All tagged The Boys From Syracuse
Rodgers and Hart musicals always included a delicious sense of fun and their 1938 comedy The Boys from Syracuse was no exception. Based on William Shakespeare’s 1594 play (his shortest) The Comedy of Errors, The Boys from Syracuse features one of Rodgers and Hart’s most-enduring score with such gems as “Falling in Love with Love,” “Sing for Your Supper,” “This Can’t Be Love” and “What Do You Do with a Man” as standouts.
There is something about the coming of spring, the earthen smell in the air and the flowers poised to bloom, that puts me in the mood for the songs of Rodgers and Hart. There is a loveliness and gaiety that I associate with their music that comes to life right around the time the earth does. Spring is all about pastoral beauty and romance, something that Rodgers and Hart deal with in spades. Today’s blog is simply a celebration of the ten Rodgers and Hart songs that put the “spring” in my step, the ditties that won’t seem to leave my brain until July.
We are a month away from Valentine’s Day, and though many people adore this holiday, I am not one of them. It has nothing to do with the commercialism of Valentine’s Day. I think it is quite fine for greeting card companies, florists, jewelers and candy makers to fleece the couples of the world by making them see that they need to show their love with presents.
How was that for bitter?
No... I am not the curmudgeon that I painted in the previous paragraph, but I did use a little hyperbole to set up a theme that I have wanted to explore on this blog: the anti-love song. Broadway musicals are full of love songs where people outright declare their love for each other in intimate duets that make you wonder how they can sing so enthusiastically in each other’s faces and not shower their beloved in saliva. These songs are a dime a dozen. The songs that have always intrigued me are the anti-love songs; songs that skirt or altogether dismiss the possibility of love, or songs that rage against the emotion with contempt. Very often these are out favorite songs to be found in a Broadway show. Today’s blog plunges into the world of the shy, the scorned, the bitter and the lonely.
