London Road: the ‘irruption of the real’ and haunting utopias in the verbatim musical
Authors
Zavros, DemetrisEditors
Rodosthenous, GeorgeIssue Date
2017-08-15
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The use of documentary material appeared in musical theatre at least as far back as Joan Littlewood's Oh! What a Lovely War, but it was not until London Road when the potential for a more experimental approach to the 'setting' of verbatim material was used in musical theatre. This chapter offers a slightly alternative perspective into the performance based on the belief that 'the reworking of speech into sung tunes' does not signal an absence as much as an 'irruption of the real' as discussed by Lehmann. It compares the stage and film versions of the musical in relation to their contiguity to the 'real' vs a utopian sensibility that accompanies the more traditionally escapist approaches to the film musical. The film audience becomes less able to viscerally and experientially appreciate the connection between the original and the aesthetic reconstitution that Lehmann so profoundly connects to the 'irruption of the real' in performance.Citation
Zavros, D. (2017) London Road: the ‘irruption of the real’ and haunting utopias in the verbatim musical, in Rodosthenous, G. (Ed.) Twenty-First Century Musicals From Stage to Screen. London: Routledge, pp. 212-229.Publisher
RoutledgeAdditional Links
https://www.routledge.com/Twenty-First-Century-Musicals-From-Stage-to-Screen-1st-Edition/Rodosthenous/p/book/9781138648890Type
Chapter in bookLanguage
enDescription
This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Twenty-First Century Musicals From Stage to Screen, available online: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315626123 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.ISBN
9781138648906ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.4324/9781315626123
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/