“EVER AFTER” IS NOT ABOUT WINSTON CHURCHILL

Still, we thought you might enjoy hearing about Chartwell Booksellers proprietor Barry Singer’s new book. So please excuse the digression.

While navigating Chartwell Booksellers through its 38 years of existence, Barry Singer has continued to write about the arts for The New York Times Arts & Leisure section, The New Yorker, New York magazine,The New York Times Magazine, Opera News, USA Today, Huffington Post and Playbill, among others. Eighteen years ago, he authored a book about the previous 25 years in musical theater on and off Broadway, entitled EVER AFTER: The Last Years of Musical Theater and Beyond. This past week, he published a new and updated edition, EVER AFTER: Forty Years of Musical Theater and Beyond 1977-2020, extending the narrative to the pandemic closure of Broadway, just in time for Broadway’s current reopening.

Though Winston Churchill is absent from EVER AFTER , just about everyone involved in the Broadway musical over the past forty  years is vividly present. With nearly one hundred first-person interviews, the book delivers a definitive, behind-the-scenes, often first-person account of how these shows were made. From an unparalleled look at A Chorus Line‘s final bow through the revolutionary evolution of Sunday in the Park with George as recounted by Stephen Sondheim, the tragic triumph of Rent, the real people behind Disney’s mega-musicals, and even an afternoon with Andrew Lloyd Webber, EVER AFTER proceeds to a moment-by-moment account of the birth of Wicked by composer Stephen Schwartz; the extraordinary journeys of Fun Home, Dear Evan Hansen, The Band’s Visit, and Hadestown through the eyes of their respective creators; and, finally, the miracle of Hamilton as reconstructed by its producer Jeffrey Seller.

“It is nearly impossible to love Musicals and not fall into the well of joy that is Barry Singer’s Ever After,” observes Thomas Schumacher, the chief of Disney Theatrical and the producer of The Lion King. “With Singer as your reporter you are literally ‘in the room where it happened’ with one of the savviest theater writers of his generation.”

You can READ HERE about EVER AFTER‘s virtual book party last week.

And, of course, all copies of EVER AFER ordered from Chartwell Booksellers, will be signed by the author/proprietor. Just CLICK HERE.