“This Was a Real Nice Clambake,” sung by the citizens of
whatever Maine town one imagines as the setting for Carousel,
who have just had a picnic on an island across the bay and who
are now lolling about in “languorous contentment,” singing
one of Hammerstein’s brilliant essays into pure corniness. “The
vittles we et / Were good, you bet! / The company was the
same.” This could just as well be called the “Hayride” type of
number, for it was first written as “This Was a Real Nice
Hayride” for Oklahoma!and then cut, but hayride or clambake,
the ideology is the same. People in their best moments voice
the joy and reassurance of community. I want to glance at this
ideology in the most famous Rodgers and Hammerstein musi-
cals in a moment, for it is a defining achievement in the genre,
but I also want to add that some of the most interesting musi-
cals of the past fifty years have questioned the Clambake ver-
sion of ensemble, have placed it under ironic examination,
turned it inside out, disbelieved it. Rodgers and Hammerstein
carried the idea of ensemble to a peak of sentimentality that
could hardly be imitated. The 1960s brought new attitudes
and new musical styles into play—the 1950s could not be imi-
tated, either. Some good shows of the 1950s did match up to
the Rodgers and Hammerstein model, but for the most part
the influential musicals of the past fifty years have reversed the
code of the sentimental ensemble and questioned its plati-
tudes. They have not given up ensembles, but have used them
in new ways.
Rodgers and Hammerstein
Mark Steyn has remarked that Oscar Hammerstein wrote about
one subject above all others, community.^5 The close fit be-
tween this preoccupation of Hammerstein’s and the ensem-
82 CHAPTER FOUR
(^5) In Broadway Babies, Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now, p. 97, and in his
program notes to the Royal National Theatre production of Oklahoma!, di-
rected by Trevor Nunn.