what would barbra do?
You won’t find me in the singalong at Marie’s Crisis, but I just finished – and loved – Emma Brockes’ "What Would Barbra Do? : How Musicals Changed My Life". 
It reminded me of the passionate audiences who flocked to "Singalong Sound of Music", the first show I produced in New York. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, smart and fun and sarcastic. Brockes’ captures a tone – simultaneously biting, irreverent and adoring – that Time Out only dreams of.
And it’s no fluffy love letter to musicals; it may be her presonal project but Brockes is a serious journalist.(Her Wikipedia entry is about a Noam Chomsky controversy her work ignited, not her analysis of Yentl.) 
So why did the US publisher deliver a Barbara Cartland-on-steroids book cover? Were they trying to turn off buyers? Did they figure that Broadway fans are a legion of Mr Humphries from "Are You Being Served", 50 year old gay men mincing to their window dressing day jobs.
I nearly didn’t buy the book when I stumbled on it at Borders. And I took the dust jacked off so I could read it on the subway. Meanwhile, there’s a second cover on Amazon – presumably the UK edition. It’s fun and irreverent and captures a book in which Babs plays only a small role.