BROADWAY NATION

This is the first half of my recent conversation with author Liza Gennaro, whose fascinating new book is titled: Making Broadway Dance. Liza is currently the Dean of Musical Theater at the Manhattan School of Music and prior to that she had a very active and successful career as a dancer and choreographer on Broadway and with prominent theater companies across the country. Most notably she choreog...

Why are the great Musicals so unforgettable? Why do musicals have so much power and impact? How is it that they are able to live in our hearts and memories for a lifetime? Musicals are experiences that get embedded in our psyche. We remember them forever -- vividly and in often in great and specific detail. And they get embedded in our emotional and physical memory as well. Our bodies and nervous...

This is the seventh and final episode in my series of conversations with author OLIVER SODEN regarding his recent book: MASQUERADE: THE LIVES OF NOEL COWARD This week we explore the final chapters of both Coward's life and this brilliant biography. Remarkably, during the final decade of his life Coward wrote the book, music & lyrics for two Broadway musicals — SAIL AWAY (starring Elaine Stritch) a...

This week marks the 124th birthday Noel Coward who was born on December 16, 1899, just in time to become, without a doubt, one of the most remarkable figures of the 20th Century. And yes, his parents named him Noel because his birth came so close to Christmas! So it couldn’t be more appropriate that today’s episode is the sixth in series of discussions with Oliver Soden, the author of the truly re...

My guest again this week is Oliver Soden whose recent book is titled Masquerade – The Lives of Noel Coward. I am devoting more episodes to this book than I have to any previous books, but I found the writing and research to be so exceptional, and this conversation with Soden to be so captivating that I don’t want you to miss any of it. Today Oliver and I focus on a very difficult period in Noel Co...

This is the fourth part of my interview with Oliver Soden author of the truly extraordinary new book MASQUERADE — THE LIVES OF NOEL COWARD. In this episode we discuss Noel Coward’s life and career during the late 1930s including his amazingly provocative play DESIGN FOR LIVING and the bisexual love triangle at the center of it, as well as dazzling series of nine one act plays and musicals that mak...

This is the third part of my interview with Oliver Soden author of the truly extraordinary new book MASQUERADE — THE LIVES OF NOEL COWARD.  In this episode we discuss Noel Coward’s life and career during the 1930s including what has become his most produced play Private Lives, his spectacular patriotic anti-war pageant Cavalcade, and his final musical revue, Words And Music (which was titled Set T...

Hello Broadway Nation listeners! This week for the first time in more than 126 episodes some unforeseen technical complications have reared their ugly heads and those, on top of the tech rehearsals for the upcoming production of White Christmas that I am co-directing at Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre, and some important deadlines for my upcoming book, have all come together and kept me from posting...

This is a special encore episode of Broadway Nation. In light of the recent revisal of Rodgers & Hart's musical comedy Pal Joey at New York's City Center I thought it would be interesting to revisit one of my favorite episodes. I’ll be back next week with the third part of my conversation with Oliver Soden regarding his amazing new biography of Noel Coward. In the meantime please enjoy Pal Joey an...

My guest again this week is Oliver Soden, author of the amazing new biography: Masquerade — The Lives of Noel Coward. Today in the second part of our conversation Oliver relates how Noel Coward, while still in his early 20s, emerged as one of the signature voices of the 1920s, both in London and on Broadway. If you missed part one of our conversation you may want to catch up with that before liste...

My guest this week is OLIVER SODEN, the author of a truly remarkable new book: Masquerade — The Lives of Noel Coward. As frequent listeners to this podcast may remember, as a teenager growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio, I developed an unlikely affinity for all things related to Noel Coward, inspired I am sure by that double record cast recording of the 1972 musical revue, Oh, Coward! — an album that I...

I am thrilled to announce that today’s episode is a Broadway Nation take over! Since I am currently wearing a number of hats including returning to Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre to co-direct Irving Berlin’s White Christmas (which started rehearsals this week), AND working on deadline for my upcoming book (also titled Broadway Nation) but still in the midst of all that firmly committed to keeping ne...

