Tag: book reviews

‘Making Musicals’ is book writer and lyricist Tom Jones’ intimate introduction to the business that he and composer Harvey Schmidt have been associated with since their first collaboration at the University of Texas in the late 1940’s. ‘Making Musicals’ is a very readable work. Genial wisdom tumbles out of the author like apples from an overturned basket. Jones relates the struggles of other well-known writers with a been-there-done-that sense of kinship. “The best a ‘teacher’ can do,” he states modestly, “Is to point out the problems and possibilities.” And so he does.

About midway through their appealing new book ‘Writing Musical Theater,’ authors Allen Cohen and Steven L. Rosenhaus set down three principles for writing an effective theater lyric. It must be concise, comprehensible and specific. That struck me as the perfect way to describe this practical guide for beginning and journeymen writers.