The Theatre of Kander and Ebb

Robert Gordon

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2025
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350107113
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Discover John Kander and Fred Ebb, the most artistically and commercially successful musical theatre writing team since Rodgers and Hammerstein, in a brand new way.

Identifying the theatrical approach that renders their musical dramaturgy unique, this book explores their importance within, and contribution to, musical theatre history. Through their biggest hits, Cabaret (1966) and Chicago (1975), Kander and Ebb have been performed on the stage more times both within and outside of the USA than any other American musical theatre writers. Unlike Sondheim, whose work from 1964 increasingly aspired towards the avant-garde, Kander and Ebb located their projects in a nexus between art and commercial entertainment, seeking to deconstruct popular forms in order to expose their ideological function.

This book investigates the full range of Kander and Ebb's collaboration from the pure comic entertainment of 70, Girls, 70 (1971) and Curtains (2006) to more overtly serious musicals such as Kiss of the Spiderwoman (1992), The Scottsboro Boys (2010) and The Visit (2014), which were less commercially successful precisely because they addressed disturbing subjects. It explores how the difficult material inspired beautiful, though challenging, scores. It also probes how the ironic counterpointing of luscious music with witty and demotic lyrics challenges the desire of a Broadway audience for escapist entertainment, devoid of critical self-reflection, in order to create complex, yet popular, masterpieces of the genre.

This is the first volume to explicitly analyse the recurrent theatrical tropes and dramaturgical forms in Kander and Ebb's musicals, offering an in-depth introduction to their oeuvre.

Table of contents

• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: ‘Sing Happy’: Flora the Red Menace (1965) and the invention of the Liza persona
• Chapter 2: The art of Cabaret (1966): A classic in the making
• Chapter 3: (Re)visions of Cabaret: Bob Fosse’s film and after
• Chapter 4: Self-reflexive storytelling: The Happy Time (1968) and Zorba (1968)
• Chapter 5: Meta-theatrical crime stories: 70, Girls, 70 (1971) and Curtains (2004)
• Chapter 6: Liza with a Z (1972), Barbra and the art of collaboration
• Chapter 7: All that jazz: Chicago on stage and screen
• Chapter 8: A star reborn: The Act (1977) as vehicle for Minnelli
• Chapter 9: A film classic reborn: Woman of the Year (1981) as vehicle for Bacall
• Chapter 10: The drama of memory: The Rink (1984)
• Chapter 11: The political is personal: Kiss of the Spider Woman (1993)
• Chapter 12: The American Dream as dance marathon: Reality and illusion in Steel Pier (1997)
• Chapter 13: Ghosting The Skin of Our Teeth: All about Us (1999) over and over
• Chapter 14: American racism as minstrel show: The Scottsboro Boys (2010)
• Chapter 15: Subverting the happy ending: The Visit (2015) as anti-operetta
• Conclusion: The Kander and Ebb legacy
• Bibliography
• Index