23. The Fantasticks

Your favorite Bingers are back! And here to stay? The coronavirus pandemic has forcibly removed every excuse Jeremy and Hannah have to delay, so they are back with brand new content for you! How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying premiered in 1961 with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, and book by Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock, and Willie Gilbert, based on Shepherd Mead's satirical 1952 book of the same name.

Hannah and Jeremy update their Is It Good scores for Oklahoma, Carousel, and Kiss Me Kate after seeing the recent Broadway revivals.  Oklahoma is famously a huge success, but did the other two, which Jeremy and Hannah previously hated, improve at all for 2018/19? Of course not.

If you're listening to this on the weekend it's being released, enjoy our 2019 Tonys preview! But we spend the vast majority of the episode raving about Hadestown, so you'll enjoy it just as much if you happen upon this episode any time in the future.

Camelot, by My Fair Lady's Lerner and Loewe, plus Moss Hart, came out in 1960 to tepid reviews. But it is now perceived as having been an important American musical culture despite itself.  Find out why in this episode, and get a sneak peek review of Alice By Heart, the new musical by Spring Awakening's Sheik and Sater.

We cover the longest running musical of all time, Off-Broadway's The Fantasticks, with music by Harvey Schmidt and lyrics by Tom Jones, loosely based on the play Les Romanesques by Edmond Rostand (of Cyrano de Bergerac). Jeremy also shares his theory about the "Broadway genre" of music.

Broadway Binge is back for its second season! We kick things off by ranking each of our top five animals played by humans in Broadway History!

We enter the 1960s with Bye Bye Birdie, music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Lee Adams, book by Michael Stewart, and directed and choreographed by Gower Champion. Does it hold up well? What's with all the Ann-Margret hype? Find out here.

This week we go over Flower Drum Song, the 1958 minor hit by Rodgers and Hammerstein, based on a novel by C. Y. Lee, which features an almost entirely Asian cast and takes place in (then) modern day San Francisco. A lot is being written about the 1961 movie version of Flower Drum Song at the time this podcast is being released, as it is one of the only three movies Hollywood has ever made taking place with an all-Asian cast in the modern day, the other two being 1993's Joy Luck Club and 2018's Crazy Rich Asians. Without going into any spoilers about Crazy Rich Asians, Jeremy talks about how Flower Drum Song tried to accomplish what Crazy Rich Asians successfully accomplished over 50 years later, by highlighting the tensions between Chinese Americans and people actually born in China/Singapore.

Rodgers and Hammerstein's only true flop was 1955's Pipe Dream, based on a short novel by John Steinbeck.  Unlike the earlier forgotten R&H shows, Allegro and Me and Juliet, neither of the pair was actually excitied about this one, so it's odd that it was even made. In this episode, you'll hear how some of the songs in pipe Dream sound suspiciously similar to earlier R&H songs. 

We take a look at 1959's The Sound of Music, the final collaboration of Rodgers and Hammerstein. While the 1965 film is universally beloved, it is possible that the original stage musical was...bad??? Hannah and Jeremy investigate.