Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Say It's Just a Show: The Musical as a British Cultural Artefact 2. ‘Kyan Wait to get to Inglan’: National Identity and the British Musical 3. Solidarity Forever!: Depictions of the Class Divide 4. Too Many Years Lost in His Story: The Absent Female Voice 5. A Cat So Clever: Andrew Lloyd Webber and the Reinvention of the British Musical 6. I Can Smile at the Old Days: Nostalgia and the British Musical 7. We Can Turn Over and Start Again…: The Way Forward Selected Bibliography

Promotional Information

A timely book that considers the British musical from 1980-2020 as a reflection of the nation and national identity, and examines the failure of the genre in the UK to embrace diversity, onstage and off, and to thus accurately depict the contemporary populace.

About the Author

Grace Barnes is an independent scholar, director/playwright who has worked as an associate or resident director on productions of My Fair Lady, Fiddler on the Roof, The Threepenny Opera, Into the Woods, Sunset Boulevard, The Witches of Eastwick, Martin Guerre, West Side Story and Guys and Dolls in the UK, Germany and Australia. She is the author of Her Turn on Stage (2015).