McCarter Theatre Opens Season with Rodgers and Hart Musical “Ten Cents A Dance”

Posted on 02. Sep, 2011 by PNN Editor in Arts, Dance, Music, Theater, University

Tony Award winner John Doyle (Broadway’s Sweeney Todd and Company) brings his trademark twist to the Rodgers and Hart songbook in this stirring new production with a cast that doubles as the orchestra! Rodgers and Hart’s evocative and sophisticated tunes will keep you bewitched, bothered, and bewildered in this inventive song-cycle.
Including favorites: Isn’t It Romantic?; My Funny Valentine; Blue Moon; My Heart Stood Still; My Romance; and many others!

ABOUT RODGERS AND HART

For a short while, the future seemed bleak for young Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. The composer-lyricist duo met at Columbia University in 1919 when Rodgers, a precocious freshman, was paired up with Hart, a recent drop-out known for his witty verses, to write Columbia’s annual talent show. Their creation, Fly With Me, was an instant hit.Rodgers soon left Columbia and, with Hart, began a collaboration that would continue for the next 24 years. The two started working together full-time, writing several mildly successful Broadway shows. But the professional opportunities soon dried up. The only gigs remaining were amateur music revues for organizations looking for entertainment to accompany their fundraising dinners.

Rodgers was ready to throw in the towel, but the night before he was scheduled to begin a job in underwear sales, he received a life-changing call. The Theatre Guild was looking for a composer to write a variety show that would highlight its company of understudies. Rodgers agreed to the gig, but only if he could bring on Lorenz Hart as his lyricist. Putting aside his tedious day job translating obscure German plays, Hart agreed to buckle down with Rodgers, and they quickly wrote Garrick Gaeities. The show, particularly their song Manhattan, was a hit, and the pair became a sensation overnight. They never looked back.

Rodgers and Hart learned early in their partnership that the key to their success was not playing it safe. The two continually pushed the boundaries of what was considered musical theater. Hart, never having formally studied verse and eschewing a rhyming dictionary (“It is more trouble to look up a rhyme than to think one up,” he once told the New Yorker) followed blind inspiration, scribbling his clever and playful lyrics on whatever scraps of paper were handy. Meanwhile, Rodgers diligently arrived at his home office at 11 am sharp to write, revise, and perfect his compositions. In addition to experimenting with song length and placement, Rodgers continually strove to integrate music fully into the storytelling. As his future collaborator Oscar Hammerstein II put it, Rodgers proved that “the dramatist is the composer” and noted that his melodies managed “to make words fly higher or cut deeper than they would without the aid of his music.”

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