Broadway category: 202 books

Alan Jay Lerner wrote the lyrics for some of the most beloved musicals in Broadway and Hollywood history. Most notably, with composer Frederick Loewe he created enduring hits such as My Fair Lady, Gigi, Camelot, and Brigadoon. In The Complete Lyrics of Alan Jay Lerner, editors and annotators Dominic...

An emotionally powerful and intimate musical about two New Yorkers in their twenties who fall in and out of love over the course of five years. The show's unconventional structure consists of Cathy, the woman, telling her story backwards while Jamie, the man, tells his story chronologically; the two...

As a young girl Alice Carey came to realise that ‘home’ can mean different things. The only child of Irish immigrants to New York in search of a better life, her isolated and sometimes violent childhood was transformed when her mother started working as maid to legendary Broadway producer Jean...

‘The Woods are just Trees. The Trees are just Wood.’ – All together 　 In 1987, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine combined several classic fairy tales including Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Jack and the Beanstalk to create Into the Woods. Funny and heartfelt, this musical...

Sweeney Todd, the gruesome tale of a murderous barber and his pastry chef accomplice, is unquestionably strange subject matter for the musical theatre – but eight Tony awards and enormous successes on Broadway and the West End testify to its enduring popularity with audiences. Written by Hugh Wheeler,...

In a career that has spanned four decades, choreographer Twyla Tharp has collaborated with great musicians, designers, thousands of dancers, and almost a hundred companies. She's experienced the thrill of shared achievement and has seen what happens when group efforts fizzle. Her professional life...

John McCabe's participation in the writing of James Cagney's autobiography, the many years of friendship that followed, and an intense period of interview and discussion in preparation for a musical comedy based on Cagney's life--a show that never saw the light of day--make him Cagney's ideal biographer....

Les Misérables is an 1862 French novel by author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. It follows the lives and interactions of several French characters over a seventeen-year period in the early 19th century, starting in 1815 and culminating...

In 1989 Chazz Palminteri wrote a one man show about a killing he saw in the Bronx when he was nine years old. He performed it at a little theatre in Hollywood California. It became a hit and the most sought after property since Rocky. With only two hundred left in the bank and million dollar offers,...

“Smart, funny and utterly engrossing…This unexpectedly rich sequel reminds us that houses tremble and sometimes fall when doors slam, and that there are living people within, who may be wounded or lost…Mr. Hnath has a deft hand for combining incongruous elements to illuminating ends.” —Ben...

High notes, high drama, and high jinks collide as elite collegiate a cappella groups compete to be the best in the nation Journalist Mickey Rapkin follows a season in collegiate a cappella, covering the breathtaking displays of vocal talent, the groupies (yes, a cappella singers have groupies),...

Musical Theater Today is a new, yearly periodical inspired by the extraordinary variety of artists, institutions, and audiences engaged in the musical theatre world. While many endeavors across the industry appear to share individual artists (composers, performers, etc.), it seems that they rarely...

One of the plays that first announced Sam Shepard as an original voice in American theater, Tooth of Crime is his thrillingly innovative rock drama, published here in a revised edition that is as fresh and provocative as the original was more than thirty years ago. An aging rock star in a world...

Emma Brockes didn't always love musicals. In fact, she hated them. One of her earliest (and most painful) memories is of her mother singing "The Hills Are Alive" while young Emma crossed the street to go to her babysitting gig. According to her mother, the music would keep muggers at bay....