In musical comedy, fictional small towns are either Anatevka — enchanted villages beyond the blue horizon — or River City, cozy burgs where everyone might as well be brother and sister. In any event, a smug insularity is the defining characteristic. Therefore, before the Cossacks or the Music Man comes to call, the inhabitants perform a clutch of place-defining numbers, symbolically extending citizenship to the audience. Who wouldn't want to visit Brigadoon, when the clouds part? Or not juke and jive on the West Side with the Jets? But Sweet Apple, Ohio, the setting for the 1960 Michael Stewart/Charles... More >>>