Review: The New York Musicals of Comden & Green: The Complete Book and Lyrics by Comden and Green

The New York Musicals of Comden & Green: The Complete Book and Lyrics
by Betty Comden and Adolph Green [Music 782.14 qCom]

Marvelous look back at three classic Comden & Green Broadway musical shows — “On the Town”, “Wonderful Town” and “Bells Are Ringing”. Each musical gets a couple of pages of reminiscences from the playwrights, then the complete script is reproduced, complete with plenty of production photos of the original casts and crews. Nicely packaged.

I’ll have to admit, I enjoyed reading each of these scripts while listening to the original Broadway soundtracks — pausing after each of the songs to catch up on the bits of each show that didn’t feature music. Or, you can find video and audio from various past productions of the shows on YouTube. But, there’s nothing like reading the original scripts to give you a full sense of what the show should’ve been like.

Strongly recommended for any fans of classic Broadway musicals, particularly for fans of shows that explore New York City. I’ll be humming some of these showtunes for weeks, particularly “New York, New York”, “Conga”, and “It’s a Simple Little System”!

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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