Reviewed by:

• Victorians on Broadway: Literature, Adaptation, and the Modern American Musical Sharon Aronofsky Weltman
• Adam Abraham (bio)

It is unusual for a book from an academic press these days to be deemed "magisterial." Life moves too quickly: graduate-school essays become journal articles; doctoral theses become books. And yet "magisterial" is a word that describes Sharon Aronofsky Weltman's Victorians on Broadway. It is clear that Weltman has absorbed the history of the Broadway musical and much of the nineteenth-century canon. The Notes on Contributors from the Dickens Studies Annual for 2011 says that Weltman's "current book project" will be called "Victorians on Broadway." It was worth the wait.

In the early chapters, Weltman is just warming up. The first chapter examines a little-known novel, The Tinted Venus, which became a Broadway musical, One Touch of Venus, in 1943. This musical is distinguished by an unlikely songwriting team (Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash) and a performance by Mary Martin. The King and I, the subject of the next chapter, is better known. Yet this 1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical is not based on a Victorian novel; it is based on a Victorian life–that of Anna Leonowens (the "I" of the title). Her story became a popular book in 1944: Anna and the King of Siam, by Margaret Landon. Dorothy Rodgers and Dorothy Hammerstein both read the book and recommended it to their songwriting husbands. Weltman argues that that The King and I Americanizes its heroine. The prototypical Victorian governess becomes something like a plucky American, caught up in "the budding civil rights movement in the United States" (57). Watching the show in the 1950s, Americans could [End Page 112] feel ever-so enlightened because of their moral distance from the King of Siam, memorably played by Yul Brynner: "audiences feel good about their own level of freedom and/or their own virtue in not owning slaves" (73). Appropriately, Weltman lingers over the musical's second-act ballet, "The Small House of Uncle Thomas," inspired by Uncle Tom's Cabin. It is curious that she does not mention that this ballet in turn gets parodied in the second act of The Book of Mormon (based on yet another nineteenth-century book): the DNA of Weltman's "Victorians on Broadway" emerges in one of the twenty-first century's iconic musicals.

Weltman is on even firmer ground with Oliver!, the exclamatory 1960 musical based on Oliver Twist. Here a famous book becomes a famous show–a hit in London and New York and then on the big screen. What is intriguing about Oliver! is that it changes our reading of the source text. Fagin, in the pages of Oliver Twist, seems more lovable because we have heard him sing "Reviewing the Situation." Audiences may perceive and remember the original through the eyes of the adaptation. But the power of Oliver! is proleptic as well. The book suggests that Oliver! invented, to some extent, the British megamusical, and the show paved the way for later stage adaptations of sprawling, nineteenth-century fictions: Nicholas Nickleby, which premiered as a two-part epic in 1980, and Les Misérables, which opened at the Barbican in 1985. The most compelling point in the chapter is that Oliver! has become, in effect, Fagin!–the center of gravity has shifted from the orphan boy to the shifty fence (who is no longer explicitly identified as Jewish). The 1960 poster art for Oliver! features a sympathetic boy. In Cameron Mackintosh's recent productions and in subsequent ones, the advertised face is that of a bearded Fagin, with the O in Oliver! forming his wicked old eye.

The centerpiece of the book arrives, appropriately, in the middle. Unlike Oliver!, Sweeney Todd was based on a sub-masterpiece, a serialized novel of dubious provenance: The String of Pearls. This story appeared, from 1846 to 1847, in one of Edward Lloyd's penny newspapers; it may have been written by Thomas Peckett Prest or James Malcolm Rymer...

审核人：

• 百老汇的维多利亚时代：文学，改编和现代美国音乐剧莎朗·阿罗诺夫斯基·韦尔特曼
• 亚当·亚伯拉罕（生物）

如今，学术界出版的一本书被视为“权威”是不寻常的。生活太快了：研究生论文变成期刊文章；博士论文变成书。然而，“大法官”一词描述了百老汇莎朗·阿罗诺夫斯基·韦尔特曼（Sharon Aronofsky Weltman）的维多利亚时代人。很明显，韦尔特曼已经吸收了百老汇音乐剧和19世纪大部经典电影的历史。狄更斯研究年度报告（2011年）上的贡献者注释说，韦尔特曼的“当前书本项目”将被称为“百老汇的维多利亚主义者”。这是值得等待的。

在早期的章节中，Weltman只是在热身。第一章介绍了鲜为人知的小说《有色金星》，该小说于1943年成为百老汇音乐剧《金星一碰》。这部音乐剧以一支不太可能的作曲团队（库尔特·威尔和奥格登·纳什）和玛丽·马丁的表演而著称。 。下一章的主题是国王和我，这是众所周知的。然而，这部1951年的罗杰斯和哈默斯坦音乐剧并不是根据维多利亚时代的小说改编的。它基于维多利亚时代的生活-Anna Leonowens的生活（标题中的“ I”）。她的故事在1944年成为一本受欢迎的书：《安娜与暹罗国王》，作者：玛格丽特·兰登（Margaret Landon）。多萝西·罗杰斯（Dorothy Rodgers）和多萝西·哈默斯坦（Dorothy Hammerstein）都读了这本书并将其推荐给他们的作曲丈夫。韦尔特曼认为，《国王与我》将其女主人公美化。维多利亚时代的原型女主人变成了一个勤奋的美国人，陷入了“美国正在萌芽的民权运动”（57）。看着20世纪50年代的表演，美国人就可以[尾页112]感觉永远如此，因为从泰国的国王，由尤伯连纳难忘打出了自己的道德距离的启发：“观众感觉良好自己的自由和/或水平的不拥有奴隶而拥有自己的美德”（73）。适当地，威尔特曼徘徊在音乐剧的第二幕芭蕾舞剧《托马斯叔叔的小房子》中，灵感来自汤姆叔叔。。奇怪的是，她没有提到这部芭蕾舞反而在《摩尔门经》的第二幕中被模仿（根据另一本十九世纪的书）：威尔特曼的《百老汇的胜利者》的DNA出现在二十本中的一部。 -第一世纪的标志性音乐剧。

Weltman与Oliver的立场更加坚定！，1960年令人惊叹的音乐剧，改编自奥利弗•特克斯（Oliver Twist）。在这里，一本著名的书成为著名的展览-在伦敦和纽约大放异彩，然后在大银幕上大放异彩。关于Oliver的有趣之处是什么！是它改变了我们对源文本的阅读。在奥利弗·特威斯（Oliver Twist）的书中，法金（Fagin）似乎更讨人喜欢，因为我们听过他在演唱《审视局势》。观众可能会通过改编的眼睛感知并记住原作。但是奥利弗的力量！也是多产的。这本书建议奥利弗！在一定程度上发明了英国的大型音乐作品，该展览为19世纪庞大的小说的后期改编铺平了道路：尼古拉斯·尼克勒比（Nicholas Nickleby）于1980年以两部史诗形式首演，而莱斯·米塞拉布斯（LesMisérables）则在1985年的外堡（Barbican）。本章中最引人注目的一点是奥利弗（Oliver）！实际上已经成为Fagin！–重心已从孤儿转移到多变的栅栏（不再明确标识为犹太人）。1960年奥利弗（Oliver）的海报艺术！有一个富有同情心的男孩。在卡梅伦·麦金托什最近的作品，并在随后的，通告的脸是一个大胡子费金的，与Ø在奥利弗！形成他邪恶的老眼睛。

这本书的核心部分恰好在中间。与奥利弗（Oliver！）不同，斯威尼·托德（Sweeney Todd）的作品是次要杰作，这是一部可疑出处的连载小说：珍珠串（The String of Pearls）。这个故事在1846年至1847年间出现在爱德华·劳埃德（Edward Lloyd）的一分钱报纸上；它可能是托马斯·佩克特·佩斯特（Thomas Peckett Perst）或詹姆斯·马尔科姆·赖默（James Malcolm Rymer）所写的...