Women Writing Musicals: The Legacy That the History Books Left Out

Tepper (The Untold Stories of Broadway), creative director at 54 Below, a nonprofit cabaret club, provides an exhaustive tribute to women whose contributions to Broadway musical history have often been overlooked. Spanning from the 18th century to the present, the brief profiles feature such figures as Ann Julia Hatton, “the first woman to write a libretto” (for 1794’s Tammany); Elsie Janis, who starred in and wrote the lyrics for 1919’s Elsie Janis and Her Gang on Broadway, which featured out-of-work WWI veterans; and the all-female creative team behind 1922’s Just Because. Carolyn Leigh’s lyrics to the mid-20th-century musicals Peter Pan and Little Me helped to make her one of the first “female musical theatre writers to enter the permanent canon of the art form,” while Quiara Alegría Hudes wrote the book to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit musical In the Heights, helping to break new ground by “paint[ing] a portrait of real modern-day Latinx people and their everyday struggles.” Tepper is thorough in her research and well-intentioned in her attempt to right historical wrongs, though stiff prose and the sheer number of profiles makes this best suited for scholars and devoted fans of the genre. It’s a valuable if occasionally dry accounting of a lesser-known corner of Broadway history. (Nov.)