Anything Goes: A History of American Musical Theatre by Ethan Mordden (review)

Abstract

Anything Goes: A History of American Musical Theatre. By Ethan Mordden. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. [xii, 346 p. ISBN 9780199892839. $29.95.] Illustrations, further reading, bibliographic refer- ences, discography, index.Ethan Mordden has been a dominant fig- ure in historiography of theater since 1970s, and his Anything Goes: A History of American Musical Theatre joins a quickly growing list of histories of musi- cal. Dating back to Gerald Bordman's American Musical Comedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982) and American Operetta (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), and including Raymond Knapp's American Musical and Formation of National Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), Larry Stempel's Showtime (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), and Mordden's many earlier titles, most of these histories largely repackage discussion of same classic shows. With Anything Goes, however, Mordden analyzes many long-neglected but important works and of- fers new insights about standards, fill- ing many gaps in literature. While do- ing this, he maintains an accessible and opinionated tone, making book as en- tertaining as it is fascinating.Mordden has organized book in four roughly chronological but overlapping parts. The First Age discusses eighteenth- and nineteenth-century prede- cessors to modern musical comedy; The Second Age surveys first three decades of twentieth century; Mordden's The Third Age addresses period that gen- erally aligns with is commonly re- ferred to as Golden Age of musi- cal, spanning roughly from 1920s through 1970s; and The Fourth Age concerns developments since 1980s. To sure, this chronological and evolution- ary arrangement is not particularly new. Indeed, today Mordden's assertions such as what American musical had been working up to for some one hundred years is the union of story and score achieved in 1940s (p. x), and his discussion of works like Black Crook as primitive (p. 18), read as dated.But Mordden more than compensates for book's conservative structure by addressing historical developments left under-analyzed by other scholars. A discus- sion of Chicago theater scene in a gen- eral history, for example, has been long overdue. Moreover, while others have per- haps overemphasized authors and hit shows, Mordden refreshingly contextualizes work of Broadway masters like Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, and Richard Rodgers by discussing profound influ- ence of their publisher Max Dreyfus. Mordden's willingness to address less suc- cessful shows also illuminates Broadway's successes and other developments: au- thor's discussion of Stepping Stones, a 1923 show, deepens readers' understand- ing of Kern's development as a composer, and Carrie, which premiered in 1988, exem- plifies can go wrong when the writing of musicals [is] swamped by staffing of them (p. 243).Mordden consistently challenges conven- tional wisdom. Traditionally, for example, 1910s Musicals-so called be- cause they were produced at Princess Theatre-have been discussed by historians like Bordman as landmark shows that brought American musical comedy into twentieth century (American Musical Comedy, p. 94). Mordden, however, demon- strating that shows' intimacy and inte- gration are largely myths, posits that the series was not remotely as innovative as it is often said to be (p. 88). Mordden also demythologizes advancement of dance in Oklahoma! which premiered in 1943, by locating early examples of dream-ballet sequences, starting with Band Wagon in 1931. Finally, Mordden joins Scott McMillin {The Musical as Drama [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006]) in his critique of usual distinction between integrated musical-in which music, lyrics, and other arts of stagecraft are united in a single expressive purpose-and concept musical, in which ele- ments of stagecraft are often pulled apart in order to revolve around a central con- cept rather than a teleological narrative. …