Customer Reviews

Pipe Dream (1955 Original Broadway Cast)

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I'm willing to overlook lyrics like"...the girls have never looked so come-and-getty" or "I suffer somethin' awful when I think 'cause thinkin' puts my brain on the blink" in order to just bask in the gorgeous music of PIPE DREAM----certainly one of Rodgers and Hammerstein's most adventurous and beautiful scores.

I'm sure that there must be problems gettings the rights from the John Steinbeck Estate to re-write the musical's book which is based on two of Steinbeck's novels: "Cannery Row" and "Sweet Thursday." Otherwise, I've no doubt that this musical would be overhauled and revived on Broadway immediately. Just listen to the Overture and I promise you're bound to be hooked.

Some of the numbers in the score took Rodgers and Hammerstein closer to opera than they'd ever been except, perhaps, in "Carousel:" One is a rousing, male chorus filled with twists and turns which is called "The Bum's Opera;" another is a splendid duet for soprano and mezzo called "Suzy Is A Good Thing." The two romantic songs, filled with the yearning that R&H are famous for ("All At Once You Love Her" and "Everybody's Got A Home But Me") are as beautiful and simple as anything the team wrote. And the duet for leading man and lady "Will You Marry Me?" is simplicity itself. Helen Traubel, William Johnson and Judy Tyler are the 3 stars who lead the completely captivating cast.

There are, granted, two comic numbers that, for me, totally misfire: "Thinkin'" and "The Party That We're Gonna Have Tomorrow Night" but they are a small price to pay to hear this almost unknown, magnificent theatre music.

Only Rodgers and Hammerstein would have written a musical where the distinguished opera singer Helen Traubel played the owner of a whorehouse. PIPE DREAM opened on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre in 1955 and shuttered after 246 performances, the shortest run for a Rodgers and Hammerstein show.

PIPE DREAM was based on a story by John Steinbeck and dealt with serious issues. In previous collaborations, Rodgers and Hammerstein had also dealt with such issues as racial intolerance (SOUTH PACIFIC), the clash of East and West (THE KING AND I), domestic violence (CAROUSEL) and sexual longing (OKLAHOMA!). In PIPE DREAM, the young heroine is a prostitute.

PIPE DREAM featured a strong cast headed by legendary Wagnerian opera singer Helen Traubel with William Johnson, as well as Judy Tyler, considered one of the great Broadway ingenues of her era.

The score is filled with delights like "Everybody's Got a Home But Me", "Suzy is a Good Thing", "Sweet Thursday" and "All At Once You Love Her" as well as "The Next Time It Happens", which would be recycled for the 1996 Broadway incarnation of Rodgers and Hammerstein's STATE FAIR.

All-in-all, this cast album is fantastic, and I highly recommend it.

Even Richard Rodgers, in an interview late in his life, said that this show was a failure and that his score was a failure. So maybe I'm crazy or maybe I'm just drawn to the underappreciated, but this is one of my favorite Rodgers and Hammerstein scores. (Or maybe Rodgers was influenced in his opinion by the excruciating physical pain he endured during the show's production period, as a result of jaw cancer, and by the fact that the show had the shortest run of any of Rodgers and Hammerstein show. And that it was the only one they put up all the money for.)

Having read the script for this show, I can see why it wasn't a hit. It's mostly very low-key, and Hammerstein doesn't always know how to write believably for the characters who populate the show, particularly in his dialogue .

But the score is an almost complete success. Apart from some wonderfully charming, light, catchy numbers (such as "Sweet Thursday" and "The Man I Used to Be"), we have "All Kinds of People," Hammerstein's most straightforward statement of his personal philosophy; several superb numbers ("The Tide Pool," "On a Lopsided Bus," and "The Bum's Opera") that completely dispense with traditional song forms; the remarkably bittersweet and touching "The Next Time It Happens"; one of the most nakedly vulnerable and moving songs ever written, "Everybody's Got a Home But Me"; and an extraordinary duet for two women, "Suzy Is a Good Thing," which starts with a long recitativelike section and then switches to a meltingly beautiful melody. With Suzy, one of the major characters, Hammerstein was writing about someone with very low self-esteem, and much of the material involving her is extremely moving.

Apart from those, there are several other fine numbers. This is one of Rodgers's most daring, unpredictable, and inventive scores. In the more straightforward songs, the melodic and harmonic contours sound very much like Kern at his richest, but some of the numbers are more complex structurally than anything Kern ever did. Hammerstein's best lyrics here are perhaps the most heartfelt and moving he ever wrote.

