Word: hammerstein
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...enjoy Me and Juliet is to forget Oklahoma, South Pacific, and The King and I. Certainly Rodgers and Hammerstein did, for their new musical is a leggy trifle, with an abundance of color and no significance. Hammerstein's characters in Me and Juliet seem cut from pasteboard to be maneuvered through a plot that's as corny as Kansas in August. But since the cast is talented and the staging fabulous, the show is a pleasant evening of lightweight entertainment...
...interior musical, also called "Me and Juliet," is a parody of all musical-comedy, with special pokes at Cole Porter and Frank Loesser. The plot of the main show, however, can only be a parody of Rodgers and Hammerstein-with all the unnatural villainies and pat romances which on occasion have plagued the team. This time, the action is so melodramatic and unreal that the audience cannot accept the characters as people...
This distinctness is not always an advantage, however. Oscar Hammerstein is one of the few top lyricists still rhyming "new moon" with "blue moon." And though his words are appropriate to the characters, they are not especially witty or unusual. Exceptions are "Keep It Gay" and "No Other, Love," both worthy of their composers. "No Other Love" would be even better if Rodger's melody did not sound so like Irving Berlin's "Something to Dance About." The only song actually bad is "The Big Black Giant," which liens theatre audiences to a large beast. A heavy, cumbersome tune coupled...
...undertaking My Darlin' Aida, Librettist Friedman was frankly inspired by the success of Carmen Jones. But there are great differences, not just between him and the much defter Oscar Hammerstein II, but between the parent operas themselves. Carmen has a vivid, earthy, human story; Aida's is unreal and faraway. Carmen, again, has the theater blood of the opera comique; Aida possesses both the stiffness and the elevation of truly grand opera. Where many operas-La Traviata, Tosca, La Boheme-might be at home on Broadway, not only must the story of Aida be revamped; the finer values...
...thinks there is "too much flip-flop stuff going on up in Washington." ¶Four big names in he world of arts and letters announced in New York that they were switching from Eisenhower to Stevenson. The four: Producer-Playwright George Abbott, Author Edna Ferber, Librettist-Producer Oscar Hammerstein II, Producer Irene Selznick. Two big Southern newspapers announced their choice. The Atlanta Journal, the South's largest daily (which has never supported a Republican for President), came out for Stevenson. The Charlotte News, largest evening paper in the Carolinas (which supported Tom Dewey in 1948), announced...