By Judy Samelson
25 Jun 2010

Broadway: The American Musical
By Michael Kantor and Laurence Maslon
Published by: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books
Publication Date: June 2010
List price: $35 paperback; 500 pages, illustrated

In 2004 PBS aired a documentary that almost put the lie to the notion of theatre as an ephemeral art form. "Broadway: The American Musical," created by writer-director-producer Michael Kantor and narrated by Julie Andrews, was an epic chronicle of the evolution of the Broadway musical throughout the 20th century and an examination of its place in American culture. Kantor unearthed riches that brought every period vividly to life, including archival news footage, lost and found television performances, cast recordings and on-camera interviews with many of the architects of musical theatre as we know it today; and the documentary won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Series. It also produced a lavishly illustrated companion book written by Kantor and Laurence Maslon that has been updated in an attractive new paperback edition. The new volume contains all the joys of the original—images of theatre marquees, production stills and rehearsal shots, sheet music, posters and scenic renderings—and it has been updated to include coverage of the 2010-2011 season, with a new chapter about musicals that debuted since the original hardcover publication. The book also includes a new Foreword by Julie Andrews who writes about her first rehearsal for My Fair Lady and conveys the goose-bump experience to which any lover of musical theatre will relate: "There is something visceral about the appeal of a great American musical, whether you are starring in one, or seeing one for the first time as a youngster. It grabs you.

NEW NOVELS
By playwrights David Rabe, Theresa Rebeck and Joanne Sydney Lessner

Girl by the Road at Night: A Novel of Vietnam
By David Rabe
Published by: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: June 1, 2010
List price: $23 hardcover; 228 pages

The subject of Vietnam—the war and the psychic and physical horror left in its wake—has been explored on stage many times by Tony and Obie Award–winning playwright David Rabe (The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, Sticks and Bones, Streamers), but this is the first novel he has written on the subject. According to publisher notes, much of the book was written in the early 1970's after Rabe's own return from military service, and this publication is the result of his having revisited his early notes. The novel's protagonist is Pfc. Joe Whitaker, who buries his fear of being imminently deployed to Vietnam in drink. His sense of isolation is further accelerated when his father suffers a debilitating heart attack (his mother abandoned the family long ago) and he discovers that his former girlfriend, for whom he leaves his Wisconsin farm to track down in Washington, DC, has married. In Vietnam he meets a young woman named Lan, who has been forced by the dire circumstances caused by the war to work as a prostitute to survive. Her assignations are lifeless and she is frequently subject to debasement at the hands of her clients, the GIs. She endures by remembering better times and losing herself in the fantasy world of he movies. Her first meeting with Whitaker is meant to be no more than another anonymous hook-up with a soldier, yet in each other they recognize an underlying humanity that draws these two lost souls together, only to be threatened by the advancing war and its ruthless racism and hatred.

Twelve Rooms with a View
By Theresa Rebeck
Published by: Shaye Areheart Books
Publication Date: May 2010
List price: $24.99 hardcover; 352 pages

From Theresa Rebeck, whose plays include Mauritius, The Scene, The Water's Edge, and Omnium Gatherum (a Pulitzer finalist), comes a novel about a dysfunctional family's real estate war. While attending her mother's funeral, 32-year-old Tina Finn learns from her two sisters that their mother has left them an $11 million apartment on Central Park West that had belonged to her husband of just a few years. It seems that while Tina had been slaving away as a cleaning woman in a trailer park, her formerly impoverished, alcoholic mother married well and moved into the manse with Bill. Since Mom died without a will, the sisters aim to claim what is rightly theirs as her only heirs by forcing Tina to move in and take possession of the apartment. Enter Bill's sons, who have other ideas about holding on to their father's pad. A real estate war erupts replete with appearances by the building's eccentric blue-blood residents; a sympathetic, hassled doorman; and a romantic entanglement with the building playboy, while Tina, notes the book's jacket, is "forced to decide just how far she'll really go for twelve rooms with a view."

Pandora's Bottle
By Joanne Sydney Lessner
Published by: Flint Mine Press
Publication Date: June 12, 2010
List price: $13.99 trade paperback; 336 pages

Like the opening of that mythological Greek box, the uncorking of a fabled bottle of wine results in unexpected repercussions in first-time novelist Joanne Sydney Lessner's tale. Lessner, who with her husband, composer/conductor Joshua Rosenblum, has written several musicals—including Fermat's Last Tango—was inspired when she heard about an account of an actual incident involving a bottle of 1787 Château Margaux whose contents landed on the floor of the Four Seasons. In Lessner's hands and imagination, the story became one of financier Sy Hampton, who purchases a legendary bottle of 1787 Château Lafite, once owned by Thomas Jefferson. Rather than share it magnanimously with the world, Sy's plan is to reassert his middle-aged virility by uncorking the precious liquid privately in the company of a female companion. Muddying up his intentions is an ambitious restaurateur, who views the event as an opportunity for publicity, while a waiter on the verge of his Broadway debut and the beautiful Brooklyn girl Sy hopes to impress are caught in the crossfire.

PLAYS OF NOTE

I'm Black When I'm Singing, I'm Blue When I Ain't and Other Plays
By Sonia Sanchez
Published by: Duke University Press
Publication Date: September 2010
List price: $19.95 trade paperback ($69.95 cloth); 208 pages

This is the first collection of plays by one of the most prominent writers in the Black Arts movement, poet and activist Sonia Sanchez. The volume includes five of Sanchez's plays from the 1970s—The Bronx Is Next, Dirty Hearts, Sister Son/ji, Malcolm/Man Don't Live Here No Mo and Uh, Uh; But How Do It Free Us?—two previously unpublished plays—I'm Black When I'm Singing, I'm Blue When I Ain't and 2 x 2—and three essays in which Sanchez reflects on her art and commitment to social justice. Scholar Jacqueline Wood has edited the collection and writes of Sanchez in her Introduction: "Incorporating the responsibility of the poet into the venue of dramatic art, she has successfully accomplished what few militant writers have done well—transcending the genre divide."

Boston Theater Marathon XI 2009 Anthology
Edited by Kate Snodgrass
Published by: Smith & Kraus Publishers
Publication Date: August 2010
List price: $24.95 paperback; 324 pages

The Boston Theater Marathon, now in its 11th year, is an annual tradition that utilizes hundreds of actors and dozens of directors to sponsor 50 ten-minute plays in 10 hours, each one supported by a different New England theatre company. That's five plays per hour! The BTM is the winner of a 2000 Elliot Norton Award and a Dramatists' Guild Citation for its work in forging relationships between playwrights and theatre companies throughout New England. All net proceeds from the marathon, notes Kate Snodgrass in her Introduction to this 2009 anthology, "go to the Theatre Community Benevolent Fund, a charitable organization that helps New England theatre artists, technicians, and companies in times of need," including help with medical emergencies, fires, vandalism, etc. Among the 50 plays in this collection are Sex for a Change by Robert Brustein, who has also written a rousing Foreword to the anthology; What Strong Fences Make by Israel Horovitz; No Skating by Dana Biscotti Myskowski; and The Liquidation of the Cohn Estate by Edmond Caldwell. About the annual event, Brustein writes: It is "the greatest camp ground for New England theater artists available, providing retreats for the elite and the beat, havens for the mavens, and a center where one can mingle freely with the entire theater community, audience members included."

***

WHAT'S ON MY NIGHTSTAND

BERNADETTE PETERS
Bernadette Peters, the two-time Tony winner who on July 13 assumes the role of Desirée Armfeldt in A Little Night Music (Walter Kerr Theatre), is reading "This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection" by Carol Burnett.

"She's genius—no wonder her sense of humor with how she just deals with life . . . makes you smile and chuckle."

