I'm
mostly reconciled to the unfortunate fact that there is already another
musical called GOLDEN BOY. (A fairly well-known one, that starred Sammy
Davis Jr.) Actually, I've decided to embrace my unoriginal title and
write a title song for the show... "Golden Boy." So that's what I'm
working on these days. Maggie's going to sing it midway through the
first act, and then it will probably be reprised as the closer of the
whole show. Just now while typing that I had the thought that THE
ALCHEMISTS had a song called "Golden" that happened midway through the
first act... and was then reprised as the closer of the whole show.
Aggh!
Oh well. The song is turning out really well so far. It has the
potential to be my favorite of the show, if I don't mess it up. I've
been looking at LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS a lot as a model of a show of a
similar cast size, similar dark comedy, similar use of a backup group,
similar storyline about a zero-to-hero kind of guy. It's been an
interesting comparison, and I've found a lot of analogies between two
plots and the various song moments. F'rinstance:
"Way Out Back And Beyond" = "Skid Row"
"Never Afeard Again" = "Grow For Me"
"Wanted Man" = "Ya Never Know"
"Little Log Cabin" = "Mushnik and Son"
"More To Me" = "Suddenly Seymour"
Seriously, I've gone through the whole show like that.
Anyway, this particular song, "Golden Boy," is "Somewhere That's
Green." (Appropriate that it has a color in its title...) It's her
halfway-through-act-one "I Want" song. And it's gonna be crucial to
understanding her character: why she was going to settle for marrying
Luther, why she's attracted to Clay, and maybe even some clues to why
she betrays Clay and loses him in the end. The Golden Boy is an image
that she has in her head before she ever meets Clay. And then when he
comes along, she molds him (like clay) into that perfect man she's
imagined.
The end of the show is going to be hard for me to write, because it's
not a happy ending. After Maggie and Clay sing their act two duet,
everyone will think they have to end up together. And they just don't
-- I have to be true to the source material. It's harsh. As they
discover in the duet, they've changed each other deeply: she's inspired
in him a poetry and a bravery he never had; he's uncovered in her a
sweet, vulnerability that she never showed anyone before. It's hard for
me to believe what happens then. But he leaves her. And he was *her*
creation! It's like a version of MY FAIR LADY where Eliza doesn't come
back.
Okay, I just checked online and apparently in the original play
PYGMALION, Eliza does not come back. In fact, Shaw wrote an epilogue
explaining that she marries Freddy instead. Man... plays are brutal!
Can musicals be that cruel?
Musings Past
