In The Secret Life of the American Musical, Viertel gives musicals the Shakespeare treatment. The book draws on a range of examples―from Carousel to Wicked, The Music Man to The Book of Mormon―and personal encounters to paint a picture of how Broadway musicals are made, taking you through all the phases of a typical musical theater story, from opening numbers to finales. It’s a hilarious and compelling look at what Viertel has learned over the course of his career, full of observations about the egotists, geniuses, and workaday