NO STRINGS
NO STRINGS
#1NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/24/13 at 10:34pmIs this show too esoteric to try to revive for today's audiences?
#2NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/24/13 at 10:41pmWould it work if you switched the races of the leading couple? I was re-imagining it with Laura Osnes in the Diahann Carroll role and Brandon Victor Dixon in the Richard Kiley role.
#2NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/24/13 at 10:42pm
I don't think you could ever have a commercial revival unless you got Hugh Jackman to be in it.
The score is solid enough for a non-profit like Roundabout to attempt a production though. I don't think it would be a big draw, but Richard Rodgers' name still carries a lot of weight when selling tickets.
#3NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/24/13 at 10:44pmWow! Hugh Jackman would be a perfect fit opposite someone like Anika Noni Rose! It's a lush, lovely score. Would love to hear Anika tear into "Loads of Love".
#4NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/24/13 at 10:49pm
Anika would be WONDERFUL in this show. Can you imagine her "Orthodox Fool?"
I don't think it would work to switch the races.
I love the OBCR. The title track and "The Sweetest Sounds" are very beautiful.
#5NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/24/13 at 11:09pmAnika would do wonders with this score! I love the OBCR, it's easily in my top 10.
After Eight
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/5/09
#6NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/25/13 at 12:17am
I loved the show way back when, and it played very well when done at Encores. I would love to see a revival --- if they didn't ruin it, that is.
The score, suprisingly, seems to have been sort of left by the wayside, which is too bad, since it's excellent.
My personal favorite song is the cute-as-a-button "La La La."
#7NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/25/13 at 5:45am
Here's a great selection of stills from the original Broadway production courtesy of the NYPL Digital Gallery.
NO STRINGS STILLS GALLERY
Updated On: 7/25/13 at 05:45 AM
Ed_Mottershead
Broadway Legend Joined: 10/20/05
#8NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/25/13 at 2:51pmI've often wondered why Rodgers didn't continue to write the words and music -- No Strings certainly proved that he was up to the task and the lyrics were neither Hart nor Hammerstein stylistically speaking. And the three remaining shows he did write were pretty awful, culminating in the worst of all, I Remember Mama. Any thoughts on this?
#9NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/25/13 at 3:42pm
"The Sweetest Sounds" is a magnificent song.
Here's a fun version from Judy Garland's 1963-64 television series, used by Judy to introduce Count Basie, her guest on that episode.
http://youtu.be/SZZ_JomTYhA
henrikegerman
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/29/05
#11NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/25/13 at 3:58pm
Has this show always been done with a black woman and a white man as the romantic leads? Was it even written with one black and one white romantic lead in mind? I thought Rodgers decided to cast Carroll because he loved her and thought she was right for the part, not because Barbara's and David's being of different races was ever part of the idea. Race is never mentioned in the show and the plot has nothing to do with the races of any of the characters.
Updated On: 7/25/13 at 03:58 PM
#12NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/25/13 at 4:08pm
^ That's an interesting question. That's why I was imagining it with the races switched with Osnes and Dixon in the leads.
Seven Arts Production and Ray Stark purchased the film rights to the show after it opened as a vehicle for NANCY KWAN.
Carroll went public with her disappointment - not so much that she wasn't considered (although I am sure she was miffed at that as well) but because they didn't consider another African American actress for the role.
henrikegerman
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/29/05
#13NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/25/13 at 4:16pmHow about Laverne Cox as Barbara and Beth Fowler as David? HALF JOKING! I'm obsessed with Orange is the New Black, and these two are fantastic together in it.
#14NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/25/13 at 4:17pm
Just looked up info and Diahann Carroll wrote in her autobiography that indeed NO STRINGS was written for her.
She also went on to write that the NAACP got involved in the whole Nancy Kwan/No Strings debacle. They sent a petition to Warner Bros. demanding to know how many black people it employed. Warners eventually decided to shelve the project.
