: Part One
The Videos

Broadway: The American Musical
The PBS Documentary
Obviously, this is an awesome place to start. A textbook-like documentary taking us from the very beginnings of musical theatre to now. It’s enthralling to see some of the footage, but it always leaves me wanting more. But, if you’re looking for a way to fill a long weekend, you couldn’t do much better than this. Amazon Link

Broadway: The Golden Age
from the amazon.com review: It’s not a comprehensive survey of the American musical theater, but Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There is an invaluable and moving salute to the art form composed of interviews with the people who were there in the 1940s through the 1960s. There are too many to list, but they include John Raitt, Angela Lansbury, Hume Cronyn, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Carol Channing, Jerry Orbach, Robert Goulet, Robert Morse (even he’s gotten old!), Jerry Herman, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Stephen Sondheim, and Harold Prince. There are also some rare performance clips, such as Ethel Merman in Gypsy, Patricia Morison in Kiss Me Kate, and Angela Lansbury in Mame, as well as more familiar television performances, but very few film versions (for either authenticity or rights reasons). Director Rick McKay’s focus, however, is on evocative stills, a few too many shots of the city, and most of all the words from the stars themselves. Fact is, because Broadway shows are a live performance medium, there simply isn’t a lot of footage available, which is why it’s a treat – no, it’s an obligation – that we hear the stories from the people themselves. It’s the best way the form will survive. After a bit of a slow start, the interviews cover the culture of Broadway, hanging out at Walgreen’s and Sardi’s, taking a show on the road, and thoughts about the current generation. (Broadway in this case refers to the location in New York rather than the musical-theater genre, so non-musicals are a major part of the discussion.) Broadway: The Golden Age had a limited theatrical run in 2004, and there will be inevitable comparisons to Broadway: The American Musical, the six-hour series that played on PBS in the fall of that same year. The PBS series is much longer (especially counting the DVDs’ bonus interviews) and unlike The Golden Age, it attempts to be a comprehensive survey of 100 years of American musical theater. The ambition is admirable, but often hard to live up to. The Golden Age offers more rare footage, and a more powerful sense of nostalgia throughout the interviews. On the downside, there’s no real structure to the film other than grouping the interviews by random subject, and director McKay relies too much on his own personal experiences as a jumping-off point. But it’s a worthwhile, often passionate film that captures a priceless glimpse at a way of life as lived by so many memorable figures whose like will never be seen again. –David Horiuchi Amazon Link

The Best of Broadway Musical: Original Cast Performances from The Ed Sullivan Show
There aren’t many opportunities to experience the original productions of West Side Story, Hello Dolly or My Fair Lady. (There weren’t YouTube bootlegs at the time…) This DVD is just spectacular. Amazon Link

Broadway’s Lost Treasures
from the amazon.com review of Volume 1
Broadway’s Lost Treasures delivers what the title promises: 21 historic performances of great moments in American musical theater televised on the Tony Awards between 1967 and 1986. (Five were not included when the program was broadcast on PBS in 2003.) Unlike some other arts, theater has rarely been well-documented, so it’s a treat to see these numbers performed by the original artists rather than experience them through audio recordings or tepid movie adaptations. Sure, sound and picture quality are only adequate, some of the numbers are minimally staged and some appear to be lip-synched, and some of the performances that do have excellent film counterparts (Yul Brynner in The King and I, Robert Preston in The Music Man, Joel Grey in Cabaret) seem rather lackluster here. But those are minor drawbacks compared to the chance to see Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera perform “All That Jazz” and “Nowadays” from Chicago, or John Raitt, a stage legend who’s woefully underrepresented on film, singing The Pajama Game’s “Hey There.” The most electrifying excerpt is from Evita, anchored by the powerhouse trio of Patti LuPone, Mandy Patinkin, and Bob Gunton, the most surprising is Julie Andrews singing “Send in the Clowns” (she wasn’t in the cast of A Little Night Music), and the most touching is a 12-year-old Andrea McArdle breaking hearts in Annie’s “Tomorrow.” An indispensable record of a quintessential American art form. –David Horiuchi