Me on Me and Juliet
We’re about to mark the 60th anniversary of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most obscure musical. True, Me and Juliet endured the longest of their three least-successful shows. The musical that opened on May 28, 1953 lasted 358 performances; that bested the team’s 1947 effort Allegro (315 showings) and their 1955 entry Pipe Dream (which could only […]
Making Liza Doolittle Day Plans
“Next week, on the twentieth of May, I proclaim Liza Doolittle Day!” So sings Eliza Doolittle in her fantasy number “Just You Wait” in My Fair Lady. It’s a line that hasn’t been lost on many musical theater enthusiasts. For years, I’ve been receiving greeting cards or postcards that celebrate the day. Some people even […]
Elephant Steps in Time
You’ve heard it said about your town or one nearby. “If you don’t like the weather here, wait five minutes, and it’ll change.” The same standard can apply to Stanley Silverman’s music in Elephant Steps. If on the off-chance you don’t like the melody you’re hearing, wait a few seconds, and you’ll come across one […]
Lady in the Dark: The Ultimate Play with Music
One of the seminal recordings of the 1960s is now with us again via digital download:the first studio cast album of Lady in the Dark. Until 1963, musical theater enthusiasts who’d been too young to have seen this legendary 1941 show — or hadn’t yet been born – enjoyed little opportunity to understand what it […]
The World’s Most Misunderstood Cast Album
So you think that the first “so-bad-it’s-good” musical was The Rocky Horror Show? A case can be made for a very different property: Say, Darling. Truth to tell, Say, Darling was less of a musical than a play with music. We assume that it was a musical because the 1958 show yielded an original cast […]
