Musical Drama (Critical Survey of Drama)
Overview
The musical drama, musical play, or simply the musical is an evening-length theater piece integrating spoken dialogue and sung music in order to tell a story. The story, or book, while it may take up serious matters, always has a significant, if not dominant, comic element, and the characters in the story are recognizable and accessible to all members of the audience. The music, usually a set of songs, is composed in a popular idiom.
The foremost criterion for evaluating a musical’s artistic success is the integration of book and music. In the best musicals,...
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