Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Geoffrey Block knows everything there is to know about Rodgers, but frustratingly this book is arranged on the lines of a patchwork quilt; if you're looking for something on a particular show (say FLOWER DRUM SONG) you're wasting your time here. Perhaps to see Rodgers through fresh eyes, Block narrows down his focus and his individual chapters pick up on very rarefied aspects of Rodgers' career. If there is just about nothing on FLOWER DRUM SONG or THE SOUND OF MUSIC, you'll find a learned monograph on the three versions of the TV project CINDERELLA. The learning's worn lightly and the writing is everywhere vivid and provocative.
As in his previous book THE RICHARD RODGERS READER, Block attempts a giant salvage operation, making a serious case for the worthwhileness, indeed the greatness, of Rodgers' final five musicals. I don't know if anyone will be convinced that TWO BY TWO or REX are great works of musical theater, but it's entertaining, just as a dip into the Bacon-wrote-Shakespeare camp might be. This is a book that will start a hundred arguments among lovers of Richard Rodgers, and there's nothing wrong with that.
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Richard Rodgers was an icon of the musical theatre, a prolific composer whose career spanned six decades and who wrote more than 1000 songs and 40 shows for the American stage. In this book, Geoffrey Block examines Rodgers's entire career, providing rich details about the creation, staging, and critical reception of some of his most popular musicals. Block traces Rodgers's musical education, early work, and the development of his musical and dramatic language. He focuses on two shows by Rodgers and Hart ("A Connecticut Yankee" and "The Boys from Syracuse") and two by Rodgers and Hammerstein ("South Pacific" and "Cinderella"), offering new insights into each one. He concludes with the first serious look at the five neglected and often maligned musicals that Rodgers composed in the 1960s and 1970s, after the death of Hammerstein.
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