Boy Loses Girl: Broadway's Librettists Review

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Boy Loses Girl: Broadway's Librettists ReviewBoy Loses Girl allows Hischak to continue his uninterrupted writing of exceedingly mediocre books on musical theatre. In this book, he purports to celebrate the often-unsung writers of Broadway's greatest book musicals, but he doesn't seem to understand that merely synopsizing their work won't make us like them any more.
As Hischak explains, he has organized the librettists into roughly chronological order (even though the chapter on Dorothy Donnelly and other early women librettists comes after the chapters on Harbach, Hammerstein, and Kaufman), and a standard chapter gives a little biographical information on the writer and then delves briefly into each show he worked on. Any analysis Hischak offers is extremely shallow and is usually limited to a sentence or two. Sometimes Hischak repeats himself several times, as when he talks about George M. Cohen's innovations to the libretto after just about every Cohen show he talks about, or when discussing Harburg's love of satire after every Harburg show. Couldn't Hischak have given a few in-depth examples, rather than glossing over everything?
An even bigger problem with this book is Hischak's confused premise. He wants to celebrate the libretto of the Broadway musical. That's fine. But sometimes, it seems he wants to do this independently of the score, and that is just wrongheaded thinking. As any Broadway scholar knows, the book of a musical is there to structure and support the score. It is incredibly important, yes, but it was never meant to be taken apart from the score. That doesn't mean that some librettos don't bear scrutiny apart from the score; merely, that one shouldn't try to analyze the innovation in the libretto seperate from the rest of the show.
In Hischak's defense, sometimes he realizes this. Which makes me wonder if this book was a rush job, and he just didn't get around to adding all the insightful commentary he had prepared. Unfortunately, I don't have the space that Hischak had in his book, so I can't offer many specific examples that I spoke of in my criticisms. But look through the book in a bookstore or a library, and you'll soon understand why I can't recommend this book. It's a shame, too, because I think that analyzing the great librettists of the American Musical Theatre is a great idea (much like Hischak's Through The Screen Door was a great idea poorly realized, but that's another subject.) Really, this book is simply a missed opportunity. The great book on Broadway librettists has yet to be written.Boy Loses Girl: Broadway's Librettists Overview

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