Our Musicals, Ourselves (2003) is an important and necessary edition to any theater practitioner’s library. The book-length study of the American musical has heretofore been examined in chronologies, “show-specific” texts, and those ordered topically. John Bush Jones’s text is a chronology. Yet, it is unique in concept because in it Jones “examines musicals both in history and as history” (1). Never before has a chronology sought to deal with musicals historiographically as social histories. Gerald Bordman’s seminal chronology American Musical Theater: A Chronicle is designed to be all inclusive and therefore leaves little room to examine social changes, while Denny Martin Flinn’s Musical: A Grand Tour focuses on the evolution of the art and craft of the American musical rather than causes or effects of their production.  Jones’s use of the historical lens makes this book both valuable and interesting; nevertheless, it often falls short of its vast potential. The book has two major flaws which will hopefully be addressed in a second edition: continuity (through thesis and structure) and the uncertain criteria for the selection of representative musicals.

            Jones certainly takes on a loaded and important discussion of American theater history that deals with how musicals dramatize, mirror, or challenge the political, social, and cultural attitudes and beliefs in the United States. But he is unable to express what it is exactly he is trying to do with this book. In the second paragraph of his introduction, Jones attempts to define his objective for his chronicle, saying he is examining musicals as “theatrical vehicles that intended to transform, not just report the tenor of the times” (1). But to what end? Jones’s thesis is broad enough to allow him the freedom to explore American social history and the musical, which he does playfully and insightfully. It is also broad enough to demand some sort of thread of continuity in order to focus the conclusions.

 The chapters are broken down by decade, each beginning with a short refresher on important historical events from the era the chapter examines, followed by essays that  look at socially relevant musicals. But the author makes no clear connections in the body of his work between similar events in decades and the types of musicals produced in those times, allowing the decades to stand alone as blocks of time and not as a flowing river of people, events, and thoughts. All too often the essays themselves lack clear and concise thesis statements, especially those that concern more than one musical at a time, and never (with the exception of his essay on The Cradle Will Rock) does Jones conclude an essay by tying it back to its own social context or connecting the text and/or productions to history as an ongoing event. Instead, he leaves the reader to make his or her own conclusions. Jones rarely states whether a musical was successful at achieving its social goal. More often than not, he ties the disparate musicals together outside their respective decades by their evolution in structure rather than by their similarities in theme and/or social context. 

Jones declares that he “focuses almost exclusively on shows that in some way spoke to the issues, achievements, and often anxieties of their particular era”(1). But he never attempts to define what “social relevance” is, relying instead on some personal gage which categorizes high art and low art that ultimately regards most popular musicals misrepresentative of the issues, achievements, or anxieties of the times.  He eschews most long-running popular musicals, such as Adonis (the first musical to play over 500 times), Annie, Damn Yankees, Gypsy, and many many more because they were written as entertainment. Hence, he considers them diversionary and unworthy representatives of social climate. Never does he stop to ask why diversion may be desirable to the Broadway audience or to consider what of society is reflected in such diversion, although in the closing pages of his text he asserts that “themes and stories are inseparable” (350).  Furthermore, the reader is left wondering why the essay on Man of La Mancha is four-pages long and the treatment of Rent doesn’t even cover a page, since Rent is both enormously popular and topical. It becomes clear to the reader, if not to Jones, that this book speaks to the issues, achievements, and, more often than not, to the anxieties of its author.