Christopher Bray
Singing for Their Supper
We’ll Have Manhattan: The Early Work of Rodgers & Hart
By Dominic Symonds
Oxford University Press 360pp £22.99
What we might call the Whig theory of Broadway history holds that it was only when Richard Rodgers abandoned the increasingly drunken Lorenz Hart to write blockbusters with Oscar Hammerstein II that the musical became a coherent whole. After Oklahoma! (1943) it was impossible to write mere song-and-dance spectacles. Musicals were now unified fields: numbers weren’t just sprinkled incontinently over some feeble yarn; now they grew organically out of a meaningful narrative. This, argues Dominic Symonds in We’ll Have Manhattan, is nonsense. Right from the jump, he says, Rodgers and Hart sought to render story and song indivisible.
In part, this ambition was a reflection of a burgeoning cultural nationalism. Until the end of the First World War, American musical theatre was dominated by Middle European operettas (all noble tenors and no-good basses) and winsome, major-chord snores imported from London’s West End. The powers that be were none
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Are iPhones ruining children's lives? A prominent American psychologist thinks so.
@tiffanyjenkins is not so sure:
Tiffany Jenkins - The Smartphone Pandemic
Tiffany Jenkins: The Smartphone Pandemic - The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an...
literaryreview.co.uk
India's 'festival of democracy', or general election, begins next month. Like every good festival, it looks likely to have its fair share of murders and arrests.
@OwenBennettJon probes the state of democracy in India:
Owen Bennett-Jones - New Delhi Confidential
Owen Bennett-Jones: New Delhi Confidential - The Incarcerations: BK-16 and the Search for Democracy in India by Alpa Shah
literaryreview.co.uk
Where is the world's newest narcostate and why is it thriving?
@AdamBrookesWord investigates Asia's meth mecca.
Adam Brookes - Meth Comes to Myanmar
Adam Brookes: Meth Comes to Myanmar - Narcotopia: In Search of the Asian Drug Cartel That Outwitted the CIA by Patrick Winn
literaryreview.co.uk