Review of Love is Love is Love: Broadway Musicals and LGBTQ Politics, 2010-2020 by Aaron Thomas (Routledge, 2023)
Appeared in Theatre Topics 34.2 (July 2024), pp. 191-192.
This review assesses Aaron C. Thomas’s Love Is Love Is Love: Broadway Musicals and LGBTQ Politics, 2010–2020, a timely study of how commercial Broadway navigates the paradox of increased LGBTQ visibility alongside intensifying queerphobic violence. Across case studies ranging from Promises, Promises, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and The Color Purple to Disney’s Newsies and Frozen, Thomas situates musicals within broader political and cultural currents, tracing debates over authenticity in casting, queer worldmaking, and the politics of representation. The book’s ecological approach to repertoire—spanning revivals, adaptations, Jr. editions, and digital media—foregrounds musicals as contested sites of identification and survival. While most persuasive in its reading of The Color Purple as a model of coalitional queer politics, Love Is Love Is Love also equips educators with accessible frameworks for classroom discussions of Broadway’s ethics and politics. The review emphasizes Thomas’s contribution as a historiography of contemporary musical theatre that insists on “love” as both an aesthetic intervention and a political practice of queer flourishing.