THE MUSICAL WEST
HE Wild West, setting of so many American sagas, is the location for the musical show to be heard in Theatre of Music on Saturday, November 23, from the YAs, 3YZ and 4YZ, at 8.0 p.m. Paint Your Wagon was the second result of the collaboration of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, whose first musical was Brigadoon, and whose latest production is the fabulous My Fair Lady. The musical is a fairly realistic picture of the life of a mining town, Rumson-its rise, feminisation, and _ decline. The gold was discovered in the loose dirt of a grave, in time for Ben Rumson to stake his claim in the final phrase of his funeral discourse. In the mining town that quickly springs up, his daughter Jennifer is the only girl, and one of the lighter songs of the show is her unsophisticated demand to know "What’s Going On Hére?" as the miners resent her pre-
sence or otherwise react to her. Their lonely life is expressed in the song "They Call the Wind Maria." The first women to arrive are the two wives of a Mormon preacher, who is persuaded to give one to Ben, whose memories are still with his first wife, Elisa. Jennie meanwhile has fallen in love with a Mexican boy, Julio, whose first big song in the haunting "I Talk to the Trees." Unhappy at home, Jennifer decides to leave. The town really comes to life when the girls, the Fandangos, arrive. It dies, however, when the gold gives out and the men begin their trek again. The wanderlust that affects the prospectors appears in Ben’s song, "Wandering
Star," and in the miners’ song, "I’m On My Way," with its refrain "Got a dream, boy, got a song? Paint your wagon and come along." The population of Rumson has declined from 900 to six again when Jennifer returns from Boston as an educated young lady. Ben refused to leave his town, but when Julio comes back and is reunited with Jennifer Ben hitches up his wagon and-goes off once more in search of gold. The part of Ben Rumson is taken by James Barton, a veteran actor of vaudeville and the touring company, and the part of Jennifer by Olga San Juan. With other members of the original Broadway cast, they have some very attractive numbers to sing.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 953, 15 November 1957, Page 26
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395THE MUSICAL WEST New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 953, 15 November 1957, Page 26
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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