- Person
- Lorenz Hart
- Lived
- 1895–1943
- Field
- Broadway lyricist
- From
- American
The story
Lorenz Hart was a voracious reader from childhood. Born in New York in 1895 to German Jewish immigrant parents, he edited and wrote for school papers and acted in school plays, and one summer at camp he brought along a trunk of books that included a fifteen-volume set of the works of William Shakespeare. At Columbia he took a class in dramatic technique, and his love of literature shaped everything he later wrote with the composer Richard Rodgers.
Two decades after that summer, Rodgers and Hart turned to Shakespeare for a Broadway show. The Boys from Syracuse adapted The Comedy of Errors, itself based on a Roman comedy by Plautus, about two pairs of identical twins separated at birth whose paths cross in the same city. The book was written by George Abbott, who also directed, and George Balanchine created the dances. Hart's younger brother, the comic actor Teddy Hart, played one of the twin servants.
The show opened at the Alvin Theater on 23 November 1938 and ran for 235 performances. It is recognised as the first musical based on a Shakespeare play, and PBS's Broadway: The American Musical calls it the pioneer adaptation of Shakespeare for musical comedy. Its score, with swing and other rhythms of the 1930s, included 'Falling in Love with Love', 'This Can't Be Love' and 'Sing for Your Supper'. It arrived in the middle of the partnership's most productive period, when, as EBSCO notes, their shows were so innovative that they helped change the course of Broadway musicals.
According to EBSCO's biography of Hart, the show established a new standard of literacy for musical comedy and paved the way for later adaptations of classic works, such as Kiss Me, Kate (1948), Candide (1956) and Man of La Mancha (1965). Universal Pictures released a film version in 1940.
The show has remained popular. An Off-Broadway revival in 1963 ran for 500 performances, more than twice the original run, and was followed by a London production that year. Later stagings included the Stratford Festival in Canada in 1986, a 1991 London production directed by Judi Dench, and a Broadway revival by the Roundabout Theatre Company in 2002.
Why it matters
The Boys from Syracuse showed that great literature could become popular musical theatre, opening a path that later classics followed.
About Lorenz Hart
Lyricist of Rodgers and Hart, whose witty, rueful words for “Blue Moon” “My Funny Valentine” and “The Lady Is a Tramp” helped make the Broadway song an art form.
More about Lorenz Hart
- One Hart show gave the world 'My Funny Valentine'Babes in Arms (1937) alone gave the world 'My Funny Valentine', 'The Lady Is a Tramp', 'Where or When' and 'Johnny One-Note'.
- Lorenz Hart turned Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee into songRodgers and Hart's A Connecticut Yankee (1927), based on Mark Twain's novel, confirmed Hart as a leading lyricist; he revised it as his final work.
- Lorenz Hart pioneered the conversational song lyricLorenz Hart was among the first lyricists to use polysyllabic rhyme for wit and insight and to write in a natural, conversational voice.
- Lorenz Hart wrote 'Isn't It Romantic?' for the moviesIn Hollywood in the early 1930s, Lorenz Hart wrote film songs including 'Isn't It Romantic?' for Maurice Chevalier, as well as 'Lover' and 'Blue Moon'.
- Hart's I'd Rather Be Right satirised a sitting presidentRodgers and Hart's 1937 musical I'd Rather Be Right took the unprecedented step of satirising an American president still in office.
- Lorenz Hart's Pal Joey triumphed when revived in 1952Pal Joey (1940), the first musical with unromanticised realism, won the New York Drama Critics Award when revived in 1952.
- Lorenz Hart wrote lyrics for 28 Rodgers and Hart musicalsLyricist Lorenz Hart and composer Richard Rodgers wrote 28 stage musicals and more than 500 songs together, including 'Blue Moon', many now classics of the American songbook.
Sources
- Lorenz Hart PBS, Broadway: The American Musical
- Lorenz Hart EBSCO Research Starters
- The Boys from Syracuse Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.