{"id":2391159,"date":"2026-04-27T10:31:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T10:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2391159"},"modified":"2026-04-27T10:31:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T10:31:09","slug":"rodgers-and-hammerstein-lerner-and-loewe-musicals-come-to-l-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/rodgers-and-hammerstein-lerner-and-loewe-musicals-come-to-l-a\/","title":{"rendered":"Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe musicals come to L.A."},"content":{"rendered":"

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It\u2019s raining classic musical revivals in Los Angeles, with three shows penned by Rodgers and Hammerstein and Lerner and Loewe poised to run concurrently this spring. <\/p>\n

These mid-century dream teams revolutionized American theater by popularizing the integrated musical, a form which leveraged classic operetta elements like song and dance as narrative tools. <\/p>\n

Once cutting-edge and now quintessential, productions led by these iconic writing duos, along with book writers Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, represented a growing interest among librettists in cohesive stories that offered topical cultural commentary. \u201cOklahoma!\u201d (1943) is generally credited with kicking off this \u201cGolden Age\u201d of Broadway, which lasted roughly through the 1960s. <\/p>\n

That Golden Age arrives in modern L.A. via \u201cFlower Drum Song,\u201d at East West Players through May 31; \u201cThe Sound of Music,\u201d at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, beginning May 5; and \u201cBrigadoon\u201d at Pasadena Playhouse starting May 13. While each of these shows engages with its source material differently, all enable theatergoers to both explore what made them classics and discover their contemporary resonance. <\/p>\n

\u201cBrigadoon,\u201d Pasadena Playhouse (May 13\u2013June 14)<\/h2>\n
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Betsy Morgan and Max von Essen star in \u201cBrigadoon\u201d at Pasadena Playhouse. The classic show has been revised by Alexandra Silber for a modern audience.<\/p>\n

(Jeff Lorch)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

Alexandra Silber spent much of her theater career with classic musicals, and several formative years studying acting in Scotland, so she felt it was her fate to adapt Lerner and Loewe\u2019s 1947 fantasy romp, \u201cBrigadoon.\u201d <\/p>\n

The original musical tells the story of two American travelers who happen upon a mythical village in the Scottish Highlands that appears just once every 100 years. Coming after three unsuccessful early collaborations, \u201cBrigadoon\u201d was the first major breakthrough hit for Lerner and Loewe, acting as the turning point that established them as premier theater creators. Critics were particularly enchanted by the show\u2019s lush score and fantastical atmosphere. <\/p>\n

Silber loves \u201cBrigadoon\u201d for those reasons and more. The ways in which the show\u2019s characters experience grief helped Silber through her own when she lost her father at age 18. But her immersion in Scottish culture taught her that Lerner and Loewe\u2019s original book did not represent Scotland realistically. Instead, she said it leaned into sentimentality and stereotyping. In her revised book, Silber sought to remedy that, along with \u201cBrigadoon\u2019s\u201d flattened female characters, while still honoring the show\u2019s emotional core. <\/p>\n

\u201c[\u2018Brigadoon\u2019 is] this enormous property with so much potential, but the existing book from 1947, like a lot of these books, reflects the temperaments and mores of that era and not necessarily of our 21st century sensibilities,\u201d Silber said. <\/p>\n

Maybe it was an instinct born from a desire to honor her own father\u2019s memory, but Silber felt protective over Lerner\u2019s legacy, and told his estate as much when she pitched her adaptation. <\/p>\n

\u201cI said to them, \u2018All I want to do is take your father and husband\u2019s hand from 1947 and go, OK, Alan Jay Lerner, let\u2019s go roaming into the 21st century,\u2019\u201d Silber said, referencing a lyric<\/a> from the \u201cBrigadoon\u201d song \u201cHeather on the Hill.\u201d <\/p>\n

In Silber\u2019s revival, the wise schoolmaster Mr. Lundie is Widow Lundie, and the town flirt Meg Brockie is a pub owner pushing middle age. Both revised characters reflect the matriarchal history of 18th century Scotland, in which women held more powerful roles than modern society associates with old times, the playwright said. <\/p>\n

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\"A <\/picture>\n
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Alexandra Silber stops to laugh at James Irvine Japanese Garden.<\/p>\n

