The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built (15 page)

HERO

He felt so small.

PHILIA

What did he do

To break the wall?

BOTH

What could he do

To break the wall?

(They kiss.)

And that was all.

The number was replaced by “Lovely,” an almost equally charming if less clever song, largely because it made a hilarious second-act reprise when sung by Zero Mostel and Jack Gilford, the latter clad in a diaphanous white gown and pretending to be dead (don’t ask). But “Your Eyes Are Blue” is as admirable as it is rarely heard. It’s a textbook example of the kind of thing that Hammerstein crystallized in the bench scene but, at the same time, a complete original.

*   *   *

There is a subset of the conditional love song, which might be called an “aftermath song.” In shows where, for one reason or another, the couple in question never get their crested grebe moment, or don’t have it onstage, we may catch up with them after the first date, or the first encounter, or whatever it is that’s drawn them together. One of them, left alone to contemplate what’s just happened, has our full attention, and an unquiet mind to explore. What happened? What is this I’m feeling? What’s going on in this brain and body that I’ve trusted for so long?

Because of its multiple plots (four of Grimm’s fairy tales and an invented fifth one all woven together by James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim),
Into the Woods
leapfrogs through much of what we think of as traditional structure, seeking inventive solutions, and getting in and out of trouble. Its audacity more than makes up for its occasional murkiness, however, and it is never less than clear thematically. It deals principally with parents and children and the gulf that accompanies the love between them.

There is, however, time for romantic love as well. Cinderella, returning from her first encounter with the Prince in
Into the Woods
, comes to a dead halt somewhere on the path back home to ponder her fate. She’s been to the ball, but we haven’t, so she needs to tell us what happened—or at least what’s happening to her.

Has she lost her shoe, or left it behind on purpose? And if the latter, why? Well, the Prince is from another world, and Cinderella doesn’t think she could ever be a part of that world. But maybe she could. Certainly he could never join hers. So now what? The ambivalence in the song is very much cut from the cloth of conditional love songs—the hope, the anxiety, and the self-doubt are all there, but the form is different. It’s just her and us. And she begins to explain:

You think, what do you want?

You think, make a decision.

Why not stay and be caught?

You think, well, it’s a thought,

What would be his response?

But then what if he knew

Who you were when you know

That you’re not what he thinks

That he wants?

Cinderella’s mind is racing, but in circles, which is usually what happens when one is smitten. And it’s all happening too fast. Nothing can really be figured out under these conditions. Unlike Julie Jordan and Billy Bigelow, who succumb to nature in the moment, Cinderella has dodged that bullet, only to wonder whether she regrets giving the Prince the slip. She’s more like Nellie Forbush, keeping her defenses up until she knows a little more. But she doesn’t know how she’ll learn it. Or what she’ll do when she learns it. So she settles on what seems like the best course of action, which is, of all things, inaction.

Then from out of the blue,

And without any guide,

You know what your decision is,

Which is not to decide.

But justifying indecision requires some significant explanation to oneself, making sure not to leave room for self-doubt through reflection or second-guessing. Cinderella has to project certainty and wisdom in a situation where she may actually possess neither. And Sondheim accomplishes this through a dizzying set of rhymes that make her sound emphatic. And what a set of rhymes!

You’ll just leave him a clue:

For example, a shoe.

And then see what he’ll do.

Now it’s he and not you

Who is stuck with a shoe,

In a stew, in the goo,

And you’ve learned something, too,

Something you never knew,

On the steps of the palace.

As a character, Cinderella shares a lot with Eliza Doolittle. They’re a pair of waifs, each trying to improve her lot and escape her destiny and her family. They’re both headed to a ball, and they find unlikely matches in an upper-class prig and an upper-class prince. But Eliza’s first taste of romantic possibility (it’s barely that) leads not to ambivalence but to uncontrolled—if unrequited—ecstasy. She falls, and hard. “I Could Have Danced All Night” can hardly be justified as a conditional love song, but it’s a not-so-distant cousin.

Eliza, you may recall, has endured a spirit-crushing tutorial: Henry Higgins’s “instruction” in proper English speech. She’s not the only one to suffer. In one of the most accomplished of all sequences in a musical, Higgins has explored all the various ways he can think of to get her to use “h” and “ai” in their proper pronunciations. He’s had her blowing “h” words at a Bunsen burner, and he’s stuffed her mouth with stones. He’s harangued her; deprived her of sleep, food, and drink; and generally insulted and tortured her for days. His staff is ready to quit, and his friend Colonel Pickering is about to end the friendship. Then, in a final, exhausted attempt, at three in the morning, he switches gears and transforms himself, just for a moment, from brutal tyrant to tender poet-confessor.

“Think of what you are trying to accomplish,” he says. “The majesty and grandeur of the English language. It’s the greatest possession we have. That’s what you’ve set yourself to conquer.”

He gives her credit. He makes what she’s doing important to her, instead of simply a means to a better job in a flower shop. He elevates her instead of trying to crush her.

Like Sarah Brown’s declaration that her lover will never be a gambler, Henry Higgins’s one moment of noble tenderness is a trip wire. For no other apparent reason, the words suddenly come out of Eliza’s mouth as directed, as if she’d been holding out on him all along, waiting to see his heart instead of his lash: “The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain,” she says. And a reckless celebration explodes on the stage. It’s one of those moments of letting go that audiences remember for decades. The buildup has been meticulous and excruciating, and the release is orgiastic. Higgins, in the midst of it, takes Eliza in his arms and does a bit of a gavotte—nothing more than that. But the die is cast. Left alone at the end of the scene, she can’t sit still, can’t calm down, can’t let go of the memory of it. It’s almost four in the morning. She’s supposed to go to bed, and she might be eager to; but not to sleep.

