dency to be through-sung. The director Trevor Nunn dates
the change from Evitain 1978, and credits the government-
subsidized companies in England and Europe with giving the
designers of musicals budgets large enough to create not just
scenery but total environments.^11
The fluid, gliding set that can materialize before our eyes has
removed the need for the in-one system of the older musicals,
in which a number was inserted for downstage performers while
the new set was being established behind the traveler curtain.
No one wants to return to the in-one system, but its aesthetic
effect should be remembered, for the new design technology
aims for a different effect, which is less germane to the musical.
The in-one system separated a moment of performance from
the larger mise-en-scèneand isolated it downstage, giving a spot
to a song-and-dance duo or a big solo voice, keeping the musi-
cal in touch with its vaudeville roots. When Carol Channing
stepped before the curtain to deliver “I’m Just a Little Girl from
Little Rock” or “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” both in-
one numbers in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the audience knew the
set was being changed and the book was being disrupted for
something else, but the something else was the heart of the
matter. Dramatic character was being established apart from the
book, in terms of song and performance, the performance was
being spotlighted in an area of keen vulnerability downstage,
and Carol Channing was stopping the show.
Sometimes the set was not even being changed during the in-
one number. Moving to the downstage position in front of the
traveler was seen as an advantage in itself. The scene I discussed
in chapter 1 from the Gershwins’ Funny Faceis a classic example.
As Fred Astaire and the Boys finished their song-and-dance
“High Hat” in the huge living room on Jimmy Reeves’s estate
where act 1 mainly took place, the curtains closed and a traveler
was brought across to mark an in-one wall at the nearby house
of the famous aviator Peter Thurston. Adele Astaire (called
“Frankie,” this time) came along to let Peter Thurston fall in
love with her, an event marked by their singing “S’Wonderful.”
NARRATION AND TECHNOLOGY 157
(^11) Goodwin, pp. 156–57.