It is a shock to realise this is the European professional premiere of a musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein. When it was first seen on Broadway in 1947 they had already written Oklahoma! and Carousel but this show, although it ran for a decent 315 performances, never achieved the same success. Even though it is now staged by Thom Southerland with his habitual brilliance, it is not hard to see why.
Hammerstein’s aim, in his book and lyrics, was to tell the story of an American Everyman using the bare-stage techniques of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. His hero, Joseph Taylor Jr, is the son of a small-town doctor who inherits his dad’s medical idealism and faith in the community. Even in college, Joe yearns to be back home with his childhood sweetheart, Jennie. But Jennie has ambitious plans for Joe and, once they are married, persuades him to take a job in a big Chicago hospital where he finds himself pandering to the whims of the pampered rich. The moral issue revolves around whether Joe will stay true to his original dream or succumb to the rewards of life in the wicked city.
The stock objection to the show when it first appeared was that it sentimentalised small-town life and it is perfectly true that Hammerstein’s lyrics sometimes make you wince in their endorsement of domestic virtues: in one number Joe’s mum tells her son that a fellow needs a girl to sit with him in the evening and “agree with the things he’ll say”. But there is nothing inherently wrong with the show’s premise that doctors should put public service before private advancement. What the musical suffers from is its abstraction from political reality. The only reference to outside events comes when Joe’s father-in-law reveals that he was a victim of the 1929 crash: otherwise this is Everyman viewed in isolation from society.
Rodgers, inevitably, writes good tunes. So Far, sung by Joe’s campus date, is a real winner. The use of a permanent onstage chorus also reaches fulfilment in the title song, which evokes the fast, frenetic pace of city life where “our music must be galloping and gay”: watching the cast dance till they almost drop in Lee Proud’s choreography is a genuine delight. Anthony Lamble’s design also makes clever use of a pair of stepladders and a portable tower to whisk us through Joe’s life and, as he proved in Titanic, Southerland is a master of marshalling large forces in a small space.
His cast is highly engaging. Gary Tushaw lends Joe the right sincerity without a hint of smugness, Emily Bull as Jennie blends seeming sweetness with inner steel and, in a 16-strong cast, there is exemplary support from Kate Bernstein as a principled nurse and Dylan Turner as a medical Lothario. To students of the musical, the show is a fascinating collector’s item, but I can’t help feeling it would have been improved if Rodgers and Hammerstein had shown as much interest in the state of America as in a doctor’s personal dilemma.
• At Southwark Playhouse, London, until 10 September. Box office: 020-7407 0234.
