All tagged Wildcat
I have written with great awe about how amazed I am by the eclecticism of Cy Coleman as a Broadway composer. He always finds an original sound for each musical he writes, capturing the perfect tone for the material. Since I am an enormous fan of Coleman and his body of Broadway work, I decided to rank the ten best of his musicals, from my least favorite to my favorite, commenting on some of my favorite songs along the way. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Broadway composers tend to settle into a style that is distinctly their own. We know a Stephen Sondheim score when we hear it. Andrew Lloyd Webber, the same. In fact, many people cling to the familiarity of a Broadway composer’s style, knowing that attending their latest show will hopefully yield something new and familiar at the same time. We can almost count on this result, and why not? Each composer is unique and cultivates their own sound with each new show that they write. There was, however, one musical theatre composer who reinvented his voice several times over throughout his career, so it is much harder to pinpoint what his style exactly is. Working with a variety of musical styles, and a wide-range of writing partners, each score he touched sounded like he reimagined his talents to best capture the musical world at hand. This is the eclectic brilliance of composer Cy Coleman.
Musical comedies: full out, "make them laugh" musical comedies peppered Broadway seasons in abundance from the 1920s through the 1960s. They were everywhere and just about everyone was writing them. Sure, there were always musicals of deeper substance and that had a darker edge making us think, but it was the big and brash musical, filled to the brim with colorful characters, lively music, and zany antics that, for many, became the epitome of what the Broadway musical was. Pure escapist fun like Anything Goes, Guys & Dolls, Damn Yankees, Bells Are Ringing, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and even lesser revered titles like Goldilocks, Wildcat, and I Had a Ball were the go-to for a joyous outing of theatre. Why are they just not as plentiful as they used to be?
Never has a composer been more eclectic in style and worked with such a variety of lyricists than the late-great Cy Coleman. Coleman had a long career in musical theatre, spanning decades, with a wide range of successes, almost hits, and flops: Wildcat (1960), Little Me (1962), Sweet Charity (1966), Seesaw (1973), I Love My Wife (1977), On the Twentieth Century (1978), Barnum (1980), City of Angels (1989), The Will Rogers Follies (1991), and The Life (1997).