With all of this, I find it easy to forgive a couple of numbers that aren't on the highest level, and even one that's a complete dud ("Thinking").

The cast is very good, particularly Judy Tyler, who has a haunting contralto that doesn't sound much like anyone else I can name who ever sang a lead in a Broadway musical. William Johnson is just bit stiff occasionally, but he's extremely musical and he does beautifully in the ballads. And Helen Traubel, who apparently had terrible vocal trouble in the show, sounds very good on the recording as a bordello madam. She doesn't sound like your typical madam, but why should she? Especially in the more tender moments, such as "Suzy Is a Good Thing" and the reprise of "All at Once You Love Her," she's pretty wonderful.

It would be great to have a new recording of this score, one that would be more complete and in modern sound, though I'm not sure we have anyone today who could quite match Judy Tyler and William Johnson (both of whom died tragically within a year of the show's closing). If we do, I don't know who they are.

Anyway, it doesn't seem likely that we'll get a new recording any time soon, so if you love Rodgers and Hammerstein but don't know this score, I highly recommend this recording.

This "Pipe Dream" CD is very 50's rich-voiced in its recording, so in some ways anyone listening to it with an eye on producing it might be put off by it. As it is, abridges abound, with some of the best (like "Bum's Opera," which is a blast) really cut short. Make no mistake--it's great Rodgers and Hammerstein. Read the book (you can find it in some libraries) and see what life you can imagine into it. It is obscure because people in 1956 who were "important" deemed it was lesser R & H. Give it a spin and see what you think. I'm betting you'll see "All at Once" is right up there with "Hello Young Lovers" and the loveable bums from Cannery Row will grow on ya!

Top notch R&H music -- never appreciated nor well known except to the most diehard Broadway fans-- this due to a faulty libretto and short Broadway run.

Trust me -- this score ranks high in the duo's portfolio, interestingly since neither was warm to the plot, but thus produced a work that, although didn't work in 1955, believe it or not would definitely work in the 1990's.

Having seen the original production but without Helen Traubel,the understudy was the wonderful Nancy Andrews from "Little Me" & "PLain & Fancy", it must have been the trouble of the opera star doing a musical, and with out the help of a good director. The show was warmly received by the audience that afternoon, not as a big blockbuster but a small gentle play with music about this group of people in Canery Row, some who take up living in a big pipe. The first act ended as the first side does on the record with "All At Once" with the two lovers sitting at a restaurant table holding hands, very quietly and simply. At that time a new twist for the musical. Yes, maybe it did suffer from both of the "boys" being sick but the show has all ways been thought of as one that should be looked at again.

From all that I have read about this ill-fated musical, the book was what sank the show. I just bought the cd and the music is quite fine;not tip-top R&H, but still pretty good R&H. The cast is excellent throughout, including Helen Traubel. She sings her part wonderfully, and my friend, who saw the show, says that she acted her part wonderfully as well. So why did the show fail? The cast cannot be blamed, the music is far better than many "hit" Broadway shows, so the blame must be laid with the book. My friend says that this adaptation of the novel "Sweet Thursday" was not well done, never caught fire, and was just basicly uninteresting. But the cd of the music is very good! It has some great peppy songs and some fine ballads. So I would define it as one of the better "floperettas" now available on cd.