“
I could have danced all night
,” she sings blissfully, “
and still have begged for more
.” The word “begged” is perhaps innocently chosen by Alan Jay Lerner, but it reminds us that there is something intriguingly sadomasochistic about the relationship between Eliza and Higgins. They don’t ever, in the course of
My Fair Lady
, seem to have an actual sex life, but the give-and-take, the power exchanges that fuel the relationship, the fantasies of beheadings, firing squads, starvation, and beatings that pepper their conversation and their lyrics create something more dangerous that replaces a vanilla romance. They’re suited to each other in a way that neither expected, and they continue to discover and savor it, even at their most antagonistic. In the world of well-mannered Mayfair, there’s something unsettlingly erotic going on between them that never quite gets stated. And looked at through that lens, the final, thrilling high G that concludes “I Could Have Danced All Night” serves as an unforgettable autoerotic orgasm in song. There’s rarely been a sexual moment in a musical that is as simultaneously raw and decorous. It’s not for nothing that the show never becomes irrelevant.

*   *   *

My Fair Lady
, in 1956, may have been speaking in code. But as the Golden Age faded and the sexual revolution took hold, the conditional love song’s traditional sense of public decency began to collapse. All that fancy dancing gets less credible in a world where people are having sex first and asking questions in the morning. And musical theater had to learn how to cope, which it started to do when, in 1970’s
Company
, the hero Bobby wakes up to discover the flight attendant he’s spent the night with is already up and dressing.
“Where you going?”
he sings plaintively.

“
Barcelona
,” she replies.

He tries to dissuade her but doesn’t have much ammunition:

BOBBY

Look, you’re a very special girl,

Not just overnight.

No, you’re a very special girl,

And not because you’re bright—

Not
just
because you’re bright.

You’re just a very special girl, June

APRIL

April …

Oh, well. One thing they didn’t do was dance all night.

*   *   *

In some cases, innuendo replaced the confusions of first encounters. Sex, rather than the possibility of lifelong romance, was the first subject to come up. In
City of Angels
, the detective Stone is retained by a beautiful but mysterious woman named Alaura and finds himself trying to resist her charms, but not really. Students of detective fiction, particularly Raymond Chandler’s
The Big Sleep
, will recognize the situation immediately: Alaura, glamorous and apparently helpless, is up to no good, and Stone will be cautious before taking her into his arms—but not cautious enough.

In the classic Warner Bros. film of
The Big Sleep
, Humphrey Bogart played the detective opposite Lauren Bacall’s glamorous heiress. After a tepid sneak preview (this was back in 1946), the director, Howard Hawks, was prevailed upon to go back and shoot more scenes with Bogart and Bacall, who sizzled together and would go on doing so personally and professionally for years. One of the new scenes was an encounter in a restaurant, where the two of them spar ostensibly over the subject of horse racing, while the actual subject hardly stays beneath the surface.

“Speaking of horses, I like to play them myself,” Bacall says. “But I like to see them work out a little first. See if they’re front runners or come from behind.”

After assuring Bogie that she sees him as quick out of the gate, it’s his turn to rate her.

“You’ve got a touch of class,” he says, “but I don’t know how far you can go.”

“A lot depends on who’s in the saddle,” she shoots back.

*   *   *

The lyricist of
City of Angels
, David Zippel, who knew a good thing when he heard one, took his inspiration where he found it, changed the subject from thoroughbreds to tennis, and created “The Tennis Song,” a similar match for his detective and client.

STONE

You seem at home on the court

ALAURA

Let’s say that I’ve played around …

And then
 …

STONE

I’ll bet you’re a real good sport

ALAURA

Shall we say the ball is in your court?

STONE

I’ll bet you like to play rough

ALAURA

I like to work up a sweat

STONE

And you just can’t get enough

ALAURA

I’m good for more than one set …

And so it goes.
City of Angels
was set in the ’40s but written in the ’80s, and the language of “The Tennis Song” was unexpected for Broadway. The innuendo is fun but unmistakably remote from “If I Loved You,” and, like the show, it’s a hard-edged kind of comedy, well beyond the bounds of what we might call “romance.” Hammerstein would have blushed, and even Frank Loesser might have mentioned matters of taste. But Zippel was bold and memorable. And modern. The audience, for better and worse, had left behind the old ways, and the theater, as it always does, was seeking the theatergoers of its own time.

*   *   *

Even more modern was a moment from the failed musical
The Wedding Singer
, from 2006. Based on a popular 1998 film of the same name,
The Wedding Singer
, charming in its way, was doomed as a musical by its most basic premise: it’s about a wedding singer who just wants to be a wedding singer. No great goals, no active hero, no mountain to climb. But a lot of incidental fun. Robbie, the hero, is abandoned by his bride at the altar—a particular irony since he spends his life doing weddings for other people. In a plot development that none of the classic writers of musicals could have imagined, he disgraces himself onstage at someone else’s wedding, causes a brawl that nearly destroys the New Jersey catering hall, and, overcome with shame and alcohol, hurls himself in despair into the dumpster in the alley. He wants to die, or at least be left in isolated misery in the garbage.

Yet one of the catering hall waitresses, Julia, sees something in Robbie she likes. And she thinks maybe it will make him feel better if he knows he’s needed, though what she needs him for is to play at
her
wedding to an obnoxious young Wall Streeter. There isn’t any reason for her to deal with this right now, but of course we in the audience understand that there’s something else going on. Julia’s attraction to Robbie isn’t just that of a prospective employer. She won’t admit it, even to herself—she’s engaged, after all—but she doesn’t have to. The lovely young waitress is not going to end up with the greedy, faithless stockbroker in this story, but the story has to get started. Tentatively, Julia approaches the dumpster, suspecting that Robbie’s in there, and sings: