The Secret Life of the American Musical

November 9, 2015
Viertel’s friendly scrutiny of Broadway is a valuable addition to the theater lover’s bookshelf. Viertel, senior v-p of Jujamcyn Theaters (owner of five Broadway houses) and artistic director of New York City Center’s Encores! series, writes from authority and experience, having had a hand in such Broadway hits as Hairspray and The Book of Mormon. As a professor at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, he began to offer critical courses on Broadway musicals. This book emerged out of those classes. It uses iconic shows such as Gypsy, Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady, and South Pacific to explain and explore the patterns underlying much of musical theater. Viertel shares unvarnished opinions—for example, he declares that the bench scene from Carousel (when “If I Loved You” is sung) is “arguably the most perfect scene ever written in a musical”—as he takes readers from overture to the “11 o’clock number,” or final star turn. It’s a shame that Viertel doesn’t acknowledge a debt to legendary Broadway musical director Lehman Engel, whose Words with Music set the bar. In the end, theater fans will appreciate the dips into memoir and Viertel’s takes on original cast albums.

October 15, 2015
From overture to final curtain, a close look at how musicals work. As a screenwriter and drama critic, senior vice president of Jujamcyn Theaters, which owns five Broadway venues, and artistic director of City Center's Encores! revivals, Viertel is well-steeped in Broadway culture, lore, and productions. He adores musicals, which, he writes, deserve the same kind of attention that literary scholars give to Shakespeare: a scene-by-scene examination, "trying to piece out why every line of dialogue was there, what every lyric accomplished, and how music supported whatever the fundamental idea of the show was." That's the project he brings to his class at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, focusing on four musicals from Broadway's golden age, from Oklahoma! in 1943 to A Chorus Line in 1975. After that, he claims, "formal rigor and craft" faded. This copious book could well serve as his text. Besides the four iconic shows--Gypsy, Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady, and South Pacific--Viertel adds others, including The Music Man, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Fiddler on the Roof, The Producers, West Side Story, Carousel, and The King and I. He also deconstructs more recent fare, including, among other productions, The Book of Mormon, Wicked, and even the current hip-hop musical Hamilton. Viertel is lively, deeply informed, and irrepressibly enthusiastic, but the problem with translating his analysis into a book is that readers may not know the musicals as well as his students do--students who likely have scripts, lyrics, cast recordings (he offers a list of his favorites), or videos. Nevertheless, he offers discerning insights about structure: the "I want" song that sets out the protagonist's hopes, the "conditional love song" that starts a romance, energetic interludes known as "the noise," subplots, next-to-last scenes, star turns, and resolutions. He examines, too, a good show's "happily unpredictable" qualities. An enlightening trip for lovers of musicals.

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Starred review from December 1, 2015

Writer, critic, musician, former dramaturg, and current senior vice president of Jujamcyn Theaters, which owns and operates five Broadway venues, Viertel knows his way around the American musical block. Inspired by the Grecian ruins of Delos and the meticulously comprehensive and analytical approach to William Shakespeare's plays employed by his wife's uncle, Harvard comparative literature professor Harry Levin, Viertel has written what will become a classic textbook on the architecture and construction of the American musical. Beginning with the overture, the author methodically wends his way through the musical by devoting a chapter to each constituent part. Opening numbers, "I Want" songs, conditional love songs, "the Noise," secondary romantic couples, all the way sequentially through the finale are expertly explicated with spot-on examples from a plethora of productions that fluidly illustrate Viertel's analysis. Ever the shrewd theater executive, he even provides an intermission chapter in which he illuminates his own experiences and introduces us to Jujamcyn impresarios Rocco Landesman and Jordan Roth. An appendix, "Listening to Broadway," provides a chapter-by-chapter list of Viertel's thoughts and comments on the cast soundtrack for each musical cited in the text. VERDICT What Harold Bloom did for Shakespearean exegesis and Peter Drucker for management, Viertel has done for theater: written a definitive work by raising the curtain and laying bare the work of playwrights, composers, librettists, choreographers, and directors. [See Prepub Alert, 8/10/15.]--Barry X. Miller, Austin P.L., TX

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2015

Senior VP of Jujamcyn Theaters, which owns five Broadway houses, and artistic director of New York City Center's Encores! Series, Viertel gives American musicals the line-by-line analysis he feels should not be reserved for Shakespeare.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2015

Writer, critic, musician, former dramaturg, and current senior vice president of Jujamcyn Theaters, which owns and operates five Broadway venues, Viertel knows his way around the American musical block. Inspired by the Grecian ruins of Delos and the meticulously comprehensive and analytical approach to William Shakespeare's plays employed by his wife's uncle, Harvard comparative literature professor Harry Levin, Viertel has written what will become a classic textbook on the architecture and construction of the American musical. Beginning with the overture, the author methodically wends his way through the musical by devoting a chapter to each constituent part. Opening numbers, "I Want" songs, conditional love songs, "the Noise," secondary romantic couples, all the way sequentially through the finale are expertly explicated with spot-on examples from a plethora of productions that fluidly illustrate Viertel's analysis. Ever the shrewd theater executive, he even provides an intermission chapter in which he illuminates his own experiences and introduces us to Jujamcyn impresarios Rocco Landesman and Jordan Roth. An appendix, "Listening to Broadway," provides a chapter-by-chapter list of Viertel's thoughts and comments on the cast soundtrack for each musical cited in the text. VERDICT What Harold Bloom did for Shakespearean exegesis and Peter Drucker for management, Viertel has done for theater: written a definitive work by raising the curtain and laying bare the work of playwrights, composers, librettists, choreographers, and directors. [See Prepub Alert, 8/10/15.]--Barry X. Miller, Austin P.L., TX

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.