All complete with slippers and pipe.
Take me like I am er leave me be!
If you cain’t give me all, give me nuthin’—
And nuthin’s whut you’ll git from me!
—Ado Annie:Not even sumpin?
Nuthin’s whut you’ll git from me!This tune trembles with danceability, and it goes without say-
ing that Will and Ado Annie dance it together. What should be
added is that two other girls dance into the middle of the song,
making up to Will and luring him away from Ado Annie. They
are not from the plot. They are song dancers who can enter
into the rhythm of this number and bring into view the “wild
and free” side of the male, whose “all or nuthin,” as Ado Annie
is coming to see, is “all fer you and nuthin’ fer me.” So she
does an oriental dance aimed at getting him back. It is true to
Annie’s batty skills that she should be able to do a comic orien-
tal dance when she is in her number mode. There is no sign of
this in the plot. She transforms when she goes into numbers—
they all do. And the oriental dance doesn’t work—it is a comic
failure (which takes talent to perform). “That’s Persian!” Will
shouts, thinking of the fling Ado has been having with the ped-
dler Ali Hakim in the plot. This kind of cross-referencing be-
tween book and number is great fun. There must be two regis-
ters for the cross-referencing to occur.
This tune was done “in one” in the original staging—out in
front of the traveler curtain, while the set was being changed
for the next scene. What happens to the characters of Will
Parker and Ado Annie when they perform out front, while the
set is being changed? They are separated from the scene of the
book, they are downstage close to the audience, they are put-
ting on a number, and they are being enlarged by crossing into
song and dance. They project themselves in a second mode of
time, even a second mode of space in the “in one” system, and
these interruptive modes amplify their roles through patterns
of repetition that can hardly arise in book mode. Book mode is
for getting on with the story, and it looks like plodding from