Bart Van Steed. Clint persuades Clio to seduce Bart into proposing marriage, but the conspirators soon find themselves falling in love while scheming to settle old scores.
The success of the musical adaptation of Ferber's Show Boat convinced her lightning could strike twice. She first approached Rodgers and Hammerstein with her proposal, and when they opted to write Pipe Dream instead, she turned to Lerner and Loewe, who agreed to compose the score but lost interest after My Fair Lady opened. DaCosta wrote a first draft of the book, which Ferber disliked, and when her offer to adapt the book herself was declined, she backed out of the project.
Critics were impressed by the elaborate sets (which included a turntable and fifteen different locales) and the more than two hundred costumes created by
Tony Award for Best Costume Design and was nominated for Best Scenic Design. The leads drew good notices, but most agreed that DaCosta's book and direction resulted in a slow-moving, uninvolving production. The main characters were unlikeable, their romance dull, and too many peripheral characters wandered in and out of the action. Show Boat, with its riverboat setting, had been a natural for musical adaptation, and whereas Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern
had succeeded in compressing the epic into a lively stage production, the creative team behind Saratoga was unable to wring much excitement from a romantic relationship stemming primarily from a mutual desire for vengeance.
Songs
Act I
I'll Be Respectable
One Step-Two Step
Gettin' a Man
Petticoat High
Why Fight This?
Game of Poker
Love Held Lightly
Game of Poker (Reprise)
The Gamblers
Saratoga
The Gossip Song
Countin' Our Chickens
You or No One
Act II
The Cure
The Men Who Run the Country
The Man in My Life
The Polka
Love Held Lightly (Reprise)
Goose Never Be a Peacock
Dog Eat Dog
The Railroad Fight
Petticoat High (Reprise)
References
Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops by