Reviewed by:

• The Oxford Handbook of Musical Theatre Screen Adaptations ed. by Dominic McHugh
• Jeff Godsey

Although the film version of Cats arrived too late for consideration in The Oxford Handbook of Musical Theatre Screen Adaptations, the questions and issues surrounding the reasons for its failure loom large throughout the book. Edited by Dominic McHugh, professor of musicology and curator of concert versions of Broadway musicals at the University of Sheffield, this massive collection of twenty-seven essays brings together leading scholars to consider the qualities that make a successful cinematic adaptation of a successful stage musical. McHugh, while referring specifically to “success” in the introduction, does not define it, and the essays vary widely in their determinations of how to measure it. Some of the writers focus on commercial success while others concentrate on artistic merit or critical achievement. Still others consider the effectiveness of specific aspects of a film. While the broad array of areas in which success is considered—critical, commercial, artistic, technical, and so on—and the consequent diverging methodologies and viewpoints provide critical insights and a multiplicity of starting points for future research, they also give the book a sprawling effect and leave the reader without a central theoretical underpinning. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The ultimate value of this book is that it creates a critical survey of topics in a subfield that has rarely been studied as such. [End Page 121]

The book comprises six sections: the nature of adaptation; politics; identity; stars; multiple adaptations of single works; and production, commerce, and technology. As one might expect, the reasons for any single work’s failure span multiple categories, so the groupings are more suggestive than prescriptive, but this only underscores the complicated issues surrounding the subject. Such a taxonomy does not hamper the usefulness and enjoyability of the book for musical theatre scholars and theatre and film historians as well as popular readers with similar interests. It may be less useful for craftsmen who want to know how to make better films, as these essays rarely stray from theatrical and literary criticism into film theory or discussions of the technical elements of film from the point of view of filmmakers. Likewise, only a handful consider music theory, although it does make a refreshing appearance in a few of the essays.

In addition to McHugh, who contributes two pieces himself, twenty-five essayists examine musical stage-to-screen adaptations from the earliest days of talking cinema (The Desert Song, Rio Rita) to twenty-first-century film (The Producers, Hairspray). Perhaps the best known of these writers is Geoffrey Block, author of Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical from “Show Boat” to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber (1997). Here, Block examines the extent to which a screen adaptation “should” emulate its stage source via the 1935 film version of Roberta, which he sees as superior to the original 1933 stage version. The key to the film’s success, he concludes, is that the creative team made changes to the original material to suit the new medium while allowing the original songwriters to be part of the refitting. This arrangement was generally not in place for other musical films in the 1930s.

The writers here chiefly give the reader close readings of primary sources and other archival materials and then argue their own theories regarding the success or failure of the films under study. Each essay historicizes its subject, and there is some terrific archival work in the volume. Most take a comparative approach in analyzing the film(s). Hannah Robbins acknowledges the critical acclaim received by the film version of Kiss Me, Kate (1953) but critiques its erasure of African American characters and the limitations it places on female agency, both of which had been important components of the 1948 stage musical. Amanda McQueen argues for the success of Half a Sixpence (1967) at bringing the film techniques of the Hollywood Renaissance to the musical comedy form, and consequently bringing the genre up to date while noting its critical and financial failure, at least in...

审核人：

• 牛津音乐剧院屏幕改编手册ed。多米尼克·麦克休（Dominic McHugh）
• 杰夫·戈德西

尽管电影《猫》的到来太迟，无法在《牛津音乐剧院屏幕改编手册》中考虑，围绕本书失败原因的问题和问题在本书中尤为突出。由谢菲尔德大学音乐学教授，百老汇音乐剧音乐会版本的策展人多米尼克·麦克休（Dominic McHugh）编辑，此庞大的27篇论文集汇集了顶尖学者，他们考虑了使成功的舞台音乐剧成功地改编成电影的品质。麦克休（McHugh）在引言中专门提到“成功”时，并未对其进行定义，并且论文在确定如何衡量方面也存在很大差异。有些作家专注于商业上的成功，而另一些作家则专注于艺术上的功绩或关键成就。还有一些人则考虑了电影某些方面的有效性。虽然广泛考虑成功的领域-关键的，商业的，艺术的，技术等方面，随之而来的不同方法和观点为未来的研究提供了重要的见识和起点，它们也为本书带来了广阔的影响，并使读者失去了主要的理论基础。这不一定是一件坏事。本书的最终价值在于，它对子领域中的主题进行了批判性的调查，而这些子领域却鲜有研究。[结束第121页]

该书包括六个部分：适应的性质；政治; 身份; 星星 单项作品的多种改编；以及生产，商业和技术。可以预料的是，任何一项工作失败的原因都涉及多个类别，因此，这些分组更具说明性，而不是规范性的，但这仅强调了围绕该主题的复杂问题。这样的分类法不会影响音乐戏剧学者，戏剧和电影史学家以及具有类似兴趣的大众读者对本书的实用性和趣味性。对于想知道如何制作更好的电影的工匠来说，它可能没什么用，因为这些论文很少从戏剧和文学批评流浪到电影理论或从电影制片人的角度讨论电影的技术要素。同样地，

除了McHugh说，谁贡献两件自己，25散文家检查从谈话电影（的初期，音乐剧舞台到银幕改编沙漠歌，力拓丽塔）到二十一世纪的电影（制片人，发胶）。这些作家中最有名的也许就是杰弗里·布洛克（Geoffrey Block），他着有《迷恋的夜晚：百老汇音乐剧《从秀船》到桑德海姆和劳埃德·韦伯（1997）。在这里，布洛克通过1935年的电影版罗伯塔（Roberta）检查屏幕改编“应”在多大程度上模仿其舞台源，他认为该版本优于1933年的原始舞台版本。他总结说，这部电影成功的关键在于创意团队对原始材料进行了更改，以适应新的媒体，同时允许原始的词曲作者参与其中。对于1930年代的其他音乐电影而言，这种安排通常是不适当的。

在这里，作者主要是为读者提供对主要资源和其他档案资料的仔细阅读，然后针对所研究的电影的成败，争论自己的理论。每篇文章都对其主题进行了历史化，并且其中有一些很棒的档案工作。大多数影片都采用比较方法来分析影片。汉娜·罗宾斯（Hannah Robbins）承认电影版《吻我，凯特（Kate Me，Kate）》（1953年）广受好评，但批评其消除了非裔美国人角色及其对女性代理的限制，这两者都是1948年舞台音乐剧的重要组成部分。阿曼达·麦奎因（Amanda McQueen）为“六便士”的成功辩护 （1967）将好莱坞文艺复兴时期的电影技术运用到音乐喜剧形式中，并因此使该类型保持最新状态，同时注意到其严重和财务上的失败，至少在...