Last year at New York’s Lincoln Center, at the start of a production of
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, I observed something strange. Well,
two things. First, the revealing of a large and opulent orchestra, some 30
players, all scraping and bowing their hearts out, under the stage; and
second, a reaction of satisfied applause from a huge and happy house.
Euphoria all round, and the show hadn’t even started.
To me, this was, and is, a puzzlement. The house wasn’t wowed by the rare
sight of three french horns and a big fat tuba in a pit band, nor were the
audience merely admiring the obvious expense. It was the sound of deep
contentment — born of the feeling that all is as it should be. Scale,
subject matter, sound, all as one. Result: happiness.
I have a theory that everyone has at some point been made happy by a musical,
whether it’s Gene Kelly singing in the rain or Nicely Nicely being told, for
the 25th time, to sit down, he’s rocking the boat. The happiness Rodgers and
Hammerstein engender, however, is of a specific kind. It’s not so much made
of moments as of paragraphs — of arching shapes and sweeping structures. To
examine how and why they achieve this, we have to travel back in time.
They got together in 1941, and the first surprise is what a late partnership
it is. Rodgers and Hammerstein are no student chums, they’re not Lennon and
McCartney. Both had already had full theatrical careers — a combined total
of almost 50 years — but their collaboration meant not merely a redefinition
but a reversal of roles. Rodgers, previously the co-author of sassy jazz-age
hits, became more the romantic melodist; Hammerstein, previously the go-to
lyricist for romantic operetta, reasserted himself as a theatrical
experimentalist. Thus, the old stagers overnight became the new kids on the
block. It’s hard to imagine today how experimental their first two shows,
Oklahoma! (1943) and Carousel (1945), actually were.
Prewar musicals were basically vaudevilles, set in posh staterooms and
sawdusty theatres, with numbers that could be swapped from act to act, even
from show to show. The story could always accommodate, say, an eccentric
dancer or a ukulele solo. Think of a Marx Brothers movie and you have it.
Now compare with Oklahoma!, which begins with one person in a wide, empty
landscape. “Oh what a beautiful mornin’,” he sings, and at that first
preview, some audience members must have been thinking “What a lovely tune”,
but most would have thought: “What a strange way to open a musical.” That’s
only the beginning. Soon, we hear a sung soliloquy (Lonely Room) in which
Jud decides to change his life and go after the girl. This is gloriously
trumped by the Billy Bigelow soliloquy in Carousel, in which, before our
eyes, he wrestles with the reality of becoming a father and turns to crime
to support his child. Story becomes song.
There are further wonders. Take the Carousel duet If I Loved You, in which
song seamlessly slips into scene, and back again, as the story of two lovers
is played out in front of us. The added ingredient here is most significant:
it’s the scale of the setting. The lovers measure themselves against an
infinite starry sky, just as later the King of Siam does against a map of
the wide world; or, indeed, as Maria does when she sings to her hills. Not
for nothing do such moments slip so seamlessly into CinemaScope. As setting
and scale begin to define shape and structure, we can see the musical start
to come of age.
What fascinates me is, why them, and why then? The first question is maybe
easier. We have two artists at the top of their profession, but looking for
a way to revitalise their careers. This mixture of knowing one’s craft
backwards yet searching for novelty informs all of the pair’s work. They are
the ultimate conservative radicals.
The question “Why then?” is more mysterious. In the late 1930s, American
artists look beyond New York. Gershwin is writing Porgy and Bess. Copland is
writing Billy the Kid. From their Manhattan flats they are not so much
exploring as inventing, almost colonising, the musical landscape of America.
Then comes Pearl Harbor, and a nation under threat longs even more urgently
for self-definition. The new frontiers of the west, the Massachusetts
shoreline, become like foreign countries within America. The indigenous
somehow becomes exotic. Most important, both Oklahoma! and Carousel describe
their worlds from the inside looking out.
With two socking great hits under their belts, Rodgers and Hammerstein were
presented with an interesting problem. Oklahoma! and Carousel were
simultaneously populist and experimental — but they had no way of telling
which of these two ingredients was the magic one. With their next show, they
were to find out. Allegro (1947) is as experimental a musical as has ever
been written. Set in small-town America, it has no sets; a Greek chorus
sings variously to the actors and the audience; dance, dialogue and lyrics
are interchangeable; there are no attempts at anything resembling a “take
home” number. For me, Allegro is the missing link of musicals, where modern
drama and modern music first intersect. (Check out the recent recording and
prepare to be fascinated.) Yet it ran for only a handful of months and
represented a road that led nowhere.
Or so you’d think. As it happens, the 17-year-old intern working on Allegro
was Stephen Sondheim, who became intoxicated with what a musical could do
and has, in some people’s minds, been “fixing” Allegro ever since.
Rodgers and Hammerstein, on the other hand, flung themselves back onto what
they knew like drowning men onto driftwood. Their next two shows were
copper-bottomed masterpieces, and huge hits. In South Pacific (1949) and The
King and I (1951), two supreme craftsmen rebuild their empire from the
experience of what went right and what didn’t. Back comes scale, but now we
get the double vista of twin worlds colliding. Colonialism, invasion and the
differences and connections between East and West are central to both
pieces. And this larger canvas leads to vastly increased manpower.
In the 1950s, most companies would have had an acting component, a singing
component and a dancing component — three companies in one, in today’s
terms. When one adds in the ethnic element (and here, R&H were way ahead of
their time), one can see the numbers stacking up. South Pacific has a named
company of more than 60, The King and I of 70-plus. There’s more. The
decision to lead with sweep and scale also means a multiplicity of settings:
in the technology of the 1950s, this means a front cloth is lowered while a
new scene is built; before this front cloth are smaller scenes, solos and,
often, reprises. It's remarkable how the deployment of reprises defines
mature R&H.
By the time we get to The King and I, it’s hard to know which comes first: the
necessary pragmatics of a large-scale spectacle or the emotional unfolding
of an intimate story. Both seem to dance to the same tune, and structure and
story are so intertwined, it’s hard to tell what’s tinsel and what’s tree.
The “dream ballet” of Carousel has become a vital story scene in The King
and I. And it is immediately mirrored by another, the Shall We Dance?
sequence, in which East and West meet in dance. The peerless architecture is
everywhere. Both acts end with the entire company on stage — 10 wives, 13
children, countless attendants, all in dazzling costumes under sparkling
light. Pure pageantry, you might say. But the story reasons for both
tableaux are watertight. Scale has somehow seeped into the DNA of the drama.
Where better, I catch myself thinking daily, than the Albert Hall to stage
something of this magnitude?
The King and I, Albert Hall, SW7, June 12-28
