Gypsy Carousel. South Pacific. The Sound of Music. Oklahoma!. Each of these now well-known musicals would not exist today if not for the partnership of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. This duo wrote many renowned musical plays, of which the majority share similar themes and ideals. Later in the twentieth century, the show Gypsy was created by Arthur Laurents, Steven Sondheim, and Jule Stein. This new musical shared some of the themes of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, but also diverged from them in some ways. The 1959 musical Gypsy demonstrates the Rodgers and Hammerstein ideals of integration, character development, and strong female characters, but lacks a central love story that many Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals had. …show more content…
Integration in a show is the intentional combination of musical elements in a seamless way. In their shows, Rodgers and Hammerstein emphasized the integration of these different musical elements, which include the book, lyrics, music, dance, and more. Gypsy demonstrates this ideal as it is, overall, a very well-integrated show. This means that the musical numbers in the show, aside from those that are diagetic, transition very smoothly from the preceding dialogue and give the audience more information about either the feelings of a particular character or advancements in the plot. In other words, the musical numbers do not feel random or out of place, they are rather intentional and effective in the context of the book. There is, however, a slight difference in the type of integration in Gypsy as opposed to in Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals. Slightly moving away from the extremely seamless style of integration utilized by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Gypsy has a more vaudeville energy, with both the cards on the wings that change according to the scene, and the idea of the show within the show. These elements add a seemingly more disjointed dimension to the show, alluding to the very disjointed vaudeville shows, but the elements of the show as a whole manage to remain tightly