Jack Viertel’s The Secret Life of the American Musical (hat-tip to the fabulous Kim for the recommendation!) isn’t a history of the American musical — a thing about which I would not care at all1 — but rather a dissection of what goes into making it. Viertel breaks down an array of musicals, from Gypsy to Hamilton, into their component parts to explore what makes their engines run. Some of this I was already familiar with, like the not-a-rule-but-sort-of-a-rule that the protagonist has to sing an “I Want” song early on, to get the audience on board with whatever the stakes are…
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