The Musical as Drama

“This Was a Real Nice Clambake,” sung by the citizens of whatever Maine town one imagines as the setting for Carousel, who have ...

ble basis of the musical helps to explain the enormous success of Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, and The King and Iin the 1 ...

Morning,” even a cappella for a minute, is a classic case of an unusual opening,^6 but the basic idea came from the source play. ...

unison-minded singers and dancers, so when in the second act they all come down to the footlights and sing the number “Oklahoma! ...

did not know who the characters were in the pantomime. Now we are finding that the sexy barker from the carousel, who wants to b ...

Figure Hornpipe danced after “Blow High, Blow Low” in the original production of Carousel . Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The ...

reason the song is so powerful is that its sentimental message coordinates with the means of its performance. Nettie can sing it ...

overture). Anna Leonowens and her young son are on a ship approaching Bangkok, courage is required, and Anna’s solution is “I Wh ...

character plays, but how many one-character musicals? Ham- let is not an ensemble performer. Romeo and Juliet build their charac ...

contrast between the ensembles for the poor and the ensem- bles for the rich, which have also been added to Shaw’s play. The Asc ...

point, with the triumph of the older tradition, My Fair Lady (opened March 1956), playing at the Mark Hellinger, a few blocks fr ...

dance, while Candidediffused its satire into narrative conven- tions, which never work well in musicals. Both of these con- vent ...

The number that demonstrates this chilling reversal of the Broadway convention is “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” Kander and Ebb’s ver ...

himself ) catch sight of the funeral procession from their win- dow. They don’t know who has died. Sally does not care. Chris ca ...

in the musical, a prostitute named Elsie. Elsie gave Sally Bowles this number and then achieved her place in memory when she die ...

show, a basic convention of the musical is being turned around. The final episode of Companyputs the ensemble out of the pic- tu ...

for Bobby might be taken to mean that the ensemble possibil- ity drains away, but Companycannot end with Bobby singing alone. Ev ...

member of an ensemble to have his own integrity and dreams.”^16 It is true that the musical offers temptations toward that inter ...

She walks into a room and you know She’s uncommonly rare, very unique, Peripatetic, poetic, and chic— In fact, this sensational ...

reflexivity does create a kind of integrated musical, but not the kind that is usually meant by that term. This is not the seam- ...