Well, let me say this: If I wanted to see a bunch of Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals and the analyze them to death - I WOULDN'T HAVE GONE TO A REVUE!!!!
Fact is, I was just looking to hear some jolly tunes and see some attractive young people sing them. Therefore, my revue review (to coin a phrase) was based on that experience, not on exposure to full fledged productions of 10 or 12 R&H shows.
Now, about the songs. Although I'm sure Ms. Morehead considers her interpretations valid within her rather dark view of humanity, I would offer these alternate views:
"Hello Young Lovers" features an older woman (How Old? My age? Ms. Morehead's age? Is there anyone Ms. Morehead's age?) looking back upon her life reflected in the light of a young couple's blossoming love. She is filled with the joy of the love she has known in her life, and joyful for the journey of love these youngsters are about to embark upon. When she sings "All of my memories are happy tonight..." she doesn't add "...because I'm dried-up, old, and alone." does she, Ms. Morehead?
And "If I Loved You" is not, as you say, a tease, Madame. It is the plaintive cry of someone who is in love but can't admit it. The "If" is an ironic "If". Truth be told, she is so in love that she fears to acknowledge it, fears that it can only lead to the difficulties expressed in the song. Of course the lyrics belie these fear. If words, indeed, "wouldn't come in an easy way" the song would go like this:
"If I loved you, words wouldn't come in an easy way
I'd prolly go 'round in, um, you know, like, circles 'n' stuff."
Finally, "Something Wonderful" has always had a special place in my heart because it's message - Most of the time he's a royal screw-up, but occasionally he does something right - is pretty much the story of my life (as any regular reader of this effort will attest.) I mean, really,
"He will not always say
What you would have him say,
But now and then he'll do
Something
Wonderful"
isn't quite the same as
"He'll beat you every day
And steal your hard earned pay,
'Cause in the end he just
Wants to
Abuse you, gal."
However, Ms. Morehead's critique has made me realize one thing. In the face of such whithering criticism, I feel the only decent thing for me to do is renounce my title as Mr. Theater.
From now on I will be known, in many circles, as Mr. Occasionally He Does Something Right.
3 comments:
You wrote: "He will not always say
What you would have him say,
But now and then he'll do
Something
Wonderful"
[Editorial note: Where you've written the word "Do" you should actually have written the word "Say". - TM]
isn't quite the same as
"He'll beat you every day
And steal your hard earned pay,
'Cause in the end he just
Wants to
Abuse you, gal."
Isn't it? What is the next stanza?
"The thoughtless things he'll do,
Will hurt and worry you,
But now and then he'll do,
Something wonderful.
Your statement: " my revue review (to coin a phrase) was based on that experience, not on exposure to full fledged productions of 10 or 12 R&H shows." is disingenuous, as we both know you are well aware of the full-show contexts, as any "Mr. Theater" would be.
The song SOMETHING WONDERFUL is sung by the oldest wife of a polygamist. The "Thoughtless things he'll do" includes having Luntha, Tuptim's lover, and the singer of I HAVE DREAMED, killed, flogging Tuptim personally for daring to love someone other than "Her Lord and Master" (Another song in that show, and a far more honest one), and being a bad slave, and of course, he then has Tuptim burned alive at the stake. Yes, those thoughtless things he does WILL "hurt and worry you." Flogging hurts. In fact, those thoughtless things may even kill you.
But ignore the horrors he inflicts on his slaves and his army of wives, because every once in a while, perhaps annually, he says "Something Wonderful." Yeah, that makes up for it.
" 'Something Wonderful' has always had a special place in my heart because it's message - Most of the time he's a royal screw-up, but occasionally he does something right - is pretty much the story of my life (as any regular reader of this effort will attest.)"
No. He's not "A royal-screw-up"; he's a murdering polygamist who keeps slaves and flogs them if they dare to have their own emotions, and then burns them alive. This is not the story of your life. You're a civilized man, who may have had multiple wives, but one-at-a-time, and who, to the best of my knowledge, has never flogged or killed anyone.
The fact is that the idea that no matter how horrifically abusive a man is, if you are his woman, put up with it because love means ignoring how brutal and subhuman your man is, and loving him even as he beats you, is a running theme throughout all of Oscar Hammerstein's work, not just with Richard Rogers but well before. "He beats me too" goes his lyric in MY MAN from SHOWBOAT, just before she sings "On my man, I love him so, he'll never know." And how does that lovely melodically but repulsive lyrically song end?
"What's the difference if I say I'll go away,
When I know I'll come back on my knees someday,
For WHATEVER MY MAN IS, [Caps mine. - TM]
I am his,
Forever more."
I may vomit.
CARROSEL is the most egregious example, as that is what the whole show is about. A worthless, wife-beating criminal ruins the life of his girlfriend, and then comes back from the dead to try and make amends for being a shit by slapping around his daughter from beyond the grave. "Momma, can a man hit you, hit you hard, and it not hurt at all?" the daughter (Played in the movie by my good friend Susan Luckey) asks. "Yes dear," her dishrag, self-esteem-free mother Julie dishonestly replies to her. The point of Carrossel seems to be that, if you love your worthless man strongly enough, you won't even feel it when he beats you senseless. Oh yes you will.
