To continue with our Memorial Day celebration, we’ve turned to a variety of musicals about American servicemen and women and their experiences for this week’s Dress Circle (5/31 7:00 p.m.).
The main musical of the evening is Irving Berlin’s World War II fundraiser, “This Is the Army.” Composed to raise funds for the war effort (just as Berlin’s WWI show “Yip Yip Yaphank”), the show began in New York, traveled across the country, and then to Europe and raised over $2 million (over $30 million in today’s money) along the way. A few of the songs from this show include “The Army’s Made a Man Out of Me,” “I’m Getting Tired, so I Can Sleep,” “This is the Army Mr. Jones,” and “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning” performed by Berlin.
We’ll also hear the title song from another service Musical, the Air Force’s “Winged Victory. Some of the other shows we’re including are “Over Here!,” a musical by the Sherman brothers looking at what was happening in the States during the war, and “Ankles Aweigh,” a wartime romance.
We’re also including songs from the show that is considered the end of the “war musicals” on Broadway, Harold Rome’s “Call Me Mister.” This show looks at the servicemen and women returning home and to the lives they left behind. It includes the wonderfully moving “Going Home Train” which we’ll be featuring.
Germany had their “supermen,” and the United States had ordinary “Joes” performing extraordinary feats, and that was the focus of American musicals: we’re all in this together, and together we’ll triumph.
