The study of musical theatre is an emerging research area, with a plethora of books being published in the past decade. Academically, the area of study needs further contextualization. Since 2008, the dedicated journal Studies in Musical Theatre serves that purpose by publishing up-to-date research on the field and is still the only journal of its kind. Nine years after the first publication of The Cambridge Companion to the Musical (2002), which functioned as the main textbook on musical theatre courses and modules, Raymond Knapp, Mitchell Morris and Stacy Wolf offer The Oxford Handbook of the American Musical (2011).

The Handbook is designed as a ‘teaching tool’ and the editors elaborate on its purpose further by saying that it is designed ‘not (necessarily) to be read cover to cover, nor (necessarily) assigned in order, but as a resource for instructors, students, and aficionados of the musical and as a complement to other studies currently available’ (p. 5). Thus the volume is not intended as groundbreaking research. The twenty-nine short chapter contributions are written mostly by American scholars (except for three British contributions). As an additional resource, the volume offers a website with ‘nearly two hundred audio, video, image or text examples’ to be used side by side with the book. This feature was pioneered by Knapp in two recent studies, The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity (2006) and The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity (2009). The audiovisual resources make the experience a rather three-dimensional one with apt and well-selected examples to accompany the written part of the Handbook.

The pragmatic usefulness of the volume is evident throughout. An excellent example is Geoffrey Block's ‘Integrating the Musical Play’, which gives a succinct summary of the features of a ‘well integrated musical’ (p. 98). These features include songs which ‘advance the plot’, ‘flow directly from the dialogue’ or ‘express the characters who sing them’, as well as dances which ‘advance the plot and enhance the dramatic meaning of the songs that precede them’, and the orchestra, which ‘through accompaniment and underscoring, parallels, complements or advances the action’ (pp. 98–9). Some contributors do probe less familiar aspects. Dominic Symonds's piece on the orchestration of musicals offers thoughtful consideration of the ingredients that make for the distinctive Broadway sound at the different stages of its evolution: from the fusion of operetta with vaudeville to rock and the megamusical.

The strong prejudice towards the hagiographic in the literature on the American musical is, in part, counterbalanced by the volume's contributors. In spite of the predominance of American scholars, theatrical and performance issues receive much greater attention than do the artists involved in the shows. Moreover, some authors, such as David Savran, offer critiques of the industry: ‘Despite the invasion of Broadway by multinational corporations and simulations of mass culture, musicals remain an archaic mode of production that seems almost embarrassingly quaint in a culture of hyper-marketing and instant celebrity’ (p. 248).

The book illuminates a fine range of key perspectives in the history and theory of the musical, aimed at students on countless university minor study programmes. As in any volume of this size, however, there are tantalizing insights here, but one senses that some of the authors’ material merits fuller, more detailed treatment. Perhaps the brevity of the articles is part of the book's charm, but it admittedly prevents the volume from sustaining a rigorous approach to critically analysing its subject matter in depth, which was more of a feature of The Cambridge Companion to the Musical. The volume is impressive in scope and will function as a contesting rival to existing volumes on musical theatre in university libraries and curricula all over the world.