Another song in that show, one of the most horrible, is WHAT'S THE USE OF WONDERIN?
"What's the use of wonderin',
if he's good or if he's bad?
He's your fella and you love him,
That's all there is to that."
No, that is NOT all there is to that. Nor is it in SOMETHING WONDERFUL. I have no ability to get sentimental and all "Ahh, he's really nice" about a slave-keeping (and whipping), mudering polygamist.
You wrote: "When she sings "All of my memories are happy tonight..." she doesn't add "...because I'm dried-up, old, and alone." does she, Ms. Morehead?"
No she doesn't, because
1. It would upset all the romantic, starry-eyed slush fans in your seat who buy the tickets, and
2. It's implied. After all, if she weren't dried-up, old, and alone, she'd be with her own lover rather than peeping on the young, doomed-to-die-horribly-before-the-final-curtain young lovers.
She's "joyful for the journey of love these youngsters are about to embark upon." You mean the journey to his stabbing, and her flogging and death at the stake a few weeks later? No. Because Anna doesn't know about that yet. On the other hand, she DOES know that Tuptim is a slave, and not allowed to love anyone but the King, on pain of a really painful death. Just what happy journey could she possibly imagine them having? That the king will turn into sloppy romantic heap of mush, free her, and be best man at her wedding to Luntha? If she does imagine that, she's too dumb to educate the young.
You wrote: "And 'If I Loved You' is not, as you say, a tease, Madame. It is the plaintive cry of someone who is in love but can't admit it."
She's perfectly able to admit it, but wants the other to admit it first, while she plays this disingenuous word game. As you pointed out, when she says "Words wouldn't come in an easy way," it's a flat-out lie, as she reels off the top of her head complex rhyme schemes that Oscar probably spent hours on. It's game-playing and manipulative. It IS a tease.
It's true you live in New York, "Birthplace of The American Musical Theater," though you were born in Los Angeles, birthplace of the Hollywood sell-out, and raised in Orange County, California, birthplace of Disneyland, but I was actually born IN a theater!
Cheers darling.
You make some good points, but wouldn't it be fairer to credit (or blame) the authors of the source material (James A. Michener, Anna Leonowens, Ferenc Molnar, et. al.) for creating these characters. Rodgers and Hammerstein just wrote the songs.
It might be, except that this attitude about the romantic relations of the sexes ("Whatever my man is, I am his forever more.") is a constant theme running throughout all of Oscar Hammerstein's entire body of work. It's rampant in Kern & Hammerstein as well, but not in Rogers & Hart.
Anna Leonowens's memoir was not the actual source material for THE KING AND I. The primary source material R&H used was ANNA AND THE KING OF SIAM, a book by Margaret Landon. Anna's book is an angry, anti-polygamy & anti-slavery screed. The real Anna was horrified and disgusted by the horrors she witnessed in the Siamese Court. She didn't love the old king, or view him sentimentally. She saw him as a monster. In a hideous irony, her son remained a lifelong friend of King Chulalongcorn, and lived permanently in Siam, becoming a polygamist himself, courtesy of the younger king. R&H romanticized and prettied up some pretty grim true stories.
I don't know if you've ever seen the Rex Harrison movie of ANNA AND THE KING OF SIAM, but it takes a very different tone. Rex's Siamese King makes your skin crawl, and Tuptim is burned at the stake onscreen. I haven't seen the Jodie Foster remake.
And Anna didn't "Create" any characters. They were all real people. (And she really was the sister of Boris Karloff's grandmother.)
It's been 42 years since I read Molnar's LILIOM, so I don't remember if it sentimentalizes the character who became Billy Bigelow, or takes his side so much, or forgives the little pischer as Hammerstein does. In any event, Molnar didn't write the songs, so he can hardly be blamed for WHAT'S THE USE OF WONDRIN'.
And anyway, Rogers and Hammerstein CHOSE the material they used, and Hammerstein wrote the lyrics and the scripts, so he is fully responsible for his own artistic choices.
As for Michenor, I didn't write a word about SOUTH PACIFIC. It's primarily concerned with two Americans overcoming their racism, so it does seem to be saying that Americans are all racists, an idea hard to refute, although when Senator Robert Byrd, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, endorses Barack Obama, as has just happened, the times, they ARE a changin'.
BUT --- Nelly has to change her ways to live happily ever after with Emile. He doesn't have to change to accommodate her. (Of course, he doesn't need to. Unlike the Siamese king or Billy Bigelow, he's an admirable and heroic character.)
Whereas, when Lt. Cable changes for his girlfriend, he dies! That'll teach him to wuss out for a woman. In the words of the King (Thus Hammerstein's words) "Flower must not ever go from bee to bee to bee." I've always found that lyric specious, since bee after bee after bee will land on the same flower.
Cheers.
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