The Villainous Stage: Crime Plays on Broadway and in the West End

Live theatre was once the main entertainment medium in the United States and the United Kingdom. The preeminent dramatists and actors of the day wrote and performed in numerous plays in which crime was a major plot element. This remains true today, especially with the longest-running shows such as The Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables and Sweeney Todd.

While hundreds of books have been published about crime fiction in film and on television, the topic of stage mysteries has been largely...