The Musical as Drama

grief, operatic singing became one of the ways characters could break into song. Opera singers took lead roles in musicals of th ...

musicals. Rodgers and Hammerstein had earlier tried highly unusual book shows that smacked of the concept musical, Alle- groand ...

which characters have two modes of existence in musicals. They were taking the convention literally, putting show business set- ...

form of drama in the age of Rodgers and Hammerstein, when the book became integrated with the music. I wish to say that the musi ...

should be held at an emotional distance from the action, able to evaluate what is before them.^23 Indeed, one of Brecht’s aims w ...

system on Broadway fits Brecht’s complaint closely enough, yet innovation has proved to be entirely possible in the musi- cal. T ...

learned how to produce tunes and verse in the standard for- mats. The most important thing they learned was how to con- nect the ...

the musical has no trouble showing. But the aesthetic of dis- unification also has the potential for resisting structures of wea ...

matter what either would have thought of the idea. I do not argue that Sondheim is a Brechtian dramatist; that would be pointles ...

Chapter Two THE BOOK AND THE NUMBERS Lyric Time O Fthe two orders of time that the musical sets against one another, lyric time— ...

movements of their own discipline, which reflect the music and reinvent it at the same time. Song brings words into contact with ...

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 ...