Dated Musicals

[ceebeegee]

I was reading on ATC about the musical Silk Stockings, Cole Porter's last musical. It's considered problematical to revive, even though it has a terrific score, because it takes place during the Cold War (it's based on the movie Ninotchka) and the plot (and jokes) are seen as pretty dated. The same thing is said about Chess, a great favorite of mine--fantastic score but the plot is said to date it.

Now here is something to ponder--South Pacific came out a few years after World War II had ended. Why hasn't that show ever been seen as dated? After World War II ended, American culture went full-bore ahead--expansion into the suburbs, the rise of consumerist culture, the highly structured couture designs on the post-War era, the baby boom--it seems they wanted to put the past behind them and not remember this truly terrible war that had decimated their youth. (Although America, the psychological toll of Pearl Harbor notwithstanding, wasn't hit nearly as hard as Europe, especially Russia. Russia was SLAMMED. Read about the sieges of Stalingrad and Leningrad sometime--Leningrad went on for over TWO YEARS. And the pathetic death of little Tanya Savicheva--"only Tanya is left." Russia was hit so hard.) Anway, you'd think America would want to forget World War II--so why was South Pacific so successful? Why has it never been considered dated?

I wonder if it has something to do with our too-soon involvement in the Korea War--such a dreary war, not even a war, a police action, with none of the romance of World War II, the "Good War," where we clearly understood what we were fighting and why. We were conspicuously triumphant in Word War II, whereas the Cold War just sort of collapsed.

Comments

[dry-2olives.livejournal.com]

Also, keep in mind that South Pacific was slightly, but significantly, rewritten for the Broadway revival.