The Musical as Drama

understand this at first. The degree of impudence in this won-
derful plot cannot be overestimated. Not only does the turn-
ing point occur during a blackout moment in a sewer, but it is
also misunderstood by the female partner in the second ro-
mantic relationship, Miss Adelaide, who encounters Nathan
on his way to the Mission. Nathan reports that he is going to a
prayer meeting. Thirteen years she has been engaged to this
man, and this is the last straw. “That’s the biggest lie you ever
told me,” Miss Adelaide retorts, but it is actually the truth. He
isgoing to a prayer meeting. Sky won the roll. When Miss
Adelaide discovers that Nathan was actually telling the truth
for once, she is willing to try for a marriage again, and this
time it works.
That the turning point for both romances has taken place in
a sewer is a stroke of genius, not only because it answers to the
lower origins of the musical itself (which goes back to the “ille-
gitimate,” nonpatented theatres of later eighteenth-century
and earlier nineteenth-century England, where melodrama and
burletta were allowed, comedy and tragedy being reserved for
the patent houses at Covent Garden, Drury Lane, and the
Haymarket) but also because it opens a new dimension to the
space of the stage. Musicals tend to fill the surface stage with
dance and song, but this musical discovers the space “under”
the stage when Nicely-Nicely Johnson is asked the persistent
question of this plot, “Where’s the crap game?” and replies
that it is about ten minutes’ walk “this way” and climbs down a
manhole in the stage. The sewer scene may be the low point of
modern drama, and it deserves full credit for this.
We should glance at two remaining songs from this show, so
neatly are they inserted into the book. In both cases, some-
thing other than integration is having the main dramatic ef-
fect. “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat” is Nicely-Nicely
Johnson’s testimony at the prayer meeting. It is a terrific “11
o’clock” number, a showstopper to rouse everyone near the
end of the evening, and Guys and Dollswould be reduced with-
out it. But it does not advance the plot. The mission has been
saved once the gamblers have trooped into the prayer meeting,
and what this number adds is a comic elaboration of that

46 CHAPTER TWO