Ever After: The Last Years of Musical Theater and Beyond

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Summary: An assessment of the last 25 years of musical productions
Review: Are these indeed the last years of musical theater history? That's the question Barry Singer tackles in his Ever After, a show-by-show history and critical assessment of the last 25 years of musical productions. Singer has been a writer and interviewer for the New York Times on the topic, and Ever After represents his extensive background in musical theatre reporting. Singer has interviewed almost all the significant names in today's musical theater, and Ever After leaves no stone unturned in its quest for a solid assessment of the present and future of modern musical productions.

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Summary: Why?
Review: I devoured Barry Singer's "Ever After" in one sitting, and mainly because I was so pumped up by anger that I couldn't put it down. Why on earth would an author write an entire book about a subject for whiche he has such clear hatred? From what I could count, he liked less than five musicals between 1978 and 2004, and thinks that there are less than five people who can "save" musical theater. Whether or not it needs saving is up to the reader, but he knocks the genre flat every chance he can get. He seems to abhor the "standard" of what a musical is, pushing for anything that is remotely boundary-pushing, good or bad. If you cannot appreciate the standard, how do you really know what is pushing the boundaries? In "Ever After," the author makes it clear that either his poison pen or his utter disregard and malevolence toward an entire genre has written this book (without the benefit of an editor or fact checker no less), rather than a feeling human being who can see and hear when inside a theater. Harsh? Absolutely, but the book is written in such sweeping over-reaching tones, that's the only way to read it.

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Summary: A disappointment
Review: I was really looking forward to reading "Ever After" when I saw the favorable quote on the back cover by Larry Gelbart. But the book turned out to be a VERY cursory glance at the past 25 years of musical theater with remarkably little insight. Here are the three things I learned from this book: (1) Mega-musicals are almost always artistically corrupt; (2) Andrew Lloyd Webber is the anti-Christ; (3) The only innovative musicals to arrive in the past 25 years started Off-Broadway (mostly at Playwrights Horizons and Lincoln Center). Most of the hundreds of shows mentioned in this book get one paragraph each, with very few illuminating details. Here's what the author says about "Carrie," perhaps the most famous recent Broadway musical flop: "Carrie, of course, was an instant classic, a monument in the pantheon of failed Broadway musicals. Adapated by Michael Gore (music) and Don Pitchford (lyrics) from the notorious Stephen King novel (and even more notorious film), this $7 million musical celebration of prom vengeance and bad taste materialized at the Virginia Theater on the 12th of May, 1988 and was gone by the 15th, touching all who saw it with a timeless reverence for its indelible, monumental ineptitude." Does that really tell us very much about this musical? Did Barry Singer even see the show? You sure wouldn't know it from this description. And just what, I wonder, makes King's novel "notorious" or the movie "even more notorious"? Almost every show in this book rates that brief a mention, but somehow Singer finds time for an entire chapter of Lloyd Webber-bashing where Sir Andrew invites the author to a cocktail party to show off his newest female singing discovery. The chapter sticks out like a sore thumb, if only because it has nothing to do with the rest of the book, but also because it's one of the few times that Singer goes into any detail. Aside from a few interesting Sondheim quotes, this book is a waste of time.

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Summary: Mostly unoriginal and generally uninteresting.
Review: Primarily Barry Singer's compilation (with some re-editing) of pieces he wrote for a number of publications, perhaps most notably The New York Times, Ever After: The Last Years of Musical Theater and Beyond is intriguing as surface-level look at the last couple of decades in musical theater. It's useful for little else, however--Singer speeds through discussions of important shows, wastes time detailing events and productions of minor importance at best, and never provides a truly engaging or thought-provoking point of view. Instead, he attempts to pass his opinions off as fact, which results in a number of statements of questionable veracity that have been noted by theater writers and critics from the esteemed Mr. Miller to Peter Filichia. Perhaps even more unfortunate is that Singer's chronicle covers exactly the same time period as Ethan Mordden's forthcoming The Happiest Corpse I've Ever Seen: The Last 25 Years of Musical Theatre; Singer's Ever After does not stand up well to Mordden's latest volume, coming across more as a simpleton's whining screed opposite an intelligent and informed gentleman's thoughtful analysis. Ever After is perhaps most enjoyed and appreciated by those with little functional knowledge of the workings of New York theater; they're likely to find Singer's anecdotes more interesting than people who know it's possible cover the subject in considerably more depth than Singer attempts.

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Summary: Author Response
Review: Scott Miller is entitled to his opinion about EVER AFTER (see above). Personally, I liked the book quite a bit but, then again, I wrote it. Miller is even entitled to his harsh personal opinions about me, though we have obviously never met. Miller crosses the line, though, when he suggests there are "many small factual errors" in EVER AFTER. EVER AFTER was proofread and vetted for its accuracy by a number of the musical theater's most distinguished professionals, many of them names Miller might know. The only purported "error" Miller actually cites specifically is, in fact, a non-existent one. The words "Oscar for Best Soundtrack" do not appear anywhere in EVER AFTER. I can only guess what Miller is thinking but I figure he's stuck on the chapter entitled "Hakuna Matata," which deals almost entirely and in some detail with "The Lion King" and the differences between its Broadway score and its Academy Award-winning film soundtrack score. In this context (Broadway versus soundtrack scores) I wrote: "The film also had won an Academy Award for its soundtrack, by veteran soundtrack composer Hans Zimmer." This is a fact. I even interviewed Mr. Zimmer about it. It's in the book. Still, I realize now that for the benefit of readers like Scott Miller, the word "score" should have been repeated here one more time. May I nonetheless suggest that Miller take the trouble in any future nitpicking he undertakes for Amazon.com to read just a little more thoughtfully.

Rating:
Summary: Really disappointing
Review: What a shame. This book seemed so exciting when I ordered it. But this author doesn't understand musical theatre. He doesn't really know the art form; he just knows a bit about it. So much of the book is so condescending and so dismissive toward a lot of oustanding musicals. And there are so many small factual errors that I have to wonder if he's really seen some of the shows he writes about. Was there no one to proof this book? Did no one reading it know that there is no Oscar for "best soundtrack"? And in addition to factual errors, Singer also fudges the truth from time to time to support his pre-existing conclusions. He doesn't seem to have much respect for the art form, and from what I can tell from his book jacket bio, he's never worked in the musical theatre, so he has virtually no interesting insights into how musicals work. Though there is a bit of useful info in the book, there are far better books than this. Don't bother.