The Musical as Drama

looks like book material. The Egermanns receive an invitation
for a weekend in the country. Anne Egermann does not want
to accept, because her husband is having an affair with Desiree,
who invited them. Her husband does want to accept, for
the same reason. Anne visits her friend Charlotte and admits
her apprehensions. Charlotte tells Anne to accept the invi-
tation, wear her white dress, demonstrate her youth, and put
Desiree to shame. Thus Anne and her husband will accept the
invitation.
The plot thickens when Charlotte proceeds to tell herhus-
band about the weekend to which the Egermanns have been
invited. Her husband is having an affair with Desiree too, and
Charlotte hopes his anger over losing out to his rival will cure
him of his adulterous urges. On the contrary, his adulterous
urges flame up. He announces that they too will attend this
weekend, although they have not been invited. There is no
stopping him. Charlotte must accompany him on this gate-
crashing adventure. The act ends with both couples planning
to attend the weekend.
The amazing thing about the first-act ending is that it is
done entirely in a number, “A Weekend in the Country.” This
is a secure example of the integrated musical, one would think,
for the plot is being advanced along several lines, yet it is
all being done through song and Hal Prince’s fluid staging,
whereby Anne can visit Charlotte merely by crossing the stage.
When she returns to her husband, the two couples can be seen
making their plans simultaneously. At the end of the number,
which is also the end of act 1, we know these characters are go-
ing to converge at the Armfeldt estate in act 2, where discord is
inevitable. This is the stuff of a book, but it all happens in a
number.
Yet the point of the number is something else. We will later
find it possible to replace integrationwith a different word for
the musical, coherence, which means different elements holding
simultaneously together without losing their differences. “A
Weekend in the Country” is an example of coherence. Its dra-
matic quality depends on its means of performance—there is
no other way to create its effect of simultaneity. These strands

CHARACTER AND VOICE OF THE MUSICAL 73