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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
In 1959, when Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were beginning work on "The Sound of Music" -- the story goes -- their co-producer Richard Halliday, who was also the husband and manager of the show's star, Mary Martin, came to them with a great idea for her first entrance: she would be discovered in a tree and, as she climbed down, catch her bloomers on a branch. Rodgers and Hammerstein rejected the idea out of hand. Halliday was incensed. "You know what's wrong with you guys?" he said, stalking out. "All you care about is the show!"
In that joke lies the essence of Rodgers and Hammerstein's revolution in musical storytelling, which began in 1943, with "Oklahoma!" In its out-of-town tryouts, the show, then titled "Away We Go!," was billed as a "musical comedy"; by the time it arrived in New York, with its now indelible brand name, it had become a "musical play." With that semantic mutation, the musical's job description changed, virtually overnight. Anarchic, freewheeling frivolity that traded in joy -- in other words, in the comedian's resourcefulness -- was renounced for an artful marriage of music and lyrics that traded in narrative. Seriousness replaced sass. Big names were no longer needed to carry the show; the show itself was the star. In show-biz terms, Rodgers and Hammerstein had hit the mother lode. They had engineered the musical equivalent of the interchangeable part, which insured a sort of quality control. Improvisation was no longer an element, and the musical was now, in principle, anyway, infinitely repeatable....
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