Hang Around the World: Musicals Style 4 : Hollywood & Broadway

Hollywood & Broadway Musicals

Fiddler on the Roof

A sensational musical re the life of a Yiddish (Jewish) community in the Pale of Settlement in Imperial Russia circa 1905
- Basis: Tevye and his Daughters, and other tales by Sholem Aleichem
- Book: Joseph Stein
- Music: Jerry Bock
- Lyrics: Sheldon Harnick
- Première: 1964 at Imperial Theater, NYC (3242 performanes)
- Film: 1971 (3hr)
The story centers on Tevye and his attempts to maintain his Jewish religious and cultural traditions as outside influences encroach upon the family's lives.

* Tradition:

* If I were a rich man

* To Life / L'chaim

* Sunrise sunset

* Wedding Celebration/ Wine bottle dance

* Do you love me?

* Anatevka (name of their village in Ukraine)

The Sound of Klezmer - wedding medley

42nd Street

The show is a jukebox musical of sorts, in addition to songs from the 42nd Street (1933) film.

- Book: Michael Stewart and Mark Bramble

- Lyrics: Al Dubin and Johnny Mercer

- Music: Harry Warren

- Première: 1980 at Winter Garden Theater, NYC (1417 performances)

* We're in the Money

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

- Basis: Shepherd Mead's 1952 book of the same name
- Book: Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock, and Willie Gilbert
- Music & lyrics: Frank Loesser
- Première: 1961 at 46th Street Theatre, NYC (1,417 performances)
- Film: 1967
The story concerns young, ambitious J. Pierrepont Finch, who, with the help of the book "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying", rises from window washer to chairman of the board of the World Wide Wicket Company.

My Fair Lady

- Basis: George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion
- Book & lyrics: Alan Jay Lerner
- Music: Frederick Loewe
- Première: 1956 at Mark Hellinger Theater, NYC (2717 perdormances)
- Film: 1964
The story concerns Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons from professor Henry Higgins, a phoneticist, so that she may pass as a lady. (The original Broadway and London shows starred Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews.)

Oklahoma!

- Basis: Lynn Riggs' 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs, Oklahoma!
- Book & lyrics: Oscar Hammerstein II
- Music: Richard Rodgers
- Première: 1943 at St. James Theater (2212 performances)

Show Boat

- Basis: Edna Ferber's novel of the same name
- Book & lyrics: Oscar Hammerstein II
- Music: Jerome Kern
- Première: 1927 at Ziegfeld Theater, NYC (572 performances)
The musical follows the lives of the performers, stagehands and dock workers on the Cotton Blossom, a Mississippi River show boat, over 40 years from 1887 to 1927.

The Sound of Music

- Basis: (1) 1956 German film "Die Trapp-Familie"; (2) Maria von Trapp's autobiography "The Story of the Trapp Family Singers"
- Book: Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse
- Music: Richard Rodgers
- Lyrics: Oscar Hammerstein II
- Première: 1959 at Lunt-Fontanne Theater, NYC (1443 performances)
- Film: 1965