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On Broadway: musical theater has tackled racism for decades, albeit covertly at times.

Article Excerpt
One of my favorite Broadway production numbers is "The Small House of Uncle Thomas," from The King and I. It's the long, lavish ballet in which children and courtiers entertain the king of Thailand with a home-grown performance of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Devised by Jerome Robbins, it uses the stylized dance-drama of Southeast Asia to tell the story of Topsy and Eliza and "King" Simon Legree--keeping intact its anti-slavery slant to prick the conscience of the real king.

I like it for a lot of reasons--the unembarrassed Eastern sonorities in Richard Rodgers' music, the sly humor of Oscar Hammerstein's narration, the adroit appropriation of Asian movement, and the wit of Robbins' cross-cultural translation of an all-American subject. But mostly I like how its musical-within-a-musical form winkingly mimics the way Rodgers and Hammerstein saw The King and I, and many of their other shows: as sneaky, easy-to-digest lessons about tolerance.

If you could ask every person attending a Broadway musical tonight why he...

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