Unless you're a Music Major avoid How Sondheim Found His Sound by Steve Swayne. I picked this up at the Borders tent at Ravinia during Gypsy and I've studied music and I love Sondheim and I can read an orchestral score, but by gosh! This thing reads like a doctoral thesis or a text for some particularly esoteric Masters program on composition.
On the other hand I also picked up Gypsy Rose Lee's The G-String Murders. What a hoot! It gives what I'm guessing is a very true account of life backstage during the burlesque age - very Runyonesque.
And speaking of Runyon - there's a whole world out there beyond the text of Guys & Dolls - get the short stories contained in the volume called Guys & Dolls. There are some wonderful and heartwarming tales there. While they are short stories and episodic in nature, characters do follow through - some of whom you'll recognize. It's also fun to see the genesis of the musical.
A few other titles just glancing at my bookshelves:
The Collected Works of Harold Clurman
The Art of Boris Aronson
Broadway Day & Night
Anything by Ethan Mordden
All His Jazz and Razzle Dazzle (biographies of Bob Fosse)
Journey to the Center of the Theatre by Walter Kerr
An American Theatre - the story of the Westport County Playhouse
Will by Grace Tiffany - a fictionalized account of Shakespeare's career.
Salesman in Beijing or Timebends by Arthur Miller
The Neil Simon autobiographies
"Love Life. Live." Michael Bennett
Updated On: 9/3/06 at 12:43 PM
