Moving Forward
I was listening to the original cast album of Damn Yankees and, during “Goodbye, Old Girl,” I thought, “This has to be one of the best examples of a song moving a plot forward.” The song starts with old Joe Boyd’s tender letter but, eventually, the music swells and there’s young Joe Hardy with his strong, young, über-male voice as the story takes a quantum leap. Musical theater songwriters are urged to work this way. More than once, I heard the multi-Tony-honored book writer Peter Stone cautioning young wordsmiths, “If your song ends and your plot is at the same place you were before the song, then you’ve done it wrong.”
Perhaps Stone urged his lyricists on 1776, Woman of the Year, and
The Will Rogers Follies toward forward progress. When “But, Mr. Adams” begins, John Adams doesn’t know who’ll write the Declaration of Independence, but by the end he’s landed on Mr. Jefferson, dear Mr. Jefferson. At the top of “I Was Right,” talk show host Tess Harding is convinced that she’d made no mistake in mocking cartoonists’ work on the air, but by song’s end, she’s apologizing to handsome comic-strip creator Sam Craig. “It’s a Boy” starts with Clem Rogers overjoyed that he finally has a son after his wife had previously given birth to many a daughter — but the song ends after Clem has argued with a teenaged Will and has come to the conclusion that daughters are easier to raise.
And yet, there are plenty of songs in those three Stone shows that don’t move the plot forward. “He Plays the Violin,” “I Wrote the Book,” and “Give a Man Enough Rope” for starters; “Yours, Yours, Yours,” “So What Else Is New?”, and “Never Met a Man I Didn’t Like” for continuers. So what gives? How necessary is it really for a song to advance the action? “Everybody Ought to Have a Maid,” “Applause,” and “Hello, Dolly!” don’t, whereas even a second-level show such as Bajour does in “I Can.” (Gypsy sorceress Anyanka wants to put one over on “gajo” Emily. Anyanka starts out denigrating herself, hoping that Emily will eventually invite her to a tea party where there will be many Park Avenue matrons whom Anyanka can fleece. It takes 2:57 to do this.)
“Soliloquy,” “Do-Re-Mi,” “The Rain in Spain,” “I’m Flying,” and “Tevye’s Dream” all advance the action. “A Boy Like That” doesn’t, but “I Have a Love,” which immediately follows, does. “People,” “Bosom Buddies,” and “Big Spender” don’t at all. Neither do the two greatest production numbers I’ve ever seen: “Who’s That Woman?” and “We’ll Take a Glass Together.” But all of these songs are terrific, aren’t they?
Moving the plot forward in song didn’t really become a musical theater goal until the mid-1940s. I’m reminded of that afternoon in 1989, when I was at On the Town at Arena Stage in Washington. Though I had three albums of the score, I saw one unfamiliar song listed in the program: “I Understand.” So I watched and listened intently when Pitkin, Claire’s fiancé (actually her stooge), told how he always let his brother and mother walk all over him and was even forgiving when a motorist hit him, responding with, “I understand.” Now Claire was victimizing him, too — “and that’s not fair,” he decided: “So instead of remaining calm and bland, I hereby do not understand.” From the sixth row of the theater, I gave out with a gasp. The theatergoers in front of me turned around, wondering if something terrible had just happened to the person behind them. It wasn’t Pitkin’s rebellion per se that made me gasp but the fact that he had done it in song — in a show dating from 1944.
A look at some of the best 11 o’clock numbers shows that they don’t advance the action. “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat,” “Brotherhood of Man,” “Why Do the Wrong People Travel?” and plenty of others have you right where you were when the song began. (Well, that’s not entirely true; the situation in the book hasn’t changed, but you and I and the rest of the audience have moved from our seat on Earth into musical comedy heaven.) I guess moving the plot forward isn’t usually the job of 11-o’clock numbers; each of them serves as the cherry on top of a delicious sundae.
Some writers move the action forward within a song by splitting the song into verse and refrain. “Getting Married Today” uses the verse to set up one set of expectations (the choir singer introduces a wedding ceremony) and the refrain to deliver something else entirely (Amy’s calling it off; don’t tell Paul). Alan Jay Lerner has Henry Higgins in denial about his feelings for Eliza during the verse of his final song in the show; then, in the refrain, he admits that he’s “grown accustomed to her face.” Lerner repeated the exact same structure a couple of years later in the title song of Gigi: Gaston spends the verse exasperated at a woman’s behavior but then, during the refrain, realizes that he loves her.
Given that, over the years, more emphasis has been placed on moving the plot forward through song, I’ve often wondered if Lerner would choose a different ending for “Why Can’t the English?” if he were writing My Fair Lady today. As it stands now, the number doesn’t advance the plot at all. These days, he might very well bring Pickering into the song and lyricize the wager that he and Higgins make on whether Higgins can transform Eliza’s speech; that way, it would be a plot-advancer.
Even when we are in a different place at the end of a song, the lyrics haven’t always moved the action forward; sometimes, a scene changes does the job. Cornelius and Barnaby are in Yonkers when they begin “Put on Your Sunday Clothes” but they’re in Manhattan by the time the song concludes — not because the lyrics say so but because the scenery has changed around them. Percy and his buddies start “Into the Fire” in England but conclude it in France. Effie Melody White pretty much repeats the same sentiment over and over again in “And I Am Telling You I Am Not Going,” but the action sure advances when she’s pulled away from the lip of the stage all the way to the back wall as the newly configured Dreams emerge to the forefront. Grizabella takes a much longer journey in “Memory,” from Earth to the Heavyside Layer. And sometimes it’s not a scene change but a costume change that advances the action, as in the title song of “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”
Some songs advance the action through dialogue interspersed with the lyrics: “Some People” greatly depends on Rose’s discussion with her father of a matter of $88 and her eventually getting it via his gold plaque on the wall. “Comedy Tonight” propels the plot when Pseudolus tells us about those three households. But, on the other hand, most opening numbers don’t advance the plot or care to: e.g., “Another Op’nin, Another Show,” “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin,” “Good Morning, Baltimore,” and “Beautiful Girls.” Some might say that the last-named number advances the plot of Follies in that it brings many of the people we’ll get to know down a flight of stairs and into the action. If so, it doesn’t advance it by much — but I wouldn’t trade it for a number that did so. Would you?
So while I hate to argue with Peter Stone and plenty of others who urge that songs should move the action forward, I must come to the conclusion that if a song is good, that’s good enough for a musical.
********************
[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@theatermania.com]
