In poetic shorthand, spring would seem to be the most obvious season for musical theatre. Spring is hope and renewal and the time when young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love (or at least its earthier form). It is certainly easier to write about than Winter.
The springiest song is probably from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Johnny Mercer’s lyrics landing just the right side of cute:
“Oh the barnyard is busy, in a regular tizzy / And the obvious reason is because of the season / Ma Nature’s lyrical, with her yearly miracle / Spring, Spring, Spring”
It’s one of the most human and humane songs in the entire canon because it elevates sex into romance, courtship and parenthood. To go all C.S. Lewis for a moment, the lower is drawn into the higher. And, just to make the point, the song concludes with the announcement of Milly’s baby. Somebody once described Seven Brides as a ‘rape fantasy’; goodness, if it’s not about women taming the beast I don’t know what it is. Check out the brothers’ shirts if you don’t believe me.1
Spring Awakening, on the other hand… is no Seven Brides, so we’ll draw a discreet veil over it.
I hadn’t known there was a musical version of Steinbeck’s Giant. Not a task for the faint-hearted, but kudos to Michael John LaChiusa. (Why hasn’t LaChiusa been on Broadway since 2000? the more I write this Substack, the less I understand about production of musicals). The original ran to 3 hrs 45 mins, but then so did the original version of Camelot. Unlike Camelot, Giant contains a charming little - sorry, l’il - song about rising sap called ‘Did Spring Come to Texas?’ Camelot, of course, has ‘If Ever I Could Leave You’, in which Lancelot says nothing at all about the season but rhymes ‘springtime’ with ‘spring I’m.’ There is also ‘The Lusty Month of May’, in which Guinevere extols the virtues of a season in which “everyone goes blissfully astray.” I prefer Loewe to Lerner in this instance, given lyrics that appear to insist Camelot should be turned into a mediaeval version of Haight-Ashbury.
Fifteen years before Camelot, Lerner and Loewe wrote The Day Before Spring, described by Ethan Mordden as a success d’estime, defined by Mark Steyn as a success that runs out of steam. The title song is so obscure that I can’t find it anywhere, but ‘You Haven’t Changed At All’ is pretty.
‘It Might As Well Be Spring’ from State Fair isn’t actually about Spring, but nonetheless expresses a lot about the season, Oscar Hammerstein letting himself go with some of his more poetic flourishes:
“I am starry-eyed and vaguely discontented
Like a nightingale without a song to sing
Oh, why should I have spring fever
When it isn't even spring?”
‘Vaguely’ discontented is lovely in itself, yet improved by the simile. I imagine that a nightingale without a song to sing might be a little more than vaguely discontented, but that’s mindless nit-picking. It tells you so much about the character and evokes that shared human experience of restless ‘spring fever’ in which we want so much to do something but aren’t sure quite what - unless there’s Another in the picture, who may yet turn out to be Significant.
Three Wishes for Jamie (1952) was a sad flop (92 performances and out) that theatre historians nonetheless tend to respect, if not love. ‘It Must Be Spring’ is worth knowing, the tune being imbued with seasonal uplift and the lyrics pleasant, if a little generic (“when birds appear upon the scene, it must be spring, it must be / And when they sing, I know they mean to show it’s springtime”). I ought to have written more about Jamie in my post on Celtic musicals, because it’s steeped in “auld sod Irish lore” with a key plot twist provided by, of all things, the Gaelic language. Perhaps Finian’s Rainbow was sufficient Oirish for Broadway.
The Happiest Girl in the World (98 and out) is notable, not least because Yip Harburg wrote lyrics to tunes by Offenbach for a show that adapted Aristophanes. Writing lyrics to unrelated work by established (and in this dead) composers is possibly not a wise decision, but it’s probably worth a shot at least once.2 (The score of Kismet is largely adapted tunes of Borodin, for example). ‘Five Minutes of Spring’ is, again, worth two minutes of your time, especially with the original cast recording’s beautiful baritone of Bruce Yarnell:
“Oh come, sweet thing / Life at best is but Five Minutes of Spring
A hi-ho fling / With a hope, a dream, a kiss on the wing.”
Noel Coward called the show “an orgy of frustrated sex. Naked young men lying about; no jokes above the navel; an appalling scene in a Turkish bath; and Cyril [Ritchard] bouncing on and off the stage in ladies’ wigs and ladies’ hats,” which on the whole makes it sound like a show very much in need of a revival.
In my version of Winter’s Tale3 I wrote a song for the Perdita character called ‘The Flowers of the Spring’ but for the time being we’ll finish with a somewhat better-known piece, which isn’t about Spring at all but is very funny. Watch it whilst you’re still permitted to do so. (If you’re in Scotland, you have the rest of this week).
“I was just a paper-hanger, no-one more obscurer
Got a phone call from the Reichstag, told me I was Fuhrer…”
I never dared show this to my A-level Germany classes. An opportunity missed, I feel.
I’ve written before about two of the brothers: Tommy Rall and Russ Tamblyn, who could never convincingly play Riff after pretending to be an eagle in this number.
In a musical-writing class, lyricists were tasked with putting words to Chanson de Matin. I wrote ‘in a soft light of dove-grey / sleepy people in love say’ and was gently scolded for being too clever.
About which I wrote last week.