Ryan Donovan reminds us at the outset of Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity that “Broadway is a fundamentally conservative institution whose casting has. . . upheld ableism, fat phobia, heterosexism, misogyny, and white supremacy” (4). Donovan’s book takes the Broadway musical as its object of study, focusing specifically on a few of the most notable casting practices related to Broadway musicals in the past fifty years, but the book—as its subtitle attests—is, in many ways, about the power of conformity and norms of beauty. For Donovan, decisions about which performers to hire for Broadway roles are the primary ground on which battles regarding fat phobia, heterosexism, and ableism are fought. In opposition to current casting practices, Broadway Bodies articulates an overt political agenda, arguing that “Achieving parity should be casting’s first goal: performers from marginalized groups should have the right to play not just their own identity but also the range of roles regularly offered to others. Casting is how the industry can start redressing its unequal distribution of roles” (11). Donovan’s book doesn’t claim to offer a road map for better casting practices but instead focuses on several key moments in recent Broadway history, tracing an account of representational politics along the lines of the work of John M. Clum in his books Acting Gay (1992) and Something for the Boys (1999).

Broadway Bodies takes 1975’s A Chorus Line as its starting point, using the musical to describe the “Broadway Body” and the way A Chorus Line made the triple-threat physique into an institution, even an assembly line. This section on Michael Bennett’s groundbreaking musical is the richest of Donovan’s chapters, diving deeply into the way A Chorus Line established the musical theatre performer’s body as a dancer’s body, merging the dancer and singer into a single physical type—a fungible, replicable physique. The replication of this particular body type became necessary, Donovan notes, not only because of A Chorus Line’s final number, “One,” but also because of the simultaneous multiple productions of A Chorus Line and the need for new performers to substitute for dancers who became exhausted by the show’s physical demands.

The remainder of Broadway Bodies is divided into three further parts—one each on size, queerness, and disability. In these parts, however, Donovan largely departs from the methods used in his first on A Chorus Line. Moving away from an examination of economic structures and disciplinary conformity to bodily norms, the remainder of the book focuses on what Donovan calls “non-conforming bodies” (6)—exceptions to the rules established by the advent of the triple threat. Chapters 2–7 highlight particular performers whose bodies contrasted mainstream standards of thinness, straightness, and ability. Because of Donovan’s investment in representational politics, these chapters tend to focus on characters rather than performers. For his examination of fatness in the Broadway musical in Part II, “Size,” Donovan discusses Effie in Dreamgirls (Chapter 2) followed by Tracy in Hairspray (Chapter 3). These two chapters contain the central thrust of Broadway Bodies; Donovan’s discussions of these two musicals are complicated with histories related to their casting, recasting, national searches for subsequent productions, interviews with actresses and casting directors, and press surrounding the performances.

“Size” is followed by Part III, “Sexuality,” an exploration of the casting and reception of La Cage aux Folles (Chapter 4) and then “‘Keeping It Gay’ on the Great White Way” (Chapter 5), which covers a survey of topics related to gay men and lesbians in the Broadway musical, including representations of people living with HIV/AIDS, Broadway Cares, the closet, “butch[ing] it up” (134), and casting straight actors to play gay characters (and vice versa). Part IV on disability follows a similar model, with a detailed exploration of Deaf West’s production of Spring Awakening (Chapter 6), followed by “Musicals, Physical Difference, and Disability” (Chapter 7). This final chapter of Broadway Bodies is also its least argument-driven, describing a rapid-fire series of disability-related topics and their conjunctions with the Broadway musical—muteness in Finian’s Rainbow, Once upon a Mattress, and The Who’s Tommy; facial disfigurement in Phantom of the Opera; ugly laws and The Color Purple; social ostracism in Carrie; shortness in Shrek—thus demonstrating a wide array of the Broadway musical’s uses of what David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder called “narrative prosthesis” in their groundbreaking book of the same name (214).

Broadway Bodies concludes with an Epilogue featuring four brief portraits of organizations that are attempting to reshape Broadway’s casting policies from without: the National Asian Artists Project, the Broadway Body Positivity Project, Ring of Keys, and Deaf Broadway. As Donovan notes, “Each of these mission-driven groups formed in response to labor concerns and/or exclusion from participation in Broadway musicals, and each aims to reach under-served and under-represented communities” (239).

Donovan’s book is accessible, readable, and deeply invested in representational politics. In this way, Broadway Bodies, like the four organizations in its Epilogue, is committed to advocacy related to casting: better roles for more people, more inclusivity, and more accurate representations. But the book is less clear about what “accurate” or better representations might look like, and even about how such accuracy might be achieved. Donovan takes strong moral positions; about the closet, for example, he writes that “Broadway actors appear to be, one hopes, out for good” (172), but then his discussions, and even his chapters, often end with questions prompted by those same value judgments, as in: “One can come out about being gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, and so on but then what roles are available to them? And what does it mean for these actors to play it straight or another identity under the queer umbrella that they don’t share?” (176). These and many more of the book’s questions go unanswered in Broadway Bodies. The book’s method is to focus on exceptional individuals rather than industry structures and cultural standards, but this means that although Broadway Bodies calls for a series of changes, firmly articulating a group of desired outcomes, the book remains unsure about how its representational goals might be achieved or what those anticipated changes might engender.