Pipe Dream (musical) - Reception and Aftermath

Reception and Aftermath

The musical received moderate to poor reviews. Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times termed it "a pleasant, lazy romance ... Mr. Rodgers and Mr. Hammerstein in a minor key". John Chapman of the Daily News stated, "Perhaps Hammerstein and Rodgers are too gentlemanly to be dealing with Steinbeck's sleazy and raffish denizens." Walter Kerr of the Herald Tribune suggested, "Someone seems to have forgotten to bring along that gallon of good, red wine." John McClain of the Journal American stated, "This is a far cry from the exalted talents of the team that produced South Pacific. They must be human, after all." Steven Suskin, in his book chronicling Broadway opening night reviews, stated that Pipe Dream received one favorable review from the seven major New York critics, two mixed, and four unfavorable. Louis Kronenberger, in Time magazine, summed it up as "roficient, professional, and disappointing." Billy Rose said of Pipe Dream, "You know why Oscar shouldn't have written that? The guy has never been in a whorehouse in his life."

Publicly, Hammerstein accepted blame for himself and Rodgers, and stated that had the musical been produced by anyone else, "we'd say that these are producers we wouldn't like to work with again". According to Cy Feuer, Hammerstein privately blamed him and Martin, telling them, "We believed your pitch and we went and did something we were never cut out to do and we should never have done it.

According to author Frederick Nolan, who chronicled the works of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Pipe Dream "cost them a fortune". Rodgers later stated it was the only one of their works he truly disliked; that if you start with a bad idea, everything is marred by that: "We shouldn't have been dealing with prostitutes and tramps." Rodgers also blamed the casting of Traubel, whom he considered wrong for the part. Hammerstein's grandson, Oscar A. Hammerstein, in his book about his family, agreed with Rodgers's view of Traubel—"too much Brunhilde, not enough Miss Kitty ". The elder Hammerstein's biographer, Hugh Fordin, tied the failure of the play to the lyricist's prudery:

South Pacific, Carousel and Carmen Jones have stories that rest on the power of sexual attraction. As long as the sexuality was implicit, Oscar could treat it with the same understanding that he brought to other aspects of human behavior ... His problem was with dealing openly with sexual material; because of this reticence, Pipe Dream was not what it might have been.