This entry in the Listener’s Companion series covers 15 American musicals, including such classics as Anything Goes, Showboat, and Porgy and Bess as well as the contemporary Rent, Wicked, and Hamilton. Musician Sherrell uses these shows to illustrate why Broadway musicals are so significant in modern popular culture. Chapters cover the plot and songs of each show profiled, and Sherrell intersperses discussion of musical styles and themes throughout the narrative—her various explanations of the music of Hamilton are nothing short of dazzling. There are many glossy coffee-table guides and encyclopedic works on musicals, but this close-lens look will appeal to both Broadway fans and music lovers in general.
