Clare Teal: Why I am up to my Do Re Mis this Christmas

It was a total hoot, made all the more special because Dame Cleo Laine was in the audience. You can hear it on BBC Radio 2, December 20 at 9pm.

In amidst all this Yuletide merriment I am up to my ears in Do Re Mis and other Favourite Things, feeling starry eyed and vaguely discontented, busy as a spider spinning daydreams while Climbing Every Mountain in preparation for Radio 2’s massive Rodgers & Hammerstein extravaganza at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane with The BBC Concert Orchestra, choirs, vocal groups and soloists.

Like the Nelson Riddle show we did a few months ago, the running order for this show reads like a list of mega hits from some of the most loved musicals ever written.

Before working together, Richard and Oscar achieved success with other collaborators. Rodgers worked with the gifted but tortured lyricist Lorenz Hart for I think twenty years or so, and Hammerstein learned with great master Jerome Kern.By the early forties, Hart was becoming incapacitated by alcoholism, tragically he died in 1943 aged just 48. Rodgers approached Oscar H and, the pair began their inspired partnership with a musical adaptation of Green Grow The Lilacs written by Lynn Riggs and better known as Oklahoma! Carousel and State Fair followed in 1945. South Pacific opened on Broadway in 1949, The King and I in 1951. The lesser-known Cinderella written for television aired in 1957 to more than 107 million viewers, starring 22-year-old Julie Andrews.

But they struck box office gold in 1959 with a musical that would go on to capture the hearts of virtually every person on the planet, initially starring Larry Hagman’s mum Mary Martin. Sadly Oscar died of stomach cancer in 1969 and would never witness Julie Andrews playing Maria Von Trapp in the 1965 movie adaptation, or enjoy the ridiculous level of success it achieved.

I’d die happy if I’d written a single verse of any of their songs.