(Jason Armond\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

\u201cThey were the keepers of wisdom and culture,\u201d Silber said. \u201cThey made huge contributions to society and were invaluable to the [social] fabric.\u201d <\/p>\n

Silber\u2019s \u201cBrigadoon\u201d will also feature a live traditional Scottish folk band, called a c\u00e8ilidh band, accompanying Meg Brockie\u2019s songs. <\/p>\n

While hardly anyone bats an eye at re-imagining Shakespeare, Silber said, some people feel differently about musicals, perhaps because musical theater is sometimes perceived as an unserious medium. However, \u201cwhen regarded with seriousness and not with an eye roll, these are great works of art,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

In the case of \u201cBrigadoon,\u201d Lerner and Loewe composed a musical that recognized the global scar of World War II, and in its insistence that love transcended loss, gave people the catharsis they needed. Just like Rodgers and Hammerstein, they were sensitive to their current moment and sought to use art to guide their peers through it, Silber said. <\/p>\n

To her, \u201cBrigadoon\u201d coming to L.A. at the same time as the Rodgers and Hammerstein productions \u201cfeels like an absolute head-nod of, clearly, there\u2019s something in the zeitgeist where we\u2019re all agreeing and deciding that there is wisdom to be found in these old musicals, there is pleasure, illumination and catharsis to be found there [and] that those things do have value.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving a communal, shared experience with a classic story that still reminds us of ourselves, it gives us the opportunity to realize that since time immemorial, we\u2019ve all asked the same questions,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cFlower Drum Song,\u201d East West Players (ends May 31)<\/h2>\n
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\"A <\/picture>\n
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Krista Marie Yu in Rodgers and Hammerstein\u2019s \u201cFlower Drum Song,\u201d produced by East West Players and the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center. The show has been reimagined by Tony Award-winner David Henry Hwang.<\/p>\n

(Mike Palma)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

In his 2026 revival of \u201cFlower Drum Song,\u201d David Henry Hwang is not solely in conversation with the musical\u2019s original composers, but also with himself. <\/p>\n

The Tony Award-winning playwright first adapted Rodgers and Hammerstein\u2019s 1958 classic set in San Francisco\u2019s Chinatown a quarter-century ago, as \u201crevisicals\u201d \u2014 in which original songs were preserved, but books were rewritten for the modern era \u2014 were cropping up left and right. <\/p>\n

\u201cAt that point, \u2018Flower Drum Song\u2019 was a musical that just wasn\u2019t being produced much at all,\u201d Hwang said. \u201cIt had been a hit in its time in the late \u201850s and throughout a lot of the \u201860s, and then it just stopped being performed for a number of reasons.\u201d <\/p>\n

Hwang knew the show had great potential, though. It loomed large in the Asian American imagination as the only Broadway musical prior to 2015 that centered Asians as<\/i> Americans. Luckily, the Rodgers and Hammerstein estate was receptive, and Hwang\u2019s \u201cFlower Drum Song\u201d opened in 2001 at L.A.\u2019s Mark Taper Forum<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Nearly 25 years later, Hwang found himself in talks with East West Players\u2019 artistic director Lily Tung Crystal about which of his shows could join the company\u2019s 60th anniversary lineup. They toyed with \u201cM. Butterfly,\u201d the masterpiece that earned Hwang his Tony, but kept gravitating toward \u201cFlower Drum Song.\u201d <\/p>\n

Part of the intrigue for Hwang lay in the fact that as he read his 2001 book decades later, he felt the same way he had when he first consulted Rodgers and Hammerstein\u2019s in the late \u201890s \u2014 that many things were \u201ccreepy and outdated.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"A <\/picture>\n
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\u201cIt had been a hit in its time in the late \u201850s and throughout a lot of the \u201860s, and then it just stopped being performed for a number of reasons,\u201d David Henry Hwang said of \u201cFlower Drum Song,\u201d which he adapted for a modern audience. <\/p>\n

(Jason Armond\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

\u201cIt just felt like this would be the perfect confluence,\u201d Hwang said, to revisit \u201cFlower Drum Song\u201d with other Asian American creatives, at the nation\u2019s longest-running Asian American theater. He added that this version imagines the production \u201cthrough an Asian American lens, as opposed to any even unconscious choices that I made in 2001 to be consistent with what I perceived to be a Broadway audience back then.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hwang could have written a new, original work, but he felt there was something distinctly powerful about bringing back a Golden Age musical that was so radical in its time. <\/p>\n

