This book offers the first full historical treatment of a music theatre that was once at the centre of London's West End. From the late Victorian period to the early 1920s, musical comedy was the single most popular form of 'legitimate' theatre entertainment. This lively account establishes musical comedy as one of the first industrial cultures and offers fascinating insights into how it functioned ideologically as a celebrated embracing of the modern condition.
'Musical comedy generated huge audiences, and thus can rightly be viewed as culturally and socially significant. Yet too frequently it and other 'middle-brow' cultures still remain beyond the cusp of scholarship. Len Platt's book rightly redresses this imbalance...It will remain a defining text for many years to come.' - Nick Hayes, Senior Lecturer, Nottingham Trent University