Although nobody knew it at the time, in April of 1968 “The Golden Age of Broadway” came to an abrupt end on the opening night of the “tribal rock musical” HAIR, which took America by storm and created a shocking jump cut into what I call “The Modern Era" of the Broadway Musical. In this episode I share the story of the emergence and rise of the so called “Rock Musical”. To many HAIR, and the "Rock...

Today’s episode is the second half of my recent discussion with author Grace Barnes whose fascinating new book it titled: National Identity and the British Musical — From Blood Brothers to Cinderella. In this conversation we explore how British national identity has, and often has not, been dramatized in British musical theater, and among the topics that we discuss are the musicals Blood Brothers,...

My guest today is Grace Barnes whose new book it titled: National Identity and the British Musical — From Blood Brothers to Cinderella. This is a fascinating book that explores how British national identity has, and often has not, been dramatized in British musical theater, and she does this by examining the content and context of musicals such as Blood Brothers, Mama Mia, Billy Elliott, The Hired...

This is an encore presentation of my conversation with author Liza Gennaro, regarding her fascinating book : Making Broadway Dance. Liza is currently the Dean of Musical Theater at the Manhattan School of Music and prior to that she had a very active and successful career as a dancer and choreographer on Broadway and with prominent theater companies across the country. Most notably she choreograph...

This is the fourth and final segment of my recent conversation with author Geoffrey Block regarding his latest book: A Fine Romance — Adapting Broadway To Hollywood In the Studio System Era This fascinating new book explores the passionate and often rocky relationship between Broadway musicals and the movie studios that brought them to the big screen. To accomplish this, Geoffrey Block takes an in...

This is the third part of my conversation with author Geoffrey Block regarding his recent book: A Fine Romance — Adapting Broadway To Hollywood In the Studio System Era. This very interesting new book takes an in-depth look at 12 Broadway stage musicals and their Hollywood movie musical adaptations. And today we discuss two of those shows — West Side Story and Rodgers & Hammerstein’s second to las...

This is the second part of my conversation with author Geoffrey Block regarding his recent book: A Fine Romance — Adapting Broadway To Hollywood In the Studio System Era. The romance that Geoffrey is referring to to in his title is the sometimes passionate, but often very rocky love affair between Broadway Musicals and the film studios that adapted them into Movie Musicals. In this episode we disc...

This is the first part of my recent conversation with Geoffrey Block whose latest book is titled: A Fine Romance — Adapting Broadway To Hollywood In the Studio System Era. This fascinating new book explores the sometimes successful, but often very rocky relationship between Broadway musicals and the movie studios that brought them to the big screen. He does this by taking an in-depth look at 12 mu...

This is a special POD SWAP editions of Broadway Nation! Last December it was my great pleasure to be a guest on Jeffrey Scott Parson’s terrific show, A Musical Theatre Podcast, and this week I am thrilled to share that episode with my Broadway Nation audience. Think of this “pod swap” as sort of a “Summer Replacement Special.” If you are too young to remember those, then let me fill you in. Back i...

This is the third and final part of my recent conversation with authors Millie Taylor & Adam Rush about their captivating new book titled, Musical Theatre Histories: Expanding the Narrative. As you will hear, Millie and Adam have uncovered new alternative ways of relating the history of the Musical. Instead of just one way of telling that story they have identified multiple thematic histories of t...

My guests again this week are Millie Taylor & Adam Rush, the authors of a very interesting new book titled, Musical Theatre Histories: Expanding the Narrative. This is the second part of our conversation about their unique approach to relating the history of both the American and the British Musical Theatre. They accomplish this through their use of multiple thematic 'histories' that take readers...

My guests this week are Millie Taylor and Adam Rush, the authors of a very interesting new book titled, Musical Theatre Histories: Expanding the Narrative. Musical theatre is often perceived as being either a Broadway based art form, or as having separate histories in London and New York. This new book, however, presents the Musical as neither American nor British, but also both of those, and more...

Celebrating Dorothy Fields 118th Birthday! Women have had a much more significant impact on the Broadway Musical than has generally been reported or acknowledged. In fact, talented, dynamic women have been a major force in the creation and development of the American musical theater from the very beginning and right up to today. In this episode my special guest Albert Evans and I will share the of...