User:Alisoncasler/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Musical theatre

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I was quite active in my high school's drama club, and I still have an interest in musical theatre today. Due to the current pandemic's effects on Broadway, the recent movie musicals that have been theatrically released in the past few months, and the consistent new shows being written and produced daily, I figured that the article would be quite extensive. Initially I was a bit overwhelmed by the article, which is due in part to the fact that it covers such a broad topic. I could have easily found an article focused on just musical theatre on Broadway, or the West End, or musical theatre movies, or musical theatre within a certain time period.

Evaluate the article
This article's lead section was strong, since it accurately provides a brief definition of what musical theatre is within the first sentence before delving into more specifics without being too specialized. The lead is a bit long, with some information that could be included in the "History" section (some points about Edwardian musical comedies and Princess Theatre musicals didn't have to be as in-depth as they were in the lead section).

All of the article's content was relevant to the topic and organized in an effective manner. Discussions about COVID-19's effect on musical theatre proves that the content is up-to-date.

The article is neutral, and considers both sides of controversies associated with certain musical theatre projects (such as the AIDS controversy as it relates to Rent). The "Social Themes" section acknowledges musicals written to encourage societal toleration of minorities and addressed racial issues of the time periods. There definitely could have been more added to this section, (there was no mention of the colorblind casting of Hamilton, for instance) but since minorities and controversies have played such a large role in the history of musical theatre, it's a good sign that this article addresses that.

The sources included in the article are thorough and diverse, both through their mediums, authors, and recency. A few of the references linked at the end of the article didn't work, most likely due to the fact that the websites they belonged to were old or deleted, but the majority of links were functional.

The article is well-written, and I didn't notice any spelling errors. The article is well-organized, and it's easy to see how each of the subheadings relate to the larger topics/concepts they belong to. Some of the sections were a bit unattractive to look at just because they were often one large paragraph of information, so separating these big paragraphs into smaller paragraphs of information may aid in organization and clarity.

The images included in the article are adequately captioned, and provide visual references for many important points made throughout the text. All images do adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations, and clicking on the pictures will take readers to the original source of the images. The images do well at not interrupting the flow of the text in that they aren't disruptive or in the way of the reading, however they could stand to be a bit larger. Some of the photos depict posters with words on them, which are hard to read when the images themselves are so small.

The talk page for this article is not particularly active, and only has one entry mentioning a possible addition of a Sondheim musical mention in the lead section. The article has been rated as B-class and is part of WikiProject Musical Theatre. This article discusses this topic on a bit of a superficial level, simply listing the history of musical theatre and namedropping famous works instead of delving deeper into the backgrounds of society that led to the creation of these musicals and their cultural impact.

The article is strong on a surface level-- there are no grammar and spelling mistakes, the organization is comprehensive, and citations are accurate. However, the photos in the article are not always the best images used to convey certain topics and can be rather small, and the text glosses over some key underlying motivations behind musicals in favor of simply listing famous composers and playwrights. The lead could be shortened, paragraphs could be split up to become more visually appealing, and yet the article is well-developed and as long as it is updated as new developments in the musical theatre world occur, it is a strong introduction for anyone looking to learn more about musical theatre.

~ Alison Casler