Samuel L. Leiter

This is the second volume in an unprecedented series devoted to the New York stage in the twentieth century. It provides a description of approximately 1,800 theatrical productions given in the New York professional theatre for the decade 1930-1940. Every legitimate theatre production--including plays, musicals, revues, and revivals--is chronicled in an easily referenced, alphabetical format. Not restricted to English-language productions, the collection includes every known foreign-language production visiting the city and reviewed in the English-language press. The volume also provides extensive entries for ethnic theatre offerings including plays produced in Italian, Yiddish, and French. A comprehensive listing for each entry includes (wherever possible) title, genre category, subject categories, author, translator, revisionist, music, lyricist, source book or other work, director, choreographer, set designer, costume designer, lighting designer, producer, theatre, opening date, and length of run. The text following each entry offers, as comprehensive as possible, a view of the work described. It gives important historical background, a summary of the plot, amusing anecdotes, and an idea of the critical reaction to the performance. Representative quotes of critics are incorporated verbatim or in paraphrase, with source. The volume concludes with a selected bibliography. Ten appendixes provide the following quick-reference listings: a chronological calendar of productions, plays listed by category, major play awards, novels and plays providing sources for plays and musicals, institutional theatres and their offerings, foreign-performing troupes, long-run hits of the period, abbreviations of newspapers and periodicals cited in the text, the season-by-season breakdown of production totals, and all Broadway and Off Broadway theatres at which the plays described were produced. An introductory overview of issues and developments on the New York stage from 1930 to 1940 provides essential background information for understanding the context in which the chronicled works were first viewed. This important reference tool will be of special interest to students and historians of drama.

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