Word: allegros
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Hammerstein was worried about Allegro. Said he: "It's the first play I have written. It's the first time I have put myself into a show." Next day, he should have been feeling pretty good. He had written something he had greatly wanted to write. He had heard a tough first-night audience salute it, time & again, with excited applause. He had been informed by some of the critics that Allegro was "perfect," "a work of rare distinction," something that "made history on Broadway" (the Times's Brooks Atkinson found it a thing of "great beauty...
Perhaps some of the talk-like some of the reviews-would not be frenzied, or even favorable. Beyond doubt, Allegro was a real departure for Hammerstein & Rodgers, and perhaps they might better have stayed where they were. Beyond doubt, Allegro was something on a pretty big scale-but that something might be artistic failure...
...Meets World. The storyline of Allegro is simple enough; up to the halfway mark, in fact, it is the story of every middle-class American boy. Joseph Taylor Jr. (John Battles) is a small-town doctor's son, born in a brass bed, brought up in a frame house, educated at a public school, packed off to a proper college, united with his father in the practice of medicine, united with his first love in the business of matrimony. His mother (Anna-mary Dickey) dies. His success-loving wife badgers him into moving to a big city, acquiring...
...child of doting, well-to-do parents (the Theatre Guild), Allegro has been given every advantage that money can buy. For nursemaid, Joe Taylor has a full-sized Greek chorus singing Richard Rodgers' pleasant tunes; for playing after school, a full-scale Agnes de Mille ballet; for wedding music, a virtual cantata. His most uninspired thoughts reverberate through loudspeakers; his quietest desires are wired for sound. As a result, Allegro gets too big for its roots and too elaborate to have an honest Our Town warmth. Snapshots in family albums lose some of their character and charm when blown...
Such successful plays as "Allegro" and "man and Superman" were sold out almost as soon as the box office windows opened. Abrams said, although his agency did manage to fill some orders for those shows...