Broadway books will intrigue, amuse fans

Technology has made great strides in making Broadway more accessible to Arkansans. We have CDs, of course, but also live simulcasts to movie theaters, DVDs, YouTube videos, and many, many Broadway-dedicated websites providing theatrical rabbit holes into which one may tumble. But what about the good, old-fashioned book? No, a book can’t really re-create a theatrical experience in a living room 1,200 miles away, but it can provide entertainment and information to satisfy the theater-lover’s quest for knowledge.

The Book of Broadway: The 150 Definitive Plays and

Musicals (Voyageur Press, $50) by New York Times critic Eric Grode is concise, exhaustive and, as Grode says in the introduction, entirely subjective.

Lists of “best” or “greatest” or “well-loved” anything will inevitably lead to some sort of disagreement, but

Grode says that’s what he was trying to do: to start discussions. The shows chosen for this compilation are, in the author’s opinion, the greatest (not necessarily most popular) shows.

Sure, some of the expected, well-known names are here, including The Sound of Music, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Music Man. But casual theater fans rarely sit around discussing The Persecution and Assassination of JeanPaul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.

Likewise, some familiar and popular shows such as Camelot are nowhere to be found.

In winnowing down the hundreds and hundreds of productions in Broadway’s history, Grode restricted himself to productions that originated on Broadway or moved to Broadway relatively soon after their world premieres. That means no Shakespeare. But George Bernard Shaw, Henrik Ibsen and the British juggernaut of Andrew Lloyd Webber are all fair game.

Each play or musical that made the cut gets two pages with photos and an information box giving the original production’s running dates and stars, a synopsis, awards won and a list of noted revivals and adaptations. A short essay gives some background and opinion on the work. There’s a dose of snark thrown in for good measure, so the reading is informative without being dry or too academic.

The book itself is great for the coffee table: hefty, colorful, attractive and certain to stimulate debate among theater lovers.

Somewhat smaller and more specific to the truly Broadway-obsessed is Seth’s Broadway Diary, Volume 2 (Dress Circle Publishing, $20).

Seth Rudetsky regularly accompanies and interviews Broadway stars such as Sutton Foster, Kristin Chenoweth, Neil Patrick Harris and Patti Lupone and shares their stories, and his tales of working with them, in online videos, blogs and on Sirius XM’s On Broadway channel.

This book is a collection of his “Onstage and Backstage” column that ran on Playbill. com. They’re all a little out of date now, running Jan. 5, 2009, to Dec. 27, 2010. So Megan Hilty’s role on Smash, Idina Menzel’s Frozen success and other big breakouts were still in the future. But in spots, Rudetsky has gone back and inserted update notes to try to keep it all from being completely behind-the-times.

Rudetsky’s style is informal, fun and very chatty, and he throws in quite a bit about his life along the way, so it’s definitely got a personal feel and makes his star stories even more accessible.

He’s a serious Broadway insider, so it stands to reason he should have some dirt. But actually, he doesn’t dish too much here. There are lots of stories of onstage disasters and near-disasters, awkward parties, weather woes and embarrassing auditions. It’s a nice look at what life in the theater world is like. But down-and-dirty gossip is mostly absent.

There’s a good bit to enjoy for big theater fans, but more casual enthusiasts might not find enough to keep them interested, as a lot of the names dropped are ones they’re unlikely to pick up.