Maestros who reinvented the sound of MUSICALS
If music is all about timing, then Todd S Purdum is right on the beat with his joint biography of Rodgers and Hammerstein. On Broadway, a sensational new production of Carousel is busting the block. At the London Palladium, tickets are selling so fast for The King And I that its run has already been extended. And a digitally restored version of The Sound Of Music is to be screened at cinemas around the country.
So even if Something Wonderful were only half as good as its title it would likely do well. But it ought to do better than that, because it is the best introduction to Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein yet published.
The White House correspondent for Vanity Fair, Purdum has written his first showbiz biography with all the attention to detail – and subterfuge – that the best political reporters have. One of his most intriguing themes is whether Rodgers and Hammerstein ever actually liked one another. Though they wrote several of the most beloved musicals of all time, the two men were rarely in the same room together. Hammerstein wrote lyrics in his Pennsylvania farm, before sending them on to Rodgers in his Manhattan townhouse. But if this compositional technique was unconventional – melodist and lyricist are usually confined in a room, sweating and swearing until words and music work in unison – it was nothing next to the way Rodgers and Hammerstein rewrote the idea of the Broadway show. They tore up the idea of the musical as a dispensable, character-free story that existed only in order for singing and dancing, and replaced it with organically structured dramas in which the numbers arose out of – and advanced – the plot. Cosy and well-loved they might be, but shows such as Carousel, The King And I, South Pacific and The Sound Of Music are revolutionary works of art.
In New York and the West End, it’s time to storm their barricades once more.
‘Carousel, South Pacific and The Sound of Music are all revolutionary works of art’