(英語の後に日本語が続きます)

(A sample chapter that I wrote for a planned book on the Broadway musical intended for Japanese publication. I hadn’t planned to release this in English, but here it is in slightly revised form.)

History of the Broadway Musical: Fiddler on the Roof (1964)

It is a strange but true fact that the overwhelming number of the great Broadway musical writers have been Jewish or part-Jewish – Gershwin, Rodgers & Hart, Berlin, Kern, Loesser, Lerner & Loewe, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Kander & Ebb, Bernstein, Sondheim, Schwartz, Boublil & Schönberg, and many more. Jewish creators have been responsible for most of the epic works still produced today: in addition to every work in this book, the list encompasses all of the first seven Pulitzer-winning musicals, and extends from the Golden Age classics like The King & I and The Sound of Music to newer hits like A Chorus Line, Chicago, Rent, Les Miserables and Wicked. And that includes not just the songwriters; in fact, a large proportion of the key musical book writers and producers were Jewish as well. This is not true just of musicals, of course – Jews are also overrepresented among major playwrights (e.g. Miller, Ionesco, Stoppard, Pinter) – but their influence on the development of the musical has been decisive. Furthermore, they make up a good part of the theatrical audience. When I produced a Japanese drama off Broadway some years ago, I was told that one iron rule is never to open a show on a Jewish holiday since only Jewish viewers could be relied on to show up, even for an obscure Japanese play. Why this is true is a subject for another book, but the Jewish presence in New York theater is undeniably immense.

Nevertheless, another strange fact is that few of the big musicals have Jewish subject matter. The style and sense of humor in Broadway musicals have always heavily reflected Jewish archetypes, but not the contents; characterizations are Jewish but not the characters. Jewish writers have shown a preference for big, broad, romantic shows aimed for universal appeal; they wrote not for themselves but for the world. The general thinking was that musicals with Jewish themes would have limited appeal. The Jewish population was small relative to the mass public, so even with their strong theatergoing habits, they could only spark a show to success, not ensure it. Thus, despite what would seem a built-in audience, few large-scale musicals until the 1960s had an explicitly Jewish theme, and none had long-running appeal. Until Fiddler.  Continue reading →