The Theatre of Kander and Ebb

Discover John Kander and Fred Ebb, the most artistically and commercially successful musical theatre writing team since Rodgers and Hammerstein, in a brand new way. Identifying the theatrical approach that renders their musical dramaturgy unique, this book explores their importance within, and contribution to, musical theatre history. Through their biggest hits, Cabaret (1966) and Chicago (1975), Kander and Ebb have been performed on the stage more times both within and outside of the USA than any other American musical theatre writers. Unlike Sondheim, whose work from 1964 increasingly aspired towards the avant-garde. Kander and Ebb located their projects in a nexus between art and commercial entertainment, seeking to deconstruct popular forms in order to expose their ideological function.This book investigates the full range of Kander and Ebb''s collaboration from the pure comic entertainment of 70, Girls, 70 (1971) and Curtains (2006) to more overtly serious musicals such as The Kiss of the Spiderwoman (1992), The Scottsboro Boy s (2010) and The Visit (2014), which were less commercially successful precisely because they addressed disturbing subjects. It explores how the difficult material inspired beautiful, though challenging, scores. It also probes how the ironic counterpointing of luscious music with witty and demotic lyrics makes complex demands of a Broadway audience, challenging its desire for escapist entertainment, devoid of critical self-reflection, to becomes complex, yet popular, masterpieces of the genre.This is the first volume to explicitly analyse the recurrent theatrical tropes and dramaturgical forms in Kander and Ebb''s musicals, offering an in-depth introduction to their oeuvre.>

Auteur

Robert Gordon is Professor of Theatre and Director of the Pinter Centre for Performance and Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London, where in 2003 he introduced the first British MA in Musical Theatre for producers and writers and a new BA in Musical Theatre in 2018. He is author of The Purpose of Playing: Modern Acting Theory in Perspective (2006), Harold Pinter's Theatre of Power (2012) and, with Olaf Jubin and Millie Taylor, British Musical Theatre Since 1950 (2016). Edited collections include The Oxford Handbook of Sondheim Studies (2014) and, with Olaf Jubin, The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical (2016). He has acted and directed in South Africa, the UK, Ireland, the USA, Italy, Russia and the Czech Republic. In 2013, he directed the European première of Kander and Ebb's Steel Pier in Brno, while his musical version of Five Children
and It with composer Nick Hutson, received a professional workshop in 2015. He is currently engaged as a writer and actor of Shylock Speaks, which premiered in February 2020.

Contenu

Introduction: Kander and Ebb in the Broadway Tradition

Chapter 1. 'Sing Happy': Flora the Red Menace (1965) and the Invention of the Liza Persona.

Chapter 2. The Art of Cabaret (1966)

Chapter 3. (Re)visions of Cabaret: Bob Fosse's Film and After

Chapter 4. Self-reflexive Storytelling: The Happy Time (1968), and Zorba (1968)

Chapter 5. Meta-theatrical Crime Stories: 70,Girls,70 (1971) and Curtains (2004)

Chapter 6: Liza, Barbra and the Art of Collaboration: Liza with a Z, 1973, New York, New York, 1977, and Funny Lady*, *1973

Chapter 7. 'All That Jazz': Chicago (1975) on Stage and Screen

Chapter 8. A Star Reborn: The Act (1977) as Vehicle for Minnelli

Chapter 9. A Film Classic Reborn: Woman of the Year (1981) as Vehicle for Bacall

Chapter 10. The Drama of Memory: The Rink (1984)

Chapter 11. The Political is Personal: Kiss of the Spiderwoman (1993)

Chapter 12. The American Dream as Dance Marathon: Reality and Illusion in Steel Pier (1996)

Chapter 13. Ghosting The Skin of Our Teeth: Over and Over/All About Us (1999)

Chapter 14. American Racism as Minstrel Show: The Scottsboro Boys (2010)

Chapter 15. Subverting the Happy Ending: The Visit as Anti-Operetta (2015)

Conclusion. The Kander and Ebb Legacy.