Cultural Identity in British Musical Theatre, 1890û1939: Knowing OneAEs Place (Palgrave Studies in British Musical Theatre)

This book examines the performance of æBritishnessÆ on the musical stage. Covering a tumultuous period in British history, it offers a fresh look at the vitality and centrality of the musical stage, as a global phenomenon in late-Victorian popular culture and beyond. Through a re-examination of over fifty archival play-scripts, the book comprises seven interconnected stories told in two parts. Part One focuses on domestic and personal identities of æBritishnessÆ, and how implicit anxieties and contradictions of nationhood, class and gender were staged as part of the popular cultural condition. Broadening in scope, Part Two offers a revisionary reading of Empire and Otherness on the musical stage, and concludes with a consideration of the Great War and the interwar period, as musical theatre performed a nostalgia for a particular kind of æBritishnessÆ, reflecting the anxieties of a nation in decline.

• | Author: Ben Macpherson
• | Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• | Publication Date: May 24, 2018
• | Number of Pages: 260 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover/Performing Arts
• | ISBN-10: 1137598069
• | ISBN-13: 9781137598066