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Emma Brockes
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Publisher | Transworld | ||
ISBN | 978-055277318 | ||
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Reviewer
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Jayne
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Synopsis
Film musicals: you either love them or they make you want to kill yourself slowly with plastic cutlery. Nothing has the power to lift your heart or turn your stomach like Howard Keel in fake sideburns singing "Bless Your Beautiful Hide" or Julie Andrews singing...well, just about anything. There are few situations where the question: What would Barbra do? doesn't have relevance in a world which is much better lived to a soundtrack of show-tunes. This is a book for people who know that: people don't tend to die in musicals, but those who do deserve it; true love waits long enough for an element of mistaken identity to be introduced (especially if one of the couple is a Nazi); and, women carry the show. Talented women wind up alone...But they have the consolation of the torch song, which in Hollywood musicals is more fulfilling than a husband.
Review
This is a book written by Emma Brocks and is really about how to understand musicals in all genre. Some are overpowereing where as others are designed for all to sit down and watch.
We know of musical films that have now become stage plays - like Mary Poppins and White Christmas. But there are also much larger productions on stage such as La Bohem which many of us can not understand! We have seen casting shows for Andrew Lloyd Webber's productions for Sound of Music, Joseph and the Technicolour Dream Coat, now Oliver which I first saw as a film not a staged musical.
This book 'What would Barbara Do?' takes you through the pitfalls and the planning of what and where to go see a musical, and which are the most suitable for families also she has a section on what ones might interest a man! I presume her reasoning for this is because she got it so wrong with the men in her own life.
I love the way this book is put together and the comical way she has describe the way people react to so many of the musicals/plays that are out there. I had some good laughs over the sub titles to some of the musicals and also her remark of "How some musicals can save your life".
Brilliantly written, witty and amusing and definitely a must for new musical goers.
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