The Musical as Drama

which carries the characters into new versions of themselves.^7 On rare occasions this new dimension of characterization does co ...

“Soliloquy” never loses touch with its sources in American song. That is its genius. It builds several songs and segments into a ...

obstacles in their romance, find their way to reconciliation and eventual marriage. This is the standard turn in most ro- mantic ...

the number, when Sky finally rolls the dice after everyone has been singing and dancing at some length. The final beat occurs on ...

understand this at first. The degree of impudence in this won- derful plot cannot be overestimated. Not only does the turn- ing ...

point.^8 It blossoms into an ensemble number, with the gamblers and the mission workers all dancing and singing together—and thi ...

dramatizes the scene in which the cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, masters upper-class pronunciation under the instruc- tio ...

senger is trapped by plague restrictions and cannot deliver the news to Romeo that Juliet is alive. This is reported, not dram- ...

“for me” and not for her daughters—and would go on scream- ing “for me” while the orchestra faded out with scratchy vio- lins. “ ...

frightened by Jud all over again, at the box social itself in act 2, and she makes up her mind there, too. In an act 2 scene tha ...

Laurey. It’s time to start for the party.” The rapist/murderer of the dream is to be her date for the box social! So act 1 ends ...

continues beating. Numbers are based on the time of repeti- tion, and we hardly ever think about this, perhaps because we have a ...

Chapter Three CHARACTER AND THE VOICE OF THE MUSICAL Are There Real People in Musicals? A BETTER book is what made the musical s ...

place, or, to put it another way, by consistently speaking dia- logue that normally answers the speech of others and is about to ...

to the country. No one else has ever thought this a problem— only Sondheim, who seems worried over the consistency of her charac ...

Maria sings that in B-flat, then the music rises to D-flat for the repeat of A. A Tonight, tonight, There’s only you tonight, Wh ...

This is a conventional ending, with the double rhyme on “star/ are” and “right/tonight” tying the final A together and con- nect ...

Lovers Maria is the Puerto Rican girl unlike other Puerto Rican girls, the one who can reach up to that unexpected G-flat at the ...

neither realizing that it has just come along. They do not know they are falling in love at first sight. In fact, they are sure ...

Character in a musical, then, is an effect of song character as well as book character. There are pairs of lovers in most musi- ...