As that number ended, the curtains opened to reveal Fred As-
taire and the Boys stillsinging and dancing “High Hat” back in
the living room. They were reprising the number, but the pre-
tense was that the two numbers had gone on simultaneously,
one performed by Fred Astaire, one performed by Adele Astaire.
The book was being stopped twice over. “High Hat” was Fred
Astaire’s first number ever in top hat and tails. This was a major
moment in the musical, the definition of a longlasting character
for Astaire to play. “S’Wonderful” was the birth of a standard
tune that everyone in the Western world has heard by now. That
these numbers were going on simultaneously in act 1 of Funny
Facegives pleasure in itself, owing to the in-one convention.
The day of the in-one staging is gone from Broadway, al-
though it is still used in high school auditoriums and town halls.
Alongside Broadway’s blockbuster shows with computerized
sets, however, there has developed a tradition of plain staging in
which a refusal to use the available technology becomes part of
ashow’s theme. Rentis the leading example. It has virtually no
set, a bare-bones decision in keeping with the poverty these
modern-day bohemians choose to live in. The technology of
rock music is called on, but not the technology of the self-
generated set change. A Chorus Linehas no set either, apart from
the stage on which the auditions are being held and the mir-
rors to the rear in which the dancers are sometimes reflected.
Cassie’s self-absorption in her “Music and the Mirror” number
thematizes the reflective device. The Encores series of musicals
done in concert versions has spun off several hit revivals on
Broadway—Chicagoand Wonderful Town, for example—and these
are staged with minimal sets and costumes. Chamber musicals
like William Finn’s Falsettolandtrilogy and the Stephen Cole/
Matthew Ward After the Fairspecialize in plain staging.^12
158 CHAPTER SEVEN
(^12) After the Fairis based on Thomas Hardy’s story “On the Western Cir-
cuit.” The libretto has not been published, but there is a 1999 cast recording
from the York Theatre production in New York. I call it to attention as an in-
dication that there is a class of small musicals that are relatively inexpensive to
stage and worth following as a countertrend to the technologized Broadway
shows. Fermat’s Last Tango, book by Joanne Sydney Lessner, music by Joshua
Rosenblum, is another, and there are dozens more.