Oz and the Musical

How has The Wizard of Oz become so popular on film, television, and stage? This book offers new insights into American identity through the special relationship between musicals and L. Frank Baum's children's novel. Drawing on personal experience, Ryan Bunch offers new readings of the MGM film (1939), The Wiz (1975), Wicked (2003), and other Oz musicals to reveal how the performative magic of the fairy tale musical, with its implied inclusions and exclusions, imagines an American utopia.