The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity Stacy Wolf Raymond Knapp . The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006. Pp. xv + 470, illustrated. $39.50 (Hb). Raymond Knapp's study of the American musical, which focuses on "personal identity," follows closely on the heels of his highly acclaimed American Musical and the Performance of National Identity. The volumes taken together - which could logically be one huge book, so similar are their purpose and usefulness - confirm Knapp as one our finest critics of the American musical and his contribution to the growing academic field of musical theatre studies as formidable. The American Musical (both books) sits gracefully on the narrow line between a scholarly text and one for a general reader. Knapp's writing is lively and elegant, his knowledge and research are exceedingly wide-ranging, and his observations are incisive and on-the-mark, often very funny, and frequently astonishing in their acuity. The book is organized around the study of specific musicals (as opposed to Scott McMillin's recently published and also excellent The Musical as Drama, reviewed in Modern Drama 50.2), with each section functioning as an easily extricable (and teachable) short essay. Each follows a similar, reader-friendly format: a survey of the social context and important proximate historical events; an assessment of the musical's premiere production process and collaborating artists; a plot summary; a thematically driven reading; a close reading of the music, with special attention to other musical forms cited in the score; and a [End Page 462] summary that focuses on the musical's engagement with issues of "personal identity" - that is, gender, race, and sexuality. Knapp maps out a wide landscape, from The Merry Widow to Evita, from Singin' in the Rain to Once More with Feeling (an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer), from Camelot to Candide. As is clear from these examples - the author takes up twenty-nine musicals in detail and cites many more in passing - Knapp's choices refreshingly eschew distinctions between forms (theatre, film, television) and judgements about their relative artistic merit. Knapp identifies several generic qualities that distinguish the American musical, dating back to the early twentieth century and finding their clearest manifestation in the mid-twentieth century. First, the American musical reveals "operatic ambition," as artists consistently try to constitute the musical as high art (4). Second, musicals demonstrate an "extraordinary capacity to overlap significantly with the lives and souls of their various constituencies" (9). Third, musicals foreground the "performer as performer," since they rely on the artificiality of one's breaking into song (6). In the context of these well-observed characteristics, Knapp finds a series of tensions that repeatedly emerge: high art versus low/popular art; an address to both a "mainstream audience" and a specific constituency (mostly, gay men); performer versus character. Knapp's mapping out of these doubly valenced preoccupations of the genre allows him to consider several readings for each musical he explores. In this way, the book models a generative pedagogy of interpretation. The book is divided into three sections that explore different thematic emphases. Part One ("Personal Genres") and the epilogue ("Operatic Ambitions and Beyond") trace the musical's performative conversation with its antecedents: the Viennese operetta, the film musical, and the opera. Part Two considers "Personal Themes" in four chapters: "Fairy Tales and Fantasy," which includes musicals for children like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Mary Poppins; "Idealism and Inspiration," which analyses adult shows that find the individual in conflict with society, such as Man of La Mancha; "Gender and Sexuality," which stresses how women (Annie Get Your Gun) and gay men (The Rocky Horror Picture Show) appear in musicals; and "Relationships," which focuses on musicals that negotiate (primarily) heterosexuality, like Kiss Me, Kate and Passion. Knapp spends most time on music, which is appropriate given his training as a musicologist. He considers a musical's entire score as well as how specific song-structures map out the musical's world. At the same time, he looks at (and listens to) many songs for how they express character, develop relationships between characters...