It’s well-known that Puccini and Gershwin wanted to set Ferenc Molnar’s play Liliom operatically, and that the Hungarian playwright denied them permission. But Molnar was so charmed by Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first effort, Oklahoma!, that he granted them the right to set his play to music.
When Hart’s alcoholism became so bad that he was no longer able to work (Rodgers always said he would have gone on working with Hart forever if it had been possible), Rodgers teamed up with the successful playwright Oscar Hammerstein II. Together they created a new uniquely American art form: the musical (or musical theater, as they termed it), in which every song advanced the story, every dance was done in character, and the line between music and drama was so magnificently blurred that you never knew when dialogue might turn into song or action into dance.
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Baritone Louis Otey, who took over for Thomas Allen in Lyric’s Fledermaus in January and stole the show, did a superb job as Billy Bigelow. His voice sometimes strained in its upper range (at the end of “If I Loved You,” for instance), but his characterization was first-rate and never corny, and his delivery of the famous “Soliloquy,” on whether he will have a boy or a girl, was extremely moving.
COT set itself a major challenge in doing this production, and overall it was magnificently realized. So I hope this is the first of many musical-theater productions by the company.
