The Musical as Drama

parlance of modern theatre, there is no subtext that cannot be
raided by an AABA tune in a musical, and the dream sequences
of Lady in the Darkare elaborate testimonies to that potential
in song. They are outbreaks of what is normally repressed, and
if they also look a lot like Broadway show numbers, the for-
mats may seem inappropriate to the talking cure, but the talk-
ing cure may be trying to find the same sources that show
numbers can turn into travesty and joy. Liza is certainly a dif-
ferent person in the numbers, but that is the way numbers al-
ways work in a musical.
The fourth sequence, where “My Ship” is completed for the
first time, is a different matter. This time the flashback scenes
do represent what Liza is at that moment recalling for the psy-
chiatrist. As the lights go down on the psychiatrist’s office, we
see Liza move toward the flashback area, where she is spot-
lighted as a spectator of her own recollections. The young Liza
is played by a child, with the adult Liza explaining the signifi-
cance of the episodes, as though she were still speaking to the
psychiatrist. All of this is happening in book time, which is in-
ventively being given a flashback treatment.
Then the adult Liza herself enters the flashback, which is
now about high school. She is playing herself as a teenager. A
good-looking boy is making time with her, convincing her that
she is not the “ugly duckling” her own parents said she was in
an earlier episode, and in the surge of relief at being made to
feel desirable for a change, Liza remembers the childhood
song “My Ship” and sings it for the boy. The breakthrough in
her therapy occurs here. As Liza sings the complete song in
the flashback, we know that she is recovering it in the therapy
with the psychiatrist. This is a complex moment. The perfor-
mance of the song is a turning point in two plots at once. This
is a diegetic number twice over. The high school boy hears it
in the flashback, and so (we imagine) does the psychiatrist in
his office. The high school Liza is recovering the song she re-
pressed as a little girl, the adult Liza is recovering the song in
her therapy, and this complex psychological moment is accessi-
ble and lovely because what is really happening is that Gertrude
Lawrence (the original Liza) is singing the Weill/Gershwin

122 CHAPTER FIVE