The
new beginning is definitely better. When we originally did
ILLYRIA in 2002, the show started with an elaborate shipwreck sequence.
We dramatized the backstory that Shakespeare (wisely) skips
over when he opens with Viola already ashore in Illyria. In
that first adaptation, we met Viola and Sebastian on board a ship as it
passed the coast of Illyria. And there was a Sea Captain who
gave the twins a crash course in Illyrian current events, introducing
Orsino and Olivia. And then the storm struck--fabric
swooshed, music swelled, and Viola landed in Illyria.
It
was a cool opener in some respects, but it didn't prepare the audience
for the show they were going to see. The mood of it was
sweeping, poetical, and not the least bit funny, so it took a while for
the audience to feel like they were watching a comedy and were allowed
to laugh. It reminds me of the story about A Funny Thing
Happened On The Way To The Forum: the show wasn't working and Jerome
Robbins came in and diagnosed the problem. He said the
opening number ("Love Is Going Around") wasn't preparing the audience
for a raucous comedy... so Sondheim went back to the drawing board and
came up with "Comedy Tonight."
Anyway,
we had realized this was the problem by the end of the initial run in
2002, but the solution was by no means obvious. The story of
Twelfth Night depends on certain tragic circumstances: Viola
must believe her brother drowned, and Countess Olivia has vowed to
mourn for seven years. Before we can have the comedy that follows, we
have to set up that situation. Shakespeare's solution was to
do it as quickly as possible, and to tell rather than show these sad
events. But we felt that we couldn't begin a musical the way
the play begins--with two very brief scenes presenting first Orsino and
then Viola. We felt that the musical had to begin in a
bigger, splashier (no pun intended) way, and that's what led us to the
shipwreck.
When
ILLYRIA was done at the Shakespeare Theater of NJ in 2004, we made one
improvement to the opening: Feste took over the Sea
Captain's job as provider of exposition. He now began the
show by singing the Sea Captain's lyric--"Illyria, lovely isle / Some
years ago I anchored there awhile..." But rather than
enlightening the twins, he was simply narrating for the audience's
benefit. He introduced the status quo in Illyria, presenting
Orsino and Olivia, and then went on to introduce the twins as the
agents of change coming into this static world. We allowed a
smidgen of ironic commentary into Feste's introductions, but even so,
there was still no real comedy in the opener. Comedy had to
wait until the scene immediately following, when Toby, Maria and Andrew
made their first appearance. And as before, the audience
wasn't sure what to make of the new tone after the more solemn
beginning.
Cara
felt that we somehow had to involve the comic characters in the opening
sequence. Her idea was to insert Toby, Maria and Andrew
immediately following the introduction of Olivia--since those
characters are part of the Countess's household. We had the
chance to try out this new idea for a 2006 concert. I took
the song that the comic trio had in Scene 2--"Any In Illyria"--and
boiled it down into a new little songlet ("What shall I do in
Illyria...?") in which each of the three took a verse to lay out his or
her frustrations. Then, after this comic interlude, Feste
resumed with the introduction of the twins and the shipwreck.
Then, in another bit of new writing, I spun an extended
ending out of Feste's main "Illyria" theme. One by one, all
of the characters joined in singing a contrapuntal hodge-podge out of
which emerged a final, choral refrain. It gave the sequence
more closure, and made it feel like a real opener.
But
now there was a new problem. This opening sequence was
almost ten minutes long! Because I'd tried to cover most of
what used to happen in scene 2, the comic "interlude" within the opener
was over three minutes long. It broke up the momentum of
Feste's narration. Also, because Andrew was introduced
earlier now, there was a long stretch of four scenes in which he
disappeared. These two issues led us to a further refinement
which we're now trying out for the first time in this 2008 production:
the introduction of Toby, Maria and Andrew has been cut down
to a bare minimum within the opening sequence--just enough to tell the
audience that there will be some "low comedy" in this show.
Then, some of the extra material for those three has been transplanted
to the top of the third scene, when we return to Olivia's house.
This accomplishes two things: it knocks two
minutes or so off the lengthy opener, and it gives us an opportunity to
check in with Toby, Maria and Andrew at more regular intervals.
So
after six years of evolution, I think we have a great opening number
that does everything it needs to do. The changes weren't so
big really, and yet each one of them required a kind of paradigm shift
in my brain. It seems like it could only have happened in
baby steps: a little progress, the perspective gained from
that, and then a little more progress.
Musings Past
