92NY's LYRICS & LYRICIST to Present COCKEYED OPTIMIST: WHERE HAMMERSTEIN FOUND HIS HOPE

Cockeyed Optimist: Where Hammerstein Found His Hope, the Lyrics and Lyricists 2024/25 season opener, takes a deep dive into the plays, novels, and films that inspired Oscar Hammerstein – resulting in such masterworks as Oklahoma!, The King and I, The Sound of Music, South Pacific, Show Boat and more. The show is written by Tony Award nominees Dick Scanlan and Malcolm Gets and directed by Scanlan, and features a cast including Kerstin Anderson  (Broadway - My Fair Lady); Mikaela Bennett (L&L – E.Y. “Yip” Harburg: Follow the Fellow Who Follows a Dream and Lenny’s Lyricists); Patrick Breen (Broadway – The Normal Heart, Next Fall); Eddie Cooper (Broadway – Parade), Omar Lopez-Cepero (Broadway – On Your Feet) and Katie Mariko Murray (Broadway – Frozen).

Performances are on October 26, 27 and 28 with tickets available here.

“Beyond his deceptively simple lyrics, Oscar Hammerstein was a genius at finding unexpected sources,” says Scanlan. “All of his hits were adaptations: a bestselling novel by a feminist author that Hammerstein turned into an anti-racist musical; two lines of text in a Hungarian play that became the basis for Carousel’s epic ‘Soliloquy;’ a queer, Indigenous writer’s story of a love triangle—Laurey, Curly and Jud—left largely intact but transformed by Rodgers & Hammerstein’s score into the quintessential American musical.”

Nicholas Russotto, Executive Director, Tisch Music, goes on to say "this Lyrics & Lyricists show looks at Hammerstein’s beloved body of work as never before and celebrates his genius in a whole new light.”

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