the opening night, Wayne Abrams wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times, "Nobody is neutral about Allegro. The Hammerstein-Rodgers-de Mille musical play is either nigh unto perfection or a dismal flop. There's that much room for disagreement." Aftermath Hammerstein was embittered by audience and critical reaction to his book, and felt they misunderstood it. Public perception was that Hammerstein had implied that small-town folk were good while their big-city cousins were neurotic and venal. The lyricist objected, pointing out that the worst character in the musical was a small-town girl, but according to Hammerstein biographer Hugh Fordin, "he knew it was his fault that the message was not clear." In a preface to the published script, issued in 1948, Hammerstein tried again to make his point: According to Frederick Nolan, in his book about the pair's music, "Reexamined today, Allegro's main fault seems to have been that it was ahead of its time, the integration of story and music far too advanced even for audiences now becoming accustomed to musicals which actually had stories." Sondheim noted, "Allegro was an attempt to use epic theatre in contemporary musical theatre. It used a Greek chorus, and tried to tell the story of a life, not through events but through generalities. This is now what would be called a Brechtian approach." A decade after Allegros premiere, after learning of his terminal cancer, Hammerstein returned to the musical, hoping to correct its flaws, but he did not complete the project. While recording an oral history tape for Columbia University, Hammerstein stated, "I intended Dick to write music for it [the chorus in Allegro] but we wound up reciting the chorus instead ... I'm not blaming anyone, because we all accepted it, we all collaborated ... but it was a mistake." Rodgers later stated that the show was "too preachy, which was the one fault that Oscar had, if any," and "[n]othing to be ashamed of, certainly". Rodgers further defended the play, "The comments we made on the compromises demanded by success, as well as some of the satiric side issues—hypochondria, the empty cocktail party—still hold." The relative failure of Allegro reinforced the team's determination to have another hit. Author James Michener recalled his meeting with the duo over the possibility of converting his book Tales of the South Pacific into a musical. "They were inwardly burning because of the reception accorded to Allegro. Those fellows were