The Frommers (Growing up Jewish in America, 1995, etc.) have gathered together the recollections (of widely varying frankness and detail) of actors, playwrights, directors, producers, designers, composers, and critics active in the evolution of theater in New York over the past seven decades. Those who find backstage details about the theater (and more particularly about the musical theater) absorbing will very likely enjoy the often witty chat recorded here ,including the widely varying, but generally warm recollections of the producers and actors who worked on many of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s landmark musicals, and the musings of a number of figures, from Patricia Neal to Richard Kiley to Louise Lasser, about the manner in which they launched their careers. There are also loving but unsparing portraits of the lives and careers of such major innovators as Bob Fosse and Michael Bennett. But those looking for more than a fleeting recognition of the downside of the business, or for some measured consideration of what, precisely, makes a piece of theatre succeed an art should probably look elsewhere. (b&w photos)
