Best Rodgers and Hammerstein Musical

1994's Lincoln Center / Broadway revival of "Carousel" for me stands out. The score to "Carousel" is sublime. I saw Tony award winner Audra McDonald in the 1994 version.

Those 1950s film versions are dreadful, lifeless, leaden things.

As far as the musicals themselves go: For its scope, characters, and the richness of its score, I think South Pacific takes it.

They produced nothing particularly noteworthy after The King and I, but their 1940s/early 50s run is matched only by Sondheim's 1970s run.

[quote]They produced nothing particularly noteworthy after The King and I

In what universe is "The Sound of Music" not "noteworthy"?

It's a mediocre Rodgers score with some of Hammerstein's corniest lyrics, R3. "...like a lark who is learning to pray?" The movie is directed with enough energy, and well-acted enough, to make it tolerable as a kitschy 60s artefact.

r4 Irrespective of your opinion of its artistic merit, it's difficult to imagine anyone not considering it to be noteworthy.

Why are Pipe Dream and Allegro combined? I actually saw a production of Pipe Dream last year. My partner still brings it up, not in a good way.

The King and I is one of my favorite musicals of all time. The Small House Of Uncle Thomas scene alone makes it for me.

R1. I saw that production of Carousel at Lincoln Center, too. Brilliant.

DL has let me down in making South of Music no. 1. It is wildly popular, of course, but, IMO, both Carousel and and South Pacific are superior. Their books are far better with some social message in each. (Sound of Music is anti-Nazi, I'll give you that, though that's not the primary focus.)

R1, I also saw that production at the Viv. The Prologue, when the whole Carousel comes alive, was my first coup d'theatre I've ever witnessed live.

Here...

The Sound of Music was ne of the few R & H shows with a book that wasn't by Hammerstein (or co-written by Hammerstein, in the case of South Pacific). I think because he was ill with cancer. (It was by the team of Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse-- "Life With Father"). It was a somewhat simple show in comparison to several of their others, and wasn't considered a work of art, exactly.

Hammerstein and Joseph Fields wrote the book for Flower Drum Song. Joshua Logan wrote South Pacific with Hammerstein and insisted on the co-writer credit.

*one of the few

Great, great scores but the books of all the major musicals are eyebrow-raising, today and even one would think at the time—

Oklahoma—where our hero tries to convince the town outcast that the best thing for him would be to commit suicide—in song!

South Pacific—where our heroine doesn’t bat an eye when her partner tells her he is there because he committed a murder back in France (“well, you must have had a good reason”) but flees in horror when she learns his late wife was Polynesian.

The King and I—where the king is treated as a well-meaning child who has to be educated in Western ways and reminded that a group of all-male elephants will not reproduce, when in fact he was an Oxford graduate.

The Sound of Music (movie version)—where the oldest daughter lives in 1938 Austria, her military father has just been called up by a regime he vehemently opposes, her boyfriend is a Nazi, and on top of all this she has a brand new stepmother, who tries to jolly her up with a reprise of “You Are Sixteen, Going on Seventeen.”

The best of these to me is clearly Carousel, still moving as a study of one one can get trapped in an abusive but still loving relationship, and even here you have to cut the line about sometimes you can be hit and it doesn’t even hurt. Ouch, indeed. By the way, strong agree with those above on the 1994 Lincoln Center production, thrilling and probably the best musical revival I have seen.

[quote] South Pacific—where our heroine doesn’t bat an eye when her partner tells her he is there because he committed a murder back in France (“well, you must have had a good reason”)

Our Heroine (which is actually the title of the Michener story this was taken from) had faith in him, was in love with him. She was young and naive (unless played by Glenn Close). It's believable.

[quote] but flees in horror when she learns his late wife was Polynesian....

In the short stories, Our Heroine, and Fo' Dolla', at least, she sees this as akin to being a "n*****." She grew up in Arkansas. Born in the 1920s, grew up in the 1930s. She overcomes her prejudices, that's sort of the point.

R10. Thanks for that brilliant clip from the London production. I'd never thought about how the setting must resonate with the Brits, from the girls working in the mill to the boat building and class, too.

R14 I guess the question would be why does she “have faith in him” when it comes to murder but not when it comes to his previous marriage. I understand that is the point and she eventually comes around but before she does we still have her singing cheery songs (“Honey Bun”) where we are supposed to find her endearing.

As an evening in the theatre I think South Pacific is their masterpiece. As a score/cast album to listen to, give me Flower Drum Song. To sing myself? Easy -The Sound of Music.

R16 I don't really have an answer. It sounds like you're saying she can't be depicted as good or likeable in many ways, in spite of having prejudices. Because she has prejudices, she should be cancelled.

She was from the South, she grew up with race prejudices that weren't inherent in her character. She was "carefully taught." She never had to live in a different culture or look at the flaws in her own culture. Her prejudices weren't deep, because she overcame them. The fact is, when I was growing up a lot of Protestants didn't want their kids to marry Catholics, and vice-versa. Anti-Asian prejudices persisted even after a lot of servicemen brought home Japanese and Korean war brides. Change takes time, I guess.

It's ironic that someone wants to cancel the heroine from a show that is all about fighting racism. Does this person not believe that people can change? What do they think of Lt. Cable, who fucks Liat and then abandons her because he could never marry an Asian woman?

I don’t want to “cancel” the heroine—that is a contemporary phrase and I was thrown by this way back in the 1960s when I first saw it. I don’t think she is a villain, but I find it hard to find her appealing between her abandoning Emile and the ending.

Maybe it is just that I find the movies of the same few years—Intruder in the Dust, No Way Out, The Well, Storm Warning (non-racial but clearly about the KKK), even Pinky—to be stronger in dealing with racial prejudice, while Rodgers and Hammerstein had to fight even to include Carefully Taught.

I will quickly admit—none of those movies has This Nearly Was Mine or Some Enchanted Evening, among others. By the way, does Cable really abandon Liat or is he given his mission and killed before he can get back to her?

I think it's amazing that they turned these couple of short stories into a coherent musical play that was a massive hit that reached a huge amount of people. IN some ways, the Show Boat of its time. (And both involved Hammerstein.) Intruder in the Dust is a great film, but it's a film, not a stage musical, and it didn't reach many people.

Rodgers and Hammerstein's most successful song of all-time is "7 Rings" by Ariana Grande. They are credited as songwriters on the song.

Cable officially dumps Liat, and her mother, Bloody Mary, drags her off to marry another man.

But doesn’t Cable make it clear, somewhere around the time of Carefully Taught, that because he knows how his family would react to Liat, after the war he intends to stay in the South Pacific?

[quote] It's ironic that someone wants to cancel the heroine from a show that is all about fighting racism.

How can someone cancel a fictional heroine? That's ridiculous. And at no point did the poster you're bitching about say that the show should not be performed.

Grow up.

Of the five most famous ones, I’d put them in this order of preference:

1. South Pacific

2. The Sound of Music

3. Oklahoma!

4. Carousel

5. The King and I

Sound of Music has the most popular score ever written. Even people who don’t know musical theater know these songs.

I have sufficient.