No Strings is a musical drama with book by Samuel A. Taylor and words and music by Richard Rodgers. No Strings is the only Broadway score for which Rodgers wrote both lyrics and music, and the first musical he composed after the death of his long-time collaborator, Oscar Hammerstein II. The musical opened on Broadway in and ran for performances. The U. It ran for slightly more than six months before transferring to the Broadhurst Theatre , where it continued until August of the following year, for a total of performances and one preview.
Barbara McNair and Howard Keel replaced them later in the run. The civil rights movement β voter registration for Black people, integration, and fairness and equality in the workplace β was starting to gain momentum in the United States in the early s, but it was a topic largely absent on Broadway.
Neither the book nor score make specific mention of race, nor does it impact upon any decisions made by the couple, but Rodgers has addressed the issue. It was only in the casting of Carroll and Richard Kiley as the star-crossed lovers that the subject of interracial romance surfaced.
Any production of the show easily could be cast with two leads of the same race without changing the content in any significant way. He felt that the casting spoke for itself and any specific references to race in the play were unnecessary. Rodgers said: "Rather than shrinking from the issue of race, such an approach would demonstrate our respect for the audience's ability to accept our theme free from rhetoric or sermons.
However, the characters' reluctance to discuss race was controversial. Fashion model Barbara Woodruff, living in Paris , meets and falls in love with expatriate American, David Jordan, a Pulitzer Prize -winning novelist who has suffered from an intense case of writer's block since his arrival in France.
