Word: hammersteins
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THERE WAS AN ABRUPT TRANSITION in the American musical theater between 1942 and 1943, and the transition was between Hart and Hammerstein. Lorenz Hart's death represented the end of the Depression Era in musicals, the end of lyrics that were fast and mean and bitter, the end of admitting that life was pretty rough for a lot of people who weren't all that equipped to deal with it. During the War one just had to look to see how hellish life was all around the world and what a good deal we had at home...
...form, although Hair has some pretensions in this area (they failed). Probably the most stirring musical that also happened to be good was the original 1932 version of Showboat, when Paul Robeson changed the racist, stereotypical lines of "Old Man River" into a song of defiance, causing Oscar Hammerstein, the lyricist, to stomp off the practice stage muttering "Let the son of a bitch write his own goddam song...
People who have never been there think vaguely of flatlands, stockyards and Rodgers and Hammerstein. In fact, Kansas City is built upon gently rolling, wooded hills on the banks of the Missouri, its stockyards are all but closed down, and everything is not only up to date but often remarkably sophisticated. Andre Maurois was so taken with the place after a visit in the '40s that he wrote: "Who in Europe, or in America, for that matter, knows that Kansas City is one of the loveliest cities on earth...
...From the musical, Oklahoma, by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. *In the past decade, more than 100 office towers were built in Manhattan. About one square mile of office space is vacant, including roughly 33% of the 110-story World Trade Center's twin towers...
...which any kind of good theatrical or literary comedy naturally demands. Usually, this framework involves such plot structures as protagonist versus antagonist in a jealous conflict over lovers, mixed identities, transferred allegiances, tragic irony, and a variety of double plots. In the musical comedy parody (after Rogers and Hammerstein) of the finale, for example, the first scene introduces the all American boy and girl who proceed in subsequent vignettes to be confronted by lesser characters who try to separate them and to stifle their career plans, but who are finally vanquished by good fortune--a reunion acene brings the lovers...