tune from beginning to end. We have heard it only in bits
before.
“Say, that was lovely,” says the high school boy. “I didn’t
know you could sing, Liza.” He then leaves her for a beautiful
blonde. Forsaken and ugly once more, Liza “begins to weep
uncontrollably.” No doubt the song is going into repression
once again, in the high school scene. The moment of recovery
is also the moment of loss. But in the psychiatrist’s office,
where the present-day Liza will now be seen (lights down
on the flashback area, lights up on the psychiatrist’s office,
Gertrude Lawrence crossing into position), the song has been
recovered once and for all. She has recalled the song by reliv-
ing the high school episode where she had recalled it once be-
fore, and this time she will keep it—especially when Charlie
turns out to know it too, in a few minutes.
So Lady in the Darkconfines all but one of its numbers to
dream sequences that are set off from book time, but it pursues
the one number as a mystery to be solved within book time,
and it handles the mystery with complex deftness. Why this
show is so rarely revived is a persistent question in musical the-
atre circles, for it has moments of greatness. The answer has to
do with that psychiatrist, whose function we will examine later,
but for the moment, “My Ship” deserves notice as a number
that sets up a drama through its failure to be completed, then
resolves the drama in the one way open to numbers, by being
performed whole.
What Holds Book and Number Together
The orchestra, of course, knows “My Ship” all along. It plays
fragments now and then, as the heroine struggles to remember
the song, giving a groundwork of recollection to the proceed-
ings. There is never any real doubt about whether the tune will
be recovered, because it has always already been recovered,
in the orchestra, which is just waiting for the proper moment
to play the whole thing. This is always true when the book
turns on the drama of the uncompleted number. The orchestra