Radio review: Rodgers and Hart and Hammerstein

A rainy Sunday afternoon after a fairly quiet week of live theatre is as good a time as any to dip back into the Drama on 3 archive of radio plays on BBC Sounds, and an original play written by Sarah Wooley and directed by Abigail le Fleming. Rodgers and Hart and Hammerstein is, as the title gives away, a story all about theatre and particularly the formative years of Broadway musicals, but you'd be right if you suspected that one of the main draws for me was wondering if we'd get to hear Oscar Hammerstein II explain just what attracted him so much to stories whose lead characters have killed a man, honestly it's no big deal why does everyone keep going on about it, who hasn't killed a few people, if anything it's a positive and you should definitely marry off your daughter to him. Sadly this particular bit of psychological insight isn't one we get in what is for the most part a highly sympathetic look at three men who between them largely defined what the Broadway musical was.

And at the start of the play it's the original superstar writing duo who are doing the redefining, as Rodgers and Hart premiere Pal Joey at Christmas 1940. They score another hit with this story about less salubrious characters than Broadway was used to seeing in musicals, but despite the success lyricist Lorenz Hart (Paul Chahidi) is haunted by the initial reviews which complained about the innovation. Already an alcoholic, he retreats even worse into drink and his collaborator Dick Rodgers (Jamie Parker) is left desperate for someone to work with. Hart had rejected Rodgers' suggestion that they adapt a play about cowboys; it turns out the lyricist Hammerstein (Nathan Osgood) had also wanted to work on the same play and been turned down by his usual collaborators, so they pair up for what would eventually become the huge hit Oklahoma! But Rodgers' worries about betraying his original partnership could put the brakes on his new one before it's even begun.

Far from turning out to spend his evenings in back alleys murdering people (THAT WE KNOW OF,) Hammerstein comes out of the play as the most affable of the trio, although he's also the one we spend the least time with. Really Wooley's play is about the platonic (from Rodgers' side at least) love between Rodgers and Hart, and suggests that only the latter's early death allowed the former to fully commit to his new partnership. Hart is pretty impossible in the period the play covers but Chahidi characteristically gives him a lot of depth and sympathy, and his despair at being gay is shown as being behind his drink problems. Rodgers on the other hand is as much a workaholic as Hart is an alcoholic, and he neglects his wife Dorothy (Emma Handy) and daughters, but his affection for his lifelong friend and determination to help him however much he doesn't want to be helped make his sympathetic as well. So Rodgers and Hart and Hammerstein could perhaps have done with a little more bite*, but it's an interesting listen all the same.

Rodgers and Hart and Hammerstein by Sarah Wooley is available on BBC Sounds.

Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.

Image credit: BBC.

*especially as the origin story of the writing duo who brought us such beloved family fare as "He's a Murderer, She's a Racist, Will These Two Crazy Kids Ever Get It Together," "If It Hurts When Your Husband Beats You It's Probably Your Fault For Not Loving Him Enough," and "Why Not Have Sex With My Daughter, Her Rates Are Very Reasonable"