Book Reviews: An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre

Mayes and Whitfield tackle a thorny area of musical theatre history with depth and complexity

British musical theatre history books often take a predictable format and explore predictable content. Mordden's Pick A Pocket or Two lists Gay, Gilbert and Sullivan, Novello, and Coward, finally arriving at Lloyd Webber. Gordon and Jubin's The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical is similar, although they acknowledge the colonial roots of the British Empire in their early chapters. Whitfield and Mayes go much, much deeper than their counterparts, not fearing to delve into complex stories.

Focusing solely between 1900 and 1950 they reframe British musical theatre history from a variety of perspectives. The first, of course, is the rich and often excluded or overlooked body of work of Black artists and the racial diversity prior to the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush. They introduce not only performers but producers, choreographers and musicians. Another perspective is the definition of musical theatre, which the authors move beyond the traditional and beyond London's West End. A third perspective is the socio-political aspects of the UK (and in fact the world) during the focus period, including Black activist movements, events and figures.

The book demonstrates how social history and performance history are tightly intertwined with their networks expanding beyond the UK. As such, it is a book that would benefit teachers and students of not only drama but also (socio-political) history.

Mayes and Whitfield, rightly, put a fine point on the title of the book being a ‘Black history’ of British musical theatre as opposed to ‘history of Black British musical theatre’. While this level of detail allows the book to explore the subject with the required depth, it also makes the book a little dense to read. To decipher the full meaning of the authors’ commentary the readers must do some work, which perhaps makes the book more suitable for scholars and higher-level students. Having said that, it is a valuable resource for teachers and for those who are responsible for providing an inclusive musical theatre curriculum.

The authors say it is their (and our duty) that ‘no Black musical theatre student, creator or spectator ever sees a history of the form that doesn't have them included’.