Michael John La Chiusa's off-Broadway 1994 musical
Hello Again, based on Arthur Schnitzler's play La Ronde, contains ten two-character scenes chronicling sexual encounters in different decades of the 20th century -- "The Soldier and the Nurse" in scene two, "The Nurse and the College Boy" in scene three, "The College Boy and the Young Wife" in scene four, etc. As such, it is an ambitious undertaking and necessarily episodic. On-stage, there may have been many unifying visual elements, but on record, the sung-through scenes pass by quickly and sketchily, simultaneously full of deep feeling and passion, yet not presented in enough detail to convey those emotions fully to the listener. Although there are nods to musical styles across the century, much of the music is in a post-
Sondheim musical recitative style: it's a musical because the dialogue is sung, not because there are real songs. ~ William Ruhlmann