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BookPrinted Material
Author Wright, Adrian, 1947 July 1- author.

Title Must close Saturday : the decline and fall of the British musical flop / Adrian Wright.

Publication Info. Woodbridge : The Boydell Press, 2017.
©2017

Item Status

Location Call No. Status OPAC Message Public Note Gift Note
 Talbott: Circulating Collection  ML1731.5 .W754 2017    Available  
Description xx, 351 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 325-326) and indexes.
Summary "The ominous announcement Must Close Saturday too often heralded the demise of British musicals. Looking forward from the vantage point of Lionel Bart's spectacularly successful Oliver! in 1960, Adrian Wright's authoritative chronicle of the commercially unsuccessful British musical of the last half a century uncovers a wealth of fascinating material. In the wake of the resurgence that briefly blew through the British musical at the end of the 1950s with verismo works such as Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be and Expresso Bongo, the British musical was shaken by Bart's adaptation of Dickens, but was quickly left floundering in the face of constant critical complaint and financial failure. The first book to deal exclusively with British musical flops, Must Close Saturday presents a rolling panorama of the good, the bad and the ugly, reassessing their place in theatrical history. Wright reveals a consistent striving at invention, with subjects including the electric chair, the Holocaust, the Virgin Mary, social inequality and Trade Unionism, sexual problems and murder, as well as biographical treatments of Hollywood stars, French painters, tragic novelists, royalty, and the Rector of Stiffkey. Discursive and provoking, Must Close Saturday at last prises open the neglected history of the British musical flop up to 2016."-- Provided by publisher.
Subject Musicals -- Great Britain -- 20th century -- History and criticism.
Musicals.
Great Britain.
Chronological Term 20th century
1900-1999
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Subject Musicals.
ISBN 9781783272358
178327235X