Theatre Survey, 66.3

Opening section

Ryan Donovan reminds us at the outset of Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity that “Broadway is a fundamentally conservative institution whose casting has […] upheld ableism, fat phobia, heterosexism, misogyny, and white supremacy” (4). Donovan’s book takes the Broadway musical as its object of study, focusing specifically on a few of the most notable casting practices related to Broadway musicals in the past fifty years, but the book—as its subtitle attests—is, in many ways, about the power of conformity and norms of beauty. For Donovan, decisions about which performers to hire for Broadway roles are the primary ground on which battles regarding fat phobia, heterosexism, and ableism are fought. In opposition to current casting practices, Broadway Bodies articulates an overt political agenda, arguing that “Achieving parity should be casting’s first goal: performers from marginalized groups should have the right to play not just their own identity but also the range of roles regularly offered to others. Casting is how the industry can start redressing its unequal distribution of roles” (11). Donovan’s book doesn’t claim to offer a road map for better casting practices but instead focuses on several key moments in recent Broadway history, tracing an account of representational politics along the lines of the work of John M. Clum in his books Acting Gay (1992) and Something for the Boys (1999).

Broadway Bodies takes 1975’s A Chorus Line as its starting point, using the musical to describe the “Broadway Body” and the way A Chorus Line made the triple-threat physique into an institution, even an assembly line. This section on Michael Bennett’s groundbreaking musical is the richest of Donovan’s chapters, diving deeply into the way A Chorus Line established the musical theatre performer’s body as a dancer’s body, merging the dancer and singer into a single physical type—a fungible, replicable physique. The replication of this particular body type became necessary, Donovan notes, not only because of A Chorus Line’s final number, “One,” but also because of the simultaneous multiple productions of A Chorus Line and the need for new performers to substitute for dancers who became exhausted by the show’s physical demands.