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A Musical about the Value of Blind Self-Belief A Musical about the Value of Blind Self-Belief
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Starlight Express in New York and in Las Vegas Starlight Express in New York and in Las Vegas
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A Jukebox Show of Aggressive Intertextuality A Jukebox Show of Aggressive Intertextuality
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Queen and We Will Rock You in the United States, or, A Tale of Two Sensibilities Queen and We Will Rock You in the United States, or, A Tale of Two Sensibilities
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Conclusion Conclusion
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Notes Notes
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Bibliography Bibliography
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15 Beloved in London, Ignored in New York: Starlight Express and We Will Rock You
Get accessDavid Cottis is senior lecturer in scriptwriting and programme leader for BA Film at Middlesex University. He received his PhD from Birkbeck College. He is also a theatre director, writer, lyricist, and dramaturge, most recently having worked with James Martin Charlton on the horror play Black Stone for Just Some Theatre Company. His five-actor adaptation of Oliver Twist was taken on national tour by the Love and Madness Company; his short plays Cash and Semolina were seen at the Royal Court Theatre, London; and his opera libretto She Stops at Costa’s was short-listed for the English National Opera’s ‘New Voices’ project. He has edited A Dirty Broth and A Ladder of Words, two anthologies of twentieth-century Welsh plays in English for the Parthian Press, and wrote the chapter on Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical.
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Published:23 October 2023
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Abstract
Since the 1970s and the rise of the so-called megamusical, it has often been assumed that the British and American audiences form a single market, with shows that triumph in the West End inevitably doing the same on Broadway. However, it isn’t always that simple. This chapter examines two shows, both long-runners in the West End, that failed to reproduce their success in the United States: Starlight Express (1984) ran two seasons, as opposed to its eighteen in London, while We Will Rock You (2002) became the most successful British musical not to open on Broadway since Salad Days (1954). This chapter examines the differing transatlantic fates of these two shows and looks at what this tells us about national attitudes to rock music, spectacle, and to the musical theatre itself.
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