Overture : all singin'! all dancin'! all white people? -- Act one : 1927-1957 -- Only make believe : performing race in Show boat -- Playing cowboys and Indians : forging whiteness in Oklahoma! and Annie get your gun -- Trouble in New York City : the racial politics of West Side story and the Music man -- Act two : 1967-2012 -- Carbon copies : Black and interracial productions of white musicals -- A chorus line : the Benetton of Broadway musicals -- Everything old is new again : nostalgia and the Broadway musical at the end of the twentieth century -- Exit music
Summary
The Great White Way reveals the racial politics, content, and subtexts that have haunted musicals for almost one hundred years from Show Boat (1927) to The Scottsboro Boys (2011). It investigates the thematic content of the Broadway musical and considers how musicals work on a structural level, allowing them to simultaneously present and hide their racial agendas. New archival research will have theater fans and scholars forever rethinking how they view this popular American ente
