Me and Juliet

Me and Juliet is a 17 scene musical comedy written and composed by the magical duo Oscar Hammerstein (Book) and Richard Rodgers (Music). This musical made me imagine that I should be watching this musical in a black and white film. Having received no Tony Award nominations Me and Juliet had a fairly good run on Broadway. The show opened in late May in 1953 and closed April 1954 for a reported total of 358 performances. Rodgers and Hammerstein had successfully written 4 popular musicals by the time Me and Juliet came into existence which explains why this musical seems to be a hybrid. Or rather, the book and musical styles of Hammerstein and Rodgers are most definitely recognizable throughout the show. There seems to be a lot of waltz tempo and stagnant vocal tracts (there is a lot of consistently repeated notes, i.e. The song “It’s me”). The story although is practical it seems to have a heightened world. Hammerstein and Rodgers set out to write a comedic musical. The instrumentation is playful and the language is sometimes hilarious. One of my favorite examples of comedy in this musical lies within the song “Intermission talk”. The song is filled with comedy both musically and verbally.

The musical quality of the voices is interesting. As I mentioned before the quality of sound makes it easy to imagine a film version of this musical shown in black and white. I find the world of the play to be great. I found the part of the story that in some ways