Dollypop
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/15/03
#15NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/25/13 at 6:19pmI love the score but was disappointed with the version that Encores! mounted a few years ago. That may have been due to James Naughton sleepwalking through the part and not knowing his lines--even though he was carrying the script.
#17NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/25/13 at 8:01pm
Race is never mentioned in the show and the plot has nothing to do with the races of any of the characters.
I don't know, henrik. I really don't know the true production history, but the climax of the play (for some reason I have the published libretto) is motivated by the leading couple realizing that the idyll they have enjoyed in Paris will be impossible to reproduce in the U.S..
If they are both white, why would there be a problem?
I am speculating based on the script, but I think somebody (Rodgers, maybe?) simply made the sensible decision that discussing race would make the play didactic (especially in the early 1960s).
But that doesn't mean race wasn't at the heart of the show.
***
I think it could be revived; there's nothing inherently dated about the book. But Whizzer is right: a revival would be more an historical curiosity than a huge commercial hit--UNLESS you cast Hugh Jackman and Beyonce.
After Eight
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/5/09
#18NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/25/13 at 10:08pm
"I've often wondered why Rodgers didn't continue to write the words and music."
He also wrote the music and lyrics to the new songs in the film remake of State Fair, and later for the tv musical, Androcles and the Lion.
I guess he found working with a lyricist more rewarding than going it alone. But the results were disappointing. He certainly didn't have a happy experience with Sondheim on Do I Hear a Waltz?, though his music is wonderful. I'm sure his own lyrics would have been far superior to those Sondheim provided.
As for his final three scores, none of them compares to No Strings, either with respect to music or lyrics, but I find Two By Two the worst of the three.
henrikegerman
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/29/05
#19NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/26/13 at 12:04am
Gaveston, I don't know the show that well, but it's a very good question. Perhaps I don't get the show enough to hazard a guess, but I can ask some questions that might help:
Do Barbara and David break up because, tacitly, the underlying obstacle to their going the distance is race?
Or is this a bittersweet romance of two expats, one of whom needs to remain an expat, the other of whom learns that he needs to go home. Richard Rodgers meets Henry James?
Or is it something in between?
Consider: does Barbara want to remain in Europe because she longs for that life like many Jamesian expats do (a life that is no longer conducive to David's creativity)?
Or does she want (or also want) to remain in Europe because there she can have a life that she could never dream to have in the U.S. as a black woman, or more particularly a black fashion model, and so has to turn down David's proposal to go back with him?
Updated On: 7/26/13 at 12:04 AM
#20NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/26/13 at 12:51am
Simply put, Rodgers found working alone lonely. Even though Larry Hart as a partner was sort of like working alone, Hammerstein was so the opposite that he just missed the company.
Also remember that he had known both of his partners for 35 to 40 years, so working with "kids" (even if one was Oscar's protege) must have been jarring.
And the show "No Strings" has lost all of the shock value: mixed race relationships are, in most parts of America, just another couple and Rodgers is long gone, so the novelty of hearing him work alone is also missing.
#21NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/26/13 at 9:58am
"I really don't know the true production history, but the climax of the play ... is motivated by the leading couple realizing that the idyll they have enjoyed in Paris will be impossible to reproduce in the U.S. If they are both white, why would there be a problem?"
I suppose there's an argument that it could be a matter of the free-spirited cosmopolitan super-model feeling that she wouldn't fit in with the stuffy old-money WASPs of New England, but it's definitely stronger if it's an unspoken question of race.
henrikegerman
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/29/05
#22NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/26/13 at 10:09amIt may be stronger, but my guess is that it isn't strong enough to make this libretto work in the 21st Century (not to imply we are "post-racial", only that if the show requires an unstated color line to fill in the blank, then there might not have been much there to begin with, and there would be even less now).
After Eight
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/5/09
#24NO STRINGS
Posted: 7/26/13 at 10:26am
^
It was published.
Maybe you could find a used copy on e-bay, amazon, etc.
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