Rodgers and Hammerstein composed \u201cFlower Drum Song\u201d in the late \u201850s, when Chinese Americans were still being aggressively investigated by the FBI as suspected communists. <\/p>\n

Yet in that milieu, Hwang said, \u201cRodgers and Hammerstein chose to write a musical that asserts that Chinese Americans are as American as anyone else … [and] then they worked really hard to cast it with an overwhelmingly Asian American cast, which was much harder to do in those days.\u201d<\/p>\n

So despite Rodgers and Hammerstein\u2019s at times inauthentic depictions of Asian Americans in the story, \u201cI think they have to get credit for that as a radical act and as a reflection of their political progressivism,\u201d the playwright said. <\/p>\n

Hwang said that he believes Golden Age theater is uniquely positioned to ease theatergoers into more critically examining our present moment. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt has the comfort elements of nostalgia. At the same time, it\u2019s looked at through new eyes and a new lens,\u201d he said. \u201cIt can be cutting-edge in its content and address the turmoil and the frustrations and the anger that many of us are feeling today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Sound of Music,\u201d The Hollywood Pantages Theatre (May 5\u201324); and Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa (June 2-14)<\/h2>\n
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\"The <\/picture>\n
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\u201cThe play originally was called \u2018The Singing Heart,\u2019 and that\u2019s really what it\u2019s about… the music is never something extra,\u201d Tim Crouse said about \u201cThe Sound of Music.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Jeremy Daniel)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

Jack O\u2019Brien, who directed \u201cThe Sound of Music\u201d revival more than a decade ago, once raved about a Russian production of Rodgers and Hammerstein\u2019s musical in a letter to a producer, which made its way to Tim Crouse \u2014 son of book writer Russel Crouse. <\/p>\n

\u201cI read, like, four sentences in his description, and it was obvious that he had a real affinity for the show,\u201d Crouse said, adding that he knew O\u2019Brien \u2014 who previously led the Old Globe in San Diego \u2014 was the man for the job.<\/p>\n

The 1965 film adaptation of \u201cThe Sound of Music\u201d broke box office records, and went on to replace \u201cGone With the Wind\u201d as the highest-grossing film of all time, turning Rodgers and Hammerstein\u2019s musical into a worldwide phenomenon. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut [the film\u2019s success has] also been a hindrance,\u201d Crouse said, \u201cbecause people want to sneak the movie into the show … and the show is a different animal.\u201d <\/p>\n

While the film adaptation\u2019s political themes are toned down, the original musical focused on the dark atmosphere of the Nazi annexation of Austria and the Von Trapp family\u2019s struggle for freedom. <\/p>\n

\n
\"Julie <\/picture>\n
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Julie Andrews in a scene from the 1965 film, \u201cThe Sound of Music.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Twentieth Century-Fox)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

O\u2019Brien, in his 2015 production<\/a> of \u201cThe Sound of Music\u201d at the Ahmanson, which has been subtly revised for the Pantages, \u201capproached the script as if it were Shakespeare or Shaw, and he looked at every line to see what it was really about,\u201d Crouse said. <\/p>\n

For Crouse, the musical is about many things: music itself, of course, but also vocation, integrity and faith: \u201cThere was a lot for them to get their teeth into in terms of a story.\u201d<\/p>\n

That certainly appealed to Hammerstein, he said, whose librettos tended to have political aspects to them. Crouse\u2019s father and his partner had a similar habit of writing stories with political undertones, Crouse said, asking audiences, \u201cWho are you when the whistle blows?\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time \u201cThe Sound of Music\u201d first arrived, that question might have been more pointed, with a global war not far in the rearview. That\u2019s what made it so resonant at the time, Crouse said. <\/p>\n

Yet, he said, watching the musical today, he sees its central questions are just as relevant as they were when his father\u2019s show first premiered. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are you going to do with your life? How are you going to find out? Why are you here?\u201d he said. \u201cThose are timeless issues, and obviously they have a certain pertinence today in the United States of America.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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