The field of musical theatre scholarship has grown in breadth and depth in the last decade. Once-dominant musicological studies are now joined by Stacy Wolf's lesbian reading of musical theatre heroines and performers, A Problem Like Maria (2002); Andrea Most's history, Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical (2004); and Bruce Kirle's examination of how musicals' sociopolitical context can impact their nature as live performances, Unfinished Business: Broadway Musicals as Works-in-Progress (2005), to list a few. Miranda Lundskaer-Nielsen's new study adds to this group of focussed readings a much-needed consideration of the director's role in the musical theatre production process.

She proposes a demystification of the so-called “British invasion” of Broadway in the 1980s, offering

Two chapters on American director–producer Harold Prince establish his groundbreaking work on socially conscious musicals, with Lundskaer-Nielsen concluding he was more aligned with a Russian and European theatre aesthetic than with the commercial, American form in which he worked.

Chapters 3 and 4 take up the work of Trevor Nunn, John Caird and Nicholas Hytner on musicals such as Les Misérables and Miss Saigon and focus on the nuts and bolts of putting large-scale musicals onstage. Lundskaer-Nielsen credits their success to these directors' training and experience at British repertory theatres and companies such as the RSC.

Chapters 5 and 6 cross the Atlantic to examine the growth of musicals at not-for-profit theatres in New York, focussing on writer–directors James Lapine and George C. Wolfe in particular. Two chapters on revivals directed by British directors follow, before a conclusion on the legacy of the 1980s and 1990s. A useful appendix of interviews with contemporary musical theatre composers, directors and producers is also included.

While this monograph provides a much-needed history of certain aspects of modern musical theatre, the reader is never fully convinced by the connections the author attempts to draw between the different narratives. The pairs of chapters work well on their own, but the title's promise of exploring both British and American musicals is never fulfilled. What Lundskaer-Nielsen describes as British theatre practice is not uniquely British, but rather the standard for much theatre practice at not-for-profit, subsidized theatres in many Western countries. Meaningful analysis of the cultural factors influencing the selected musicals would have enriched this study.

More crucially, the author routinely dismisses the work of choreographer–directors, lumping Michael Bennett, Bob Fosse and Jerome Robbins together despite the significant differences in their styles and approaches to musical theatre staging. In framing the director's work as chiefly responsible for the success of the musicals examined here, the author fails to acknowledge the role of song and dance as expressive devices, a problematic omission when the megamusicals she discusses were conceived by songwriters. A more balanced study might acknowledge the collaborative nature of musical theatre, and the different ways directors negotiate and manage that collaboration. Lundskaer-Nielsen has further widened the field of musical theatre scholarship and her study should stimulate lively debate.