The Musical as Drama

within their own repetitions but not quite with each other, so that the syncopation is pronounced. The composition is a study in ...

Green Grow the Lilacs, written in 1931 by Lynn Riggs, where Curly describes his fantastic surrey this way: A bran’ new surrey wi ...

THE BOOK AND THE NUMBERS 35 out tonight with me / Honey, here’s the way its going to be,” but let us concentrate on the chorus t ...

and the “winkin’ ” dashboard lamp turning into side-lights whose winkin’ and blinkin’ set one a-thinkin.’ One can see why Rodger ...

song-and-dance man enlarging characters in the silly plots of the 1920s. Curly does not dance at this point, one might say. But ...

words he sings, the words I quoted above about going on fer- ever. “(Aunt Eller’sand Laurey’slips move involuntarily, shaping th ...

Curly...Don’t you wish they wassich a rig, though? Nen you could go to the party and do a hoe-down til mornin’ ’f you was a mind ...

slowed, as though Curly is dreaming the thing. Laurey falls for this too—she might even have her head on his shoulder at this po ...

yet, but everyone knows they have fallen for each other— because they sing the same tune and repeat it the same way.^6 The song ...

which carries the characters into new versions of themselves.^7 On rare occasions this new dimension of characterization does co ...

“Soliloquy” never loses touch with its sources in American song. That is its genius. It builds several songs and segments into a ...

obstacles in their romance, find their way to reconciliation and eventual marriage. This is the standard turn in most ro- mantic ...

the number, when Sky finally rolls the dice after everyone has been singing and dancing at some length. The final beat occurs on ...

understand this at first. The degree of impudence in this won- derful plot cannot be overestimated. Not only does the turn- ing ...

point.^8 It blossoms into an ensemble number, with the gamblers and the mission workers all dancing and singing together—and thi ...

dramatizes the scene in which the cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, masters upper-class pronunciation under the instruc- tio ...

senger is trapped by plague restrictions and cannot deliver the news to Romeo that Juliet is alive. This is reported, not dram- ...

“for me” and not for her daughters—and would go on scream- ing “for me” while the orchestra faded out with scratchy vio- lins. “ ...

frightened by Jud all over again, at the box social itself in act 2, and she makes up her mind there, too. In an act 2 scene tha ...

Laurey. It’s time to start for the party.” The rapist/murderer of the dream is to be her date for the box social! So act 1 ends ...