Reading Into It- Broadway Books for Spring 2023

Spring is here and so is the Broadway season, full of exciting new shows and revivals of beloved classics. While many of them are original concepts or based on plays, five are based on books that you can add to your Spring reading list today. If you are seeing any of the below productions this Spring, check out how you can study up beforehand or unpack afterwards!

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See: Camelot
Read: The Once and Fure King by T. H. White

T. H. White's masterful retelling of the saga of King Arthur is a fantasy classic as legendary as Excalibur and Camelot, and a poignant story of adventure, romance, and magic that has enchanted readers for generations.

Once upon a time, a young boy called "Wart" was tutored by a magician named Merlyn in preparation for a future he couldn't possibly imagine. A future in which he would ally himself with the greatest knights, love a legendary queen and unite a country dedicated to chivalrous values. A future that would see him crowned and known for all time as Arthur, King of the Britons.

During Arthur's reign, the kingdom of Camelot was founded to cast enlightenment on the Dark Ages, while the knights of the Round Table embarked on many a noble quest. But Merlyn foresaw the treachery that awaited his liege: the forbidden love between Queen Guenever and Lancelot, the wicked plots of Arthur's half-sister Morgause and the hatred she fostered in Mordred that would bring an end to the king's dreams for Britain-and to the king himself.

Camelot is running on Broadway at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre.

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See: Life of Pi
Read: Life of Pi by Yann Martel

After the sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a wounded zebra, an orangutan-and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger.

Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi Patel, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with the tiger, Richard Parker, for 227 days while lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them "the truth." After hours of coercion, Pi tells a second story, a story much less fantastical, much more conventional-but is it more true?

Life of Pi is running on Broadway at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre.

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See: Pictures from Home
Read: Pictures from Home by Larry Sultan

First published in 1992 to wide critical acclaim, Pictures From Home is Larry Sultan's pendant to his parents. Sultan returned home to Southern California periodically in the 1980s and the decade-long sequence moves between registers, combining contemporary photographs with film stills from home movies, fragments of conversation, Sultan's own writings and other memorabilia. The result is a narrative collage in which the boundary between the documentary and the staged becomes increasingly ambiguous. Simultaneously the distance usually maintained between the photographer and his subjects also slips in an exchange of dialogue and emotion that is unique to this work.

Significantly increasing the page count of the original book, this MACK design of Pictures From Home clarifies the multiplicity of voices - both textual and pictorial - in order to afford a fresh perspective of this seminal body of work. Emphasising the cinematic motion of the family's home videos, the Super-8 film stills have been newly digitised and magnified, with select scenes running full-bleed across double-page spreads. Meanwhile, Sultan's photographs of his parents as they go about their daily lives - against the quintessential backdrop of the Reagan-era American dream - are supplemented with previously unpublished images. Most significantly, the book honours Sultan as the oft-hailed 'King of Colour Photography'.

Pictures from Home is running on Broadway at Studio 54.

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See: Peter Pan Goes Wrong
Read: Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie

J. M. Barrie's classic children's story is reimagined in this delightful full-color deluxe edition filled with all-new illustrations and ten removable features specially designed by MinaLima, the award-winning design studio behind the graphics for the Harry Potter films.

For more than a century, the adventures of Peter Pan-the boy who can fly and never grows up-and Wendy Darling have captured the hearts of generations of readers. In this enchanting illustrated volume, the fantastical world of Neverland and its magical inhabitants, including the Lost Boys, Captain Hook, Tiger Lily, and the beloved Tinker Bell, are brought to life like never before.

Peter Pan Goes Wrong is running on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

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See: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Read: The String of Pearls by James Malcolm Rymer

The exploits of Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street , have been recounted many times in plays, films and musicals, but the origins of the character largely were forgotten for many years. The String of Pearls - the original tale of Sweeney Todd, a classic of British horror - was first published as a weekly serial in 1846-7 by Edward Lloyd, the King of the Penny Dreadfuls.

One of the earliest detective stories, it became an important source for Bram Stoker's Dracula, but it was after over 150 years of obscurity that it appeared first in book form in the Wordsworth edition published in 2005. The one great mystery that has surrounded the book is who the author was - or was it possibly the work of more than one man? In his new introduction to this fully revised second edition, Dick Collins, by means of detailed research of contemporary records, has established finally the identity of the creator of this legendary figure. So here is the original story of the terrifying owner of that famous London barber-shop, and the secret recipe for Mrs Lovett s delicious pies...

Sweeney Todd is running on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.