Well having read the other excellent reviews I feel I must add, my own.
I have possessed the Lp of this score for years, being a dyed in the wool R&H fan, and have owned the CD since it was first released, but until now I had never seen a production of it or read the script/libretto.
Now that I have, it absolutely beats me why this wasn't a big fat hit. I just think its wonderful, perhaps I'm crazy, but I do, everything negative I have ever read about this show just isn't true, and falls away for me> I love Hammerstein's adaptation. Having read the orginal novel 'Sweet Thursday' Steinbeck's novels are hard to adapt into another medium anyhow especially his Cannery Row stories and I think Hammerstein has done his usual brilliant best here.I dont understand where people think he has gone wrong, they say it doesn't ring true I think its hilarious, brilliant a work of his usual genius, who could do better with the material I dont know, Hammerstein was a great librettist it should be remembered as well as lyricist, his libretti being models of construction and delineation, very few could do better, and to say so is a cavil.
True it isn't a musical play in the sense of their more well known shows like CAROUSEL & SOUTH PACIFIC but its a wonderful musical comedy, I have always thought the score was marvellous anyway but now I know how its fits into the script, makes it even more enticing, Rodgers music is among his best and melodic and Hammerstein's lyrics are at times at least some of his most profound, making it a perfect musiclization as you will ever get of Steinbeck's story, this is a musical after all!!! the score is a dichotomy of was its wonderful characters are and what they aspire to be, yes you can say from Hammerstein's point of view but it a view of genius.
Richard Rodgers did indeed say late in his life that it was a failure, but here I feel his judgment was clouded, by his cancer of the jaw and his alcoholism, little known at that time, and coupled with the fact that they invested all their own money into this show , the first and only time.
However Rodgers did say that it was 'not all that well produced' but also said that if other writers had written it, he was convinced it would have got a better reception. Even Hammerstein said 'this show wont be exactly what is expected of us' and feel thats it the 1955 Rodgers & Hammerstein 'public' refused to accept the show on its own terms, they wanted more of South Pacific & The King and I, which Pipe Dream certainly isn't! but they were like true great writers & artists bold and brave, and never believed in writing sequels, because again as they wrote ' we feel writers who repeat themselves bore themselves, and that one step towards boring the 'public'.
This recording should be a must have, although it should be given a new modern recording and revived as well, but should include a copy of the Script/libretto and you'll have even better a time enjoying yourself. should be classed as one of Rodgers & Hammerstein's classics, not as a relative failure!!!!

Of the three lesser works by Rodgers and Hammerstein (ALLEGRO, ME AND JULIET & PIPE DREAM) ALLEGRO has the most interesting premise but is done in by a deficient recording. ME AND JULIET an enjoyable, lightweight affair. PIPE DREAM is a more fascinating score.

Rodgers melodies always were and always will be beautiful gifts, and some of the lyrics represent Hammerstein at his best. The show failed because of a weak and meandering book with characters that audiences found reistable. It may have been a bad idea from the start, or maybe R & H were the wrong men for this job: The songs just don't sound right for this story.

There are moments where the characters come across beautifully: listen to "Everybody's got a home but me" or "The Next Time it happens." You do not need to know a scrap of the plot...its all there in the songs! Unfortunately not all the songs are at this level. "Will You Marry Me?" sound like a pleasant love song. Read the script: It is sung as a joke. "The Tide Pool" seems a strange choice as a moment to set to music.

Still, the album offers much to enjoy and some lessons to be learned as to why sometimes a show works and sometimes it doesn't.

When I became hooked on musical theatre as a teenager in the early 1960s, I remember devouring a book by Stanley Green on the subject. In that book, if I remember correctly, the recording of Pipe Dream wasn't even listed as existing. How could a recent R&H show NOT have been recorded?! I even read the librettos to all the R&H shows up to Pipe Dream, which was available as a popular published compendium in the late 1950s. Later on I found out that there indeed was a recording of Pipe Dream, but I couldn't find a copy of it anywhere, which, of course, made me want to hear it even more. Suddenly in the mid-to-late 1960s, RCA Victor chose to rerelease their three R&H OC recordings (and in rechanneled stereo, no less!). When I saw them in the store for the first time, I almost lost my breath, and purchased all three (which was a big deal for someone with only allowance money.) Allegro was a disappointment, probably because it was so short and so much of the score was missing. Me and Juliet, although more entertaining, was a trifle and didn't seem to be well recorded because, again, parts of the score were substituted for other parts, making the recording seem disjointed, and the plot was nothing to write home about. Pipe Dream was another matter. Well recorded, considering the limitations of the Lp medium, with a wonderfully cohesive score, I returned to it over and over again. It didn't take my breath away like my first hearing of Anyone Can Whistle did, but I found it captured my attention and I never became bored with it. Of the three, it is the only one I return to.

Why is it not better known? Well, unlike the great R&H shows, it doesn't have any blockbusters. It is less a simple set of song hits than a more complex completely unified piece, which is why it so enjoyable just to put on and listen to. The performances, with the exception of Traubel's, are wonderful. Traubel's voice on the other hand was past its prime by this time, her voice doesn't blend with the other singers, and she was totally miscast in the role. Finally, the show has a mid-1950s sensibility. By that I mean it tends to completely sanitize difficult subject matter and social issues. Suzy is in fact, a homeless girl who resorts to prostitution to survive! In light of today's social awareness, the play's treatment of the topic is not only totally unbelievable, it could actually be considered offensive. And I don't think there is any way to revise Hammerstein's libretto and maintain the score's integrity.

So, get the CD, and when you have the time, put it on, settle back and give it a listen from beginning to end. You won't be disappointed.