Reviews
As social distancing as a result of COVID-19 has us streaming videos and devouring books on our couches at home, we can find comfort in Weltman's writing, which is so lively and witty that it conjures the experience of an engaging lecture, and in the precision with which Weltman details the visual and auditory experiences of musical-theater scenes, often evoking the audiences that were present for them. Even as Weltman reflects so effectively on the differences between text and performance, her own prose constantly pushes to capture the firsthand experience "of the liveness of musical theater", In her riveting book Victorians on Broadway , Sharon Aronofsky Weltman fills us in on some 19th-century classics that became 20th-century song-and-dance shows. Just as Weltman writes that The Mystery of Edwin Drood , "seems to beg for musicalization," all these shows seemed to beg for greater analysis; Weltman has provided that for musicals you undoubtedly know ( The King and I ; Sweeney Todd ; Oliver! ) and ones you might not ( Goblin Market ; Jane Eyre ). By the time we get to the musical that has its roots in the 1846-47 serial novel The String of Pearls , she's given us a string of fascinating stories. Who knew that the timid Tuptim we met in The King and I actually was a slaveholder? That a statue in Liverpool was one of the inspirations for a big 1940s hit? That the author of Vanity Fair had issues of Oliver Twist ? Even a brief history of panties is not beyond Weltman's purview. In the end, you'll have as hard a time deciding which chapter you like best as The Mystery of Edwin Drood audience had when deciding who murdered Edwin.", Victorians on Broadway is an important and original study that opens a new field of inquiry: the critical analysis of Broadway musical adaptations of Victorian literary texts. Sharon Aronofsky Weltman is the perfect person to undertake such a study, and she has done a beautiful job with it. Her book promises to become the authoritative account of its topic for years to come., Weltman's study is an ambitious and rewarding read that is sure to speak to scholars of Victorian literature and culture as skillfully as it addresses musical theatre scholars.... As her study ably shows, the Victorians are still very much with us, though our interest in and invocation of their culture may ultimately reveal more about us than them.
