Review: My Favorite Things: Rodgers and Hammerstein's 80th Anniversary on PBS Great Performances / 90 minutes / at Theater Royal Drury Lane, May 31.
The most moving moment in this overly sentimental -- to the point of maudlin -- 80th Anniversary tribute to the musical theater giants: Anther giant, Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber, appearing at the end, having a hard time holding back tears of genuine love for the team, of how, without them, there might not have been the musicals he composed.
THE BEST: The songs are powered by some of the finest talents. Among the towering treasures, "Younger Than Springtime"gave me the indescribable thrill I felt when first hearing this song in my youth.
THE WORST: Marisha Wallace's self-indulgent, vulgarized rendition of I Can't Say No from Oklahoma. There is a delicate line between character interpretation and culture signalling.
THE STRANGEST: Totally out of place on a program alleging to celebrate the collaborations of Dick and Oscar. A numbingly oddball song called Something Good, feebly floating the idea of a "wicked childhood"in Maria's background. This torturous ditty was NOT created by R&H, but by the composer, writing his own words, and inserted in the movie version of The Sound of Music, to replace a lovely ballad, An Ordinary Couple. Rodgers was said to have never liked the number, so with Oscar gone, he pounced.
SAME OLD. SAME OLD: The 90 minute PBS version ignores one of the six successful R&H stage musicals, Flower Drum Song. And the entire lot of songs on the CD leaves out numbers more dark and sophisticated, such as A Lonely Room from Oklahoma, and How Can Love Survive from The Sound of Music. (See it brilliantly choreographed in The Sound of Music, Live, 2015.) Another absolute gem is the very anti-sentimental Shall I Tell You What I Think of You? from The King and I.
All of which, suggests poor, inept oversight. The world of R&H, forever lionized for its virtues, is, the deeper you go, shaded with realism and off beat emotions, sometimes subtly.There is a very quiet number in Flower Drum Song, daringly quiet, I am Going to Like It Here. Whenever I play the album, I marvel at how the calming atmosphere it evokes affects me, readjusting my mood to slow down for something so utterly simple, and to find in it rare beauty.
The 42-song CD will give you at least one song from all their scores.
Singing: A
Minimal Dancing: B-
Range of the canon represented: D
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