But Hammerstein was worried about Allegro. Said he; "It's the first play I have written. It's the first time I have put myself into a show." Next day, he should have been feeling pretty good. He had written something he had greatly wanted to write. He had heard a tough firstnight audience salute it, time & again, with excited applause. He had been informed by some of the critics that Allegro was "perfect ... .. a work of rare distinction," something that "made history on Broadway" (the Times's Brooks Atkinson found it a thing of "great beauty and purity [which] just missed the final splendor of a perfect work of art"). And Author Hammerstein had been informed by the box office that his show had a record advance take of $750,000 in the till. The talk of Broadway for long weeks before it opened, Allegro would still be talked about a long while after.
Perhaps some of the talk--like some of the reviews--would not be frenzied, or even favorable. Beyond doubt, Allegro was a real departure for Hammerstein & Rodgers, and perhaps they might better have stayed where they were. Beyond doubt, Allegro was something on a pretty big scale--but that something might be artistic failure.
Boy Meets World. The story-line of Allegro is simple enough; up to the halfway mark, in fact, it is the story of every middle-class American boy. Joseph Taylor Jr. (John Battles) is a small-town doctor's son, born in a brass bed, brought up in a frame house, educated at a public school, packed off to a proper college, united with his father in the practice of medicine, united with his first love in the business of matrimony. His mother (Annamary Dickey) dies. His success-loving wife badgers him into moving to a big city, acquiring a fancy practice, mingling with a phony crew. But when she proves unfaithful, he turns his back on her and high life, and lights out for home.
The child of doting, well-to-do parents (the Theatre Guild), Allegro has been given every advantage that money can buy. For nursemaid, Joe Taylor has a full-sized Greek chorus singing Richard Rodgers' pleasant tunes; for playing after
school, a full-scale Agnes de Mille ballet; for wedding music, a virtual cantata. His most uninspired thoughts reverberate through loudspeakers; his quietest desires are wired for sound. As a result, Allegro gets too big for its roots and too elaborate to have an honest Our Town warmth. Snapshots in family albums lose some their character and charm when blown up for public display. That way they show their defects more plainly, too.
But Allegro, with all its faults, is an impressive effort in a good cause: it is the latest sortie in that well-nigh-won revolution against cloak-and-daguerreotype operetta and June-moon musicomedy. In that revolution, Oscar Hammerstein is certainly one of the heroes. He put something like real people into Oklahoma! and Carousel; but Allegro is by far the most realistic of his librettos, by far the most deliberate manifestation of the New Look he gave to musical plays.
Stature for Solemnity. The New Look does not imply sophistication. Says Oscar: "The sophisticates have let us down." The theme of Allegro is a simple, minor-key faith shared by many Americans: a kind of puzzled sympathy for the puzzled ("Poor Joe! The older you grow, the harder it is to know . . .").' Oscar is a sentimentalist who is repelled by the materialistic din of big city living. One lyric in Allegro says bitterly:
