But there's a lot in the book that's not in the musical. And as noted by others, Rodgers and Hammerstein were not always all that faithful to their source material. Sometimes the differences are relatively minor, other times they're so major that musical almost seems just vaguely inspired by the source material. Well, that's only true of one, Flower Drum Song, which diverges greatly from the novel (although it's still at least recognizably connected to the novel, unlike the Hwang version). But, still, most of them do have fairly major differences.
I'm guessing that Myron McCormick made Billis work very well. I think that some later actors of the role try too hard to be funny. |
