On Mon May 24, at MondayMay 24 12:58 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
On 24 May 2010 at 12:51, John Howell wrote:
I take
"Oklahoma!" as the tipping point, even though "Showboat" had tended
that way earlier (and significantly with the help of Hammerstein).
Hmm. The Showboat issue is quite complicated. There exist about 5
distinct versions of the show. It was tinkered with quite extensively
in revivals and in the movie versions, and really think most of the
"innovations" are later tweaks to the original (at least, in
comparison to the original of Oklahoma).
The social conscience part of Showboat (stories sympathetic to black
principal characters, black actors and white in the same scene and
singing the same song) were part of the original, I think. Please
correct me if I'm wrong, but I got a look at an original engraving of
the Showboat score, and I think I remember this stuff. You may be
right about dramatic innovations.
Christopher
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