Queer Approaches in Musical Theatre by Ryan Donovan, and: Race in American Musical Theatre by Josephine Lee (review)

Reviewed by: Queer Approaches in Musical Theatre by Ryan Donovan, and: Race in American Musical Theatre by Josephine Lee Dennis Sloan (Pronouns: Any) Queer Approaches in Musical Theatre. Ryan Donovan. Topics in Musical Theatre Series. London: Methuen Drama, 2023; pp. 125. Race in American Musical Theatre. Josephine Lee. Topics in Musical Theatre Series. London: Methuen Drama, 2023; pp. 113. Methuen Drama's Topics in Musical Theatre series offers brief introductions to musical theatre through a variety of practical and theoretical lenses. Both Ryan Donovan's Queer Approaches in Musical Theatre and Josephine Lee's Race in American Musical Theatre provide thematic explorations of the musical's ever-changing relationship with marginalized populations in the United States. Donovan engages various components of queer theory to demonstrate the ways in which changing societal attitudes toward queerness manifest in both the content and form of various musicals. Lee relies on the work of Michael Omi and Howard Winant in Racial Formation in the United States (1986) to examine how evolving understandings of race have informed not only racial representation on stage but also musical theatre production. Although the two volumes operate differently, each highlights the ways in which the genre has variously reflected, explored, combated, and even exacerbated the processes and effects of marginalization. Donovan begins Queer Approaches in Musical Theatre with a hefty introduction that grapples with the history and multivalence of the term "queer," the role of the press in both promoting and stifling queerness on US stages, and the practice of reading musical theatre texts and production processes for both direct and indirect signs of queerness. He structures the four ensuing chapters around individual case studies, following what he describes as a theatrical framework. Chapter 1 addresses how historical context can dictate the ways in which a text or production deals with or incorporates queerness; chapter 2 examines queerness in written performance texts; chapter 3 explores how individual productions can incorporate queerness beyond the written script; and chapter 4 analyzes how queerness in musicals has historically been received by critics and audiences alike. Rather than focusing on an individual musical, Donovan takes the HIV/AIDS epidemic as his case study for chapter 1. In so doing, he demonstrates how sociopolitical events and circumstances can influence the content and focus of theatre dealing with a given subject at a given time. Through brief explorations of Falsettos (1992), Rent (1996), The Book of Mormon (2011), A Strange Loop (2019), and Diana (2021), Donovan highlights different musical theatre treatments of HIV/AIDS in different parts of its history. He argues that musicals of the 1980s and '90s tend to highlight the horrors of the early HIV/AIDS epidemic, but musicals of the twenty-first century—during which time a positive diagnosis in the US no longer constitutes an automatic death sentence—often treat the subject more lightly. Chapter 2 highlights the written text of Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori's 2015 adaptation of Alison Bechdel's graphic novel Fun Home. Here, Donovan celebrates the challenges Fun Home poses to heteronormativity through its disassembly of the nuclear family and its inclusion of musical theatre's first lesbian protagonist. Moreover, Donovan argues that through its bending and fracturing of time, Fun Home is queer not only in content but also in form. In chapter 3, Donovan chronicles the way productions can demonstrate changing attitudes toward queerness as they are re-produced over time. Relying on production details and published interviews, he examines iterations of Cabaret ranging from the 1966 Broadway production to the 2014 Broadway revival. He explores how changing perceptions of queerness off stage allowed the character of Cliff to shift from heterosexual to bisexual to homosexual and the Emcee to increase in queerness over the course of several decades. Donovan notes that while some changes appear in the musical's various scripts, others are introduced through production and acting choices, which sometimes even include improvisation. Chapter 4 similarly examines the ways in which the original Broadway and West End productions of La Cage aux Folles (1983 and 1986, respectively) were received differently than subsequent revivals (2004, 2008, 2010). Donovan ties these differences in reception in part to the same changing circumstances that helped...