MUSE/IQUE Will Host PLENTY OF HEART, PLETNY OF HOPE Concert This Month

MUSE/IQUE’s next show of their 2024 season will be Plenty of Heart. Plenty of Hope, The Making of Oklahoma! and the Broadway Musical.  The concerts take place on Friday, July 26, Saturday, July 27 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, July 28 at 2:30 pm and 7:30 pm at The Wallis in Beverly Hills.  MUSE/IQUE is led by Artistic and Music Director Rachael Worby.
 
The concert is partially inspired by Todd S. Purdum’s acclaimed book, Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution.  Purdum, Vanity Fair national editor and political correspondent, will appear on stage, and serves as an artistic and historical advisor to the concert.
 
Joining Rachael Worby and the MUSE/IQUE orchestra onstage as guest performers are 2024 Tony Nominee Brandon Victor Dixon, direct from Hell’s Kitchen on Broadway; American Ballet Theatre principal dancer and choreographer Herman Cornejo; acclaimed opera mezzo soprano Abi Levis; and the amazing DC6 Singer Collective.
 
Reservations for Plenty Of Heart, Plenty Of Hope are now open. Visit muse-ique.com to learn about attending MUSE/IQUE events and to explore membership plans.
 
Purdum wrote in Something Wonderful, “From the distance of three-quarters of a century, it is difficult to fathom just how revolutionary Oklahoma! was in its day.  It was not, as if so often said, the first musical play to integrate dance into its drama.  Nor was it the first to eschew the typical musical comedy conventions, such as an opening chorus.  Nor was it the first to deal with serious themes and personalities in its storyline. But Oklahoma! was the first to do all three at once. Oklahoma! was in its day as radical in its way as
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop genre bending Hamilton would be more than seventy years later.”
 
“The reason was simple: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s combined lifetimes of consummate theatrical knowledge, taste and skill.  Between them they knew virtually everything there was to know about the theater … by the time the two mean teamed up, Hammerstein would recall years later, they didn’t ‘want anything that ‘looks like a good musical comedy.’  They wanted something else [italics ours].’ In their prime, they seemed to stand for the best of America: forward-looking, liberal, innovative, internationalist -- progressive both artistically and ideologically.”

MUSE/IQUE Artistic and Music Director Rachael Worby leads us through some of Broadway’s most momentous numbers, from the groundbreaking Hamilton to the vibrant Hair, and inventive reimaginations of classic stories in The Wiz and West Side Story. This performance features soaring solos, stirring motifs, and ambitious dance numbers that will leave us feeling inspired to dream differently.

Worby said, “Please join MUSE/IQUE for the dazzling story of how the Broadway musical came to represent hope and wonder in American culture. We trace the history of the modern musical beginning with the provocative, unprecedented Oklahoma!, which dared to tackle darker themes and serious subject matter, all while capturing the hopeful, resilient spirit of the nation during World War II. In the 80 years since, brave artists have continued to push the boundaries of Broadway even further.”

The MUSE/IQUE program features songs from the classical musical along with works that followed and were influenced by Oklahoma! including songs from West Side Story, Company, Hair, The Wiz, Company, and Hamilton, among others. 
 
Purdum concluded, “If they had never so much as met, Rodgers and Hammerstein each would be remembered as signal figures in theatrical history.  Together they achieved immorality.  But no one could have known that on the long-ago March evening [that Oklahoma! opened in 1943] when a handsome young cowhand loped onto a stage, singing about the dawn.”