Pipe Dream (musical) - Rehearsals and Tryouts

Rehearsals and Tryouts

When rehearsals opened in September 1955, Rodgers assembled the cast and told them that he was going into the hospital for a minor operation. In fact, Rodgers had been diagnosed with cancer of the jawbone. He spent the weekend before the operation writing one final song for Pipe Dream. The surgery required removal of part of the jawbone and tongue, and some of the lymph nodes. The operation took place on September 21, 1955; within ten days of the operation he was back in the theatre watching rehearsals, though for some time only as a spectator.

After rehearsals began, Steinbeck wrote to Hammerstein to express his delight at the adaptation. He became more dismayed as the play was slowly revised in rehearsal and during the tryouts. According to Traubel, the play was being "cleaned up ... as scene after scene became emasculated". The revisions made Suzy's profession less clear, and also fudged the nature of Fauna's house. One revision removed Suzy's police record for "vagrancy". These changes were sparked by the fact that audience members at the tryouts in New Haven and Boston were uncomfortable with the setting and Suzy's role; by the times the revisions were completed, the script could be read to say that Suzy was merely boarding at Fauna's.

Steinbeck noted this tendency on a page of dialogue changes:

One of the most serious criticisms is the uncertainty of Suzy's position in the Bear Flag. It's either a whore house, or it isn't. Suzy either took a job there, or she didn't. The play doesn't give satisfaction here and it leaves an audience wondering. My position is that she took the job all right but she wasn't any good at it. In the book, Fauna explains that Suzy's no good as a hustler because she's got a streak of lady in her. I wish we could keep this thought because it explains a lot in a short time.

In another memo, Steinbeck noted that the pathos of Suzy being a prostitute had given much of the dramatic tension to the scene in which Doc rejects Suzy, and later, her rejection of him. "I think if you will finally bring the theme of this play into the open, but wide open, you will have solved its great weakness and have raised it to a high level ... If this is not done, I can neither believe nor take Pipe Dream seriously."

In the end, Suzy's activities at the Bear Flag were glossed over, as Hammerstein concentrated on her relationship with Doc. Alluding to Hammerstein's emphasis on the scene in which Suzy makes Doc soup after Hazel breaks his arm, Steinbeck stated, "You've turned my prostitute into a visiting nurse!"