Oklahoma!: Its Origin and Influence
1984; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 2; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/3051564
ISSN1945-2349
Autores Tópico(s)Music History and Culture
Resumowent up to New Haven to confirm their darkest fears, and they came back to New York wearing their brightest smiles. They were the Broadway experts, the wrecking crew of rival producers, managers, and agents who, on a blustery March 11, 1943, had made the journey to pass judgment on the first tryout performance of Away We Go! at the Shubert Theatre. It was no secret that with this show the Theatre Guild was making a last-ditch attempt to reverse a string of failures by presenting a musical comedy; or that raising the money had not been easy; or that the musical was a daring departure in many ways; or that this was the first time that Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were working together. Since Rodgers had never before written professionally with anyone else but Lorenz Hart, and since Hammerstein had not had a hit in over ten years, the all-knowing insiders were certain-above all else-that the new partnership simply had to fail. Thus, on the day following the opening, the word began to spread. The show was nothing but a musical horse opera mostly about whether a good guy or a bad guy gets to take a girl to a dance. It needed more laughs. It was too clean. It was too melodramatic. It was too long. The dances were too arty. And how could experienced theater people have made the fatal mistake of waiting almost forty minutes before bringing on the dancing girls? The general attitude along Broadway was even immortalized in a catch phrase supposedly coined by producer Michael Todd: No gags, no gals, no chance. What the Times Square savants happily ignored was that, despite the overlong and far from polished first night in New Haven, the musical-whose title, to spare the reader any further suspense, was changed to Oklahoma! by the time it reached New York-had received a warm reception from the majority of the audience and an encouraging set of reviews. In fact, the prediction of Variety's Harold Bone was right on the mark when he referred to the show's potential marathon
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