Lin-Manuel Miranda
Lin-Manuel Miranda, currently represented on Broadway by the 2008 Tony Award–winning Best Musical In the Heights (Richard Rodgers Theatre)—for which he was creator, composer, lyricist and original Tony-nominated star—and West Side Story (Palace Theatre)—for which he provided Spanish translations of Stephen Sondheim's lyrics, is reading the soon to be published "Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954–1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes" by Stephen Sondheim.

"Steve Sondheim sent me a draft of his upcoming book on lyrics, to be released later this year. That's all I've been reading all summer. I've been trying to keep myself to only a chapter a day, but it's very difficult. His essays and asides about his own lyrics are brilliant and illuminating, and reading his mini-essays about other lyricists (Gershwin, Porter, Coward) is like watching Zeus hurl thunderbolts. He's going to cause a lot of heated debates, that's for sure. It's going to be required reading for any musical theater lover from here on out. I'm grateful to be reading it early. Pre-order it now, Playbill readers!"

Kate Baldwin
Kate Baldwin, a 2010 Tony nominee for Best Actress in a Musical (Finian's Rainbow) and currently appearing in the London production of Paradise Found, is reading "The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss.

"Having just started it, I put it down after twelve pages because I needed to breathe. Its beauty is terrifying and astounding. I'm gong to try and pick it up again tonight."

	photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

Jan Maxwell
Jan Maxwell, a double Tony Nominee this year for both Best Actress in a Play (The Royal Family) and Best Featured Actress in a Play (Lend Me a Tenor), is reading "Half The Sky" by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.

"An incredible book. I have been reading Kristof's column for years and he is a true humanitarian. This book is about atrocities committed against girls and women throughout the world, with stories of some of them overcoming horrific odds and making a difference, and what we can do to help them (www.halftheskymovement.org). I would love to start a theatre community–based organization to raise money so these girls can be safe, thrive, have an education and help save the world."

Sutton Foster
Sutton Foster, who won a 2002 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for Thoroughly Modern Millie, will soon star in the world premiere of Paul Weitz's Trust, previewing July 23 at Second Stage, and—it was just announced—will return to Broadway in a 2011 revival of Anything Goes, is reading "Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime" by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.

"I'm in a book club and this is our new book. I'm only about 20 pages in . . . and I must admit that I'm not a very political person. As soon as someone starts talking politics my eyes glaze over and I start thinking of rainbows and puppy dogs . . . But so far this book has been fascinating. It's been recommended to me by several people, so I'm eager to read more of it. The last book I read was "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett. I loved this book. It was so inspiring . . . especially because it takes place in the South and is about women really taking risks and standing up during a time when it was socially so repressed. I highly recommend it to everyone."

John Tartaglia
John Tartaglia, a 2004 Tony nominee for Best Actor in a Musical for Avenue Q who has gone behind the scenes and under the sea with ImaginOcean (New World Stages), the new live, black light puppet show he created, is reading "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by JK Rowling.

"This is my second time reading it. In fact, I'm in the process of re-reading the entire series because I am getting ready to go down to the new Harry Potter Theme Park in Orlando. JK Rowling's writing is so brilliant and it's wonderful to get lost in the world she's created. I love her attention to detail and uncover something new each time I re-read one of the books. It's great bedtime reading for when I need to put a little magic in my life."

Michael Mayer
Michael Mayer, who has won four Tony Awards for his direction of both plays (1998's A View From the Bridge) and musicals (You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Spring Awakening) and who is currently represented on Broadway by American Idiot and Everyday Rapture, is reading "Istanbul" by Orhan Pamuk.

"I have about 9 books on my night table at any given time. I'm currently devouring Orhan Pamuk's "Istanbul," a beautifully told memoir and evocative portrait of a city that I'm excited to visit later this month."

*

Passionate about theatre books? See what the Playbill Store has on its shelves.