CDs: Loads of Love
Last year, Richard Rodgers' No Strings was given a distressing Encores! revival that mostly served to diminish the 1962 musical's reputation. But it's probably the case that No Strings can never be the same without the star for whom it was written, Diahann Carroll, and without Joe Layton's staging concepts for the original production.
Watching Carroll on a television show, Rodgers got the idea of building a musical around a glamorous black leading lady in a classy, contemporary environment. Rodgers might have been alluding to Carroll's previous Broadway musical, House of Flowers, or to the recent Lena Horne vehicle, Jamaica, when he stated that No Strings would "get {black actors} out of the bandanna and gingham stage."
No Strings was the first show Rodgers worked on following the death of his partner Oscar Hammerstein II in 1960. Because it was too soon for Rodgers to feel comfortable with a new lyricist, he chose to write the lyrics for the new show himself, emboldened by his experiences filling in for a straying Lorenz Hart and, more recently, writing music and lyrics for some new songs for the remake of the State Fair film.
Rodgers and Hammerstein had had a success producing Samuel Taylor's Broadway play The Happy Time later made into a Kander and Ebb musical, and Rodgers asked Taylor to write the book for the Carroll show. The star would play Barbara Woodruff, a high-fashion model working successfully in Paris who meets David Jordan Richard Kiley, an award-winning but blocked novelist who avoids work by sponging off wealthy friends. The interracial romance was never referred to in the script, but it affected the conclusion of the story, with David realizing he must go home to Maine if he is to get back to work, and Barbara realizing she's safer remaining in Europe.
If the plot was unremarkable, the staging was special. The title of the show had a dual meaning, referring to the central relationship but also to the fact that the show's orchestra was, but for a harp, stringless, relying instead on brass, percussion, and woodwinds. Rodgers and Layton decided to eliminate the pit and place the orchestra on stage, grouping the players in various combinations and, as soloists, allowing them to trail and occasionally interact with the principals. Principals and chorus members moved set pieces around in full view of the audience. The production was an exercise in style, the last word in chic.
No Strings opened at the 54th Street Theatre on March 15, 1962, to raves for Carroll, praise for Rodgers' score, and reservations about the book. The show transferred to the more central Broadhurst Theatre on October 1, 1962, where it lasted until August, 1963, playing a total of 580 performances. Tonys were won by Carroll, Rodgers, and Layton for his choreography. The show lost the Best Musical prize to How to Succeed..... During the run, Carroll and Kiley were replaced by Barbara McNair and Howard Keel, who also headed the national tour. The London production, starring Americans Art Lund and Beverly Todd, opened in late '63 and played 135 performances.
Between then and Encores!, No Strings has had few if any major revivals, but then its particular glamour and excitement would be difficult to recapture. That excitement is definitely captured on Capitol's original Broadway cast recording, one of the most electric of all '60s show discs. In 1993, it was issued on a Broadway Angel CD that went out of print, and now it's finally back, from DRG, the label that recently released "No Strings" with Strings, an orchestral treatment of the tunes, conducted by the show's orchestrator, Ralph Burns. DRG once issued domestically the London cast LP; it features a couple of items not on the Broadway set the playout music, the dialogue within the title song and Lund's strong vocals, but the performance is markedly inferior to the Broadway recording. The U.K. label Must Close Saturday is scheduled to reissue the London No Strings on CD.
With Burns' superb orchestrations and Rodgers' poetic, quirky, surprisingly fresh lyrics, the No Strings recording is an extremely classy package. Kiley is the ideal leading man, and Carroll's vocals are extraordinary. The most celebrated song, the exquisite "The Sweetest Sounds," opens and closes the show. There are strong romantic ballads for the leads "Nobody Told Me," "Look No Further", who are also given the charming duet "Maine." Carroll got a terrific, belty introductory number, "Loads of Love," and Kiley gets the elegant title song. And there's also the zesty Bernice Massi, playing oil heiress Comfort O'Connell and leading "Be My Host" and "Eager Beaver."
Rodgers went on to write both music and lyrics for the new songs for the Sound of Music film 1965 and for the television musical Androcles and the Lion 1967. But No Strings would remain the only Broadway show with an all-Rodgers score. And no Broadway collection is complete without the cast album of No Strings.
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