Paint Your Wagon (Original Broadway Cast 1951) / Love Life (1955)

There's a fairly simple rule for evaluating the lasting merit of the shows written by Alan Jay Lerner: the stronger the original source material, the more durable the final product.

That's why My Fair Lady (based on Shaw's Pygmalion), Camelot (from White's The Once and Future King) and Gigi (from Colette's play of the same name) generally stand the test of time better than originals like The Day Before Spring and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

This selection of songs from Paint Your Wagon (1951) and Love Life (1948) proves this theory, but also makes you aware that even when Lerner the librettist could be on shaky ground, Lerner the lyricist was still capable of turning out some first-rate work.

Both shows were quirky, ground-breaking works that weren't giant hits in their original presentations and have rarely been revived since. They also both have some glorious songs in their scores, thanks to the music of Frederick Loewe (Paint Your Wagon) and Kurt Weill (Love Life).

Lerner was originally inspired to write Paint Your Wagon by the gold rush stories of Bret Harte, even though none of them were specifically referenced in the final work.

As frequently happened to the procrastinating Lerner during his career, the time lapse between inspiration and execution spanned several years and after conceiving the show shortly after Brigadoon opened in 1947, it took him over three years to sit down and write it.

The final plot combined the lusty atmosphere of the mid 19th century Gold Rush in California with two personal stories: one of a grizzled prospector who couldn't stop wandering and the other concerning the interracial love affair between the prospector's daughter and a young Mexican.

From the very beginning of the out-of-town tryout, critics praised the show's score and its eclectic cast (which combined veteran James Barton with newcomers Olga San Juan and Tony Bavaar), but had trouble with the disjointed and overly ambitious book.

Unfortunately, no amount of late-night rewrites could fix the problems of the script and when it opened on 12 November 1951, the critics were fairly chilly.

Walter Kerr attacked the show's 'rather tenuous and deflated romance' while Wolcott Gibbs, out for blood, said that while Lerner was 'credited' with the book, 'it's hard to believe everybody around the premises didn't just make it up as they went along'.