Ho, Ho, Ho, I'm Carefree

We've finished blocking Promenade, we ran each act separately and tonight, we ran the whole show for the first time. And it's all starting to make a kind of sense as we assemble all the crazy pieces. And it's really entertaining!

One funny thing I've noticed -- so many of the characters act like children. The two prisoners, 105 and 106, have the innocence and curiosity and openness of children, while the aristocrats display the greed and selfishness and ego of children, as well as the tendency toward shameless showing off and very short attention spans. You might say the prisoners are child-like while the aristocrats are childish. And we leave the audience to decide what they think that means about America.

Likewise, several of the songs sound like children's songs, simple and direct on the surface but loaded with layers of meaning underneath.

"Unrequited Love" is funny in its obvious contradictions, but it's really about emotional walls and the inability to make human connection.

Passionate lips are sweet, but oh,
How much sweeter
Are lips that refuse.
Don't love me, sweetheart,
Or I might stop loving you.

That's pretty neurotic, but we also recognize it as truthful. There are people in the real world like this. Sondheim tackled the same emotions in "Buddies Blues" in Follies. In The Robber Bridegroom, the idea goes to an even darker place in the Act I finale, "Love Stolen."

The lyric to "Unrequited Love" shows us these aristocrats as shallow, trivial people, but these characters don't realize they're also revealing their darker depths.

Much of the song "Isn't That Clear?", sung by the aristocrats to the servant, sounds almost like nonsense...

Your unprosperous status
Produces a dubious,
Fallacious, and tedious
Outlook on life.

You do not know what we're about
We do not know what you’re about
Or care to know.

It’s sad your career
Depends on our whim.
On with your work, my dear,
Or you'll get thin.

But it's not nonsense. It's class warfare. It's the starkest statement in the show about class status in America -- and it comes very early in the show, to establish this theme that runs beneath everything. This song is a declaration of separateness and it's a flexing of social power, to belittle the Other and to remind the Other of their place.

You see,
Even if you're here,
And we're also here,
You are not near,
Isn't that clear?

These lines almost sound like a Dr. Seuss book, but the aristocrats are telling the servant that physical proximity is not the same as social proximity. It's a nasty way of putting her in her place and a it's bouncy, catchy song that's what composer Al Carmines does best, throw us off balance. And he'll do that through the whole show.

In another seemingly silly song in Act I, "Four Naked Ladies," the women aristocrats are jealous of the attention the men are showing Miss Cake, so the women start taking their clothes off. But we soon understand that this song is about social competition and conformity more than anything else.

"The Cigarette Song" is another deceptively complex song, in which the servant and the prisoners muse about the mundane, everyday freedom of being upper class. In the song "Bliss" the trio muses further about being rich.

Eating is a blessing,
Money is a joy.
Drinking is a pleasure
And riches a delight.
We've come to one conclusion
That's readily discerned:
A lot of satisfaction
Does away with discontent.
Doesn't it?

A lot of satisfaction
Produces happiness,
And the source of satisfaction
Is wealth. Isn't it?
All that man possesses
Displaces discontent.

It goes by so fast, we don't completely register the horror of the understatement. "Eating is a blessing"...? "Drinking is a pleasure"...? No, those things are necessary to life. But to these Others, they are luxuries. It's a direct, blunt response to the cliche that Money Can't Buy Happiness. On the contrary, says Promenade, "A lot of satisfaction does away with discontent. . . and the source of satisfaction is wealth."

Nothing subtle about that.

The song "The Clothes Make the Man" is another insightful commentary on social status, but coming at it from a different angle. Here, it's sort of the same idea as My Fair Lady, but in this case, it's the appearance that bestows status, not speech.

You see, a costume
Can change your life.
Be one and all.
Be each and all.
Transvest!
Impersonate!
'Cause costumes
Change the course of life.

There's so much going on in this lyric. It starts with the idea that our outward appearance is all important -- it can literally "change the course of your life." The song lists a series of professions, every one of them defined by their "costume" -- gigolo, businessman, cop, clown, priest, and the Jailer.

But this song also tells us to take that knowledge and use it, to use the power of appearance to get what we need. (I love the command, "Transvest!") The song tells us that our outward appearance is only a costume, a deception, a role we play. Once again, this seriously catchy song catches us off guard with its serious undertones. And it also reminds us of the everyday deceptions we all practice, the costumes we wear, the roles we play.

Later in Act II, the prisoners sing "I'm Carefree," a deeply ironic song about the ugliness of the world.

When I was born, I opened my eyes,
And when I looked around, I closed them.
And when I saw how people get kicked in the head,
And kicked in the belly,
And kicked in the groin,
I closed them.
My eyes are closed but I’m carefree.
Ho, ho, ho,
Ho, ho, ho,
I’m carefree.

In other words, you can be happy only if you ignore the world around you, because it's just too ugly. 105 and 106 are the only decent characters in the show, the only ones with any dignity or self-awareness. Though they are child-like, they are also anthropologists exploring a lost tribe -- the American upper middle class -- who commit (social) atrocities with a smile. And Carmines has written sad, dissonant, minor music to accompany the prisoners' obviously false claim to oblivious happiness in a world like this.

And Carmines has written beautiful music for "Spring Beauties," during which the aristocrats blithely turn two wounded soldiers into a maypole, and they dance around their "maypole" holding onto the soldiers' bandages, merrily wrapping the poor men up tighter and tighter. The song's lyric is all about celebrating the spring as a time for coupling, even as our soldiers are being wounded and killed half a world away. The aristocrats "don't see" our troops in Act II, the same way they "don't see" poor people in Act I. And then the aristocrats leave to go to a party at the Mayor's mansion, leaving the wounded men on the ground.

This subtle but powerful statement about Americans' attitudes toward our soldiers in Vietnam sneaks up on us, gradually emerging out of the silliness and the pretty music of this number.

The most disturbing number is surely the show's gorgeous finale, "All is Well in the City," because we've just spent the whole evening witnessing how much is not well in the city.

All is well in the city;
People do what they want.
They can go to the park.
They can sleep all they want.
And for those who have no cake,
There's plenty of bread.

But what "people" are they talking about? Who can do whatever they want, go to the park, or sleep all day? Rich people and the unemployed.

The last two lines of the finale are the most subversive of the entire show. Reversing the famous Marie Antoinette quote is funny but it implies two uncomfortable ideas -- that poor people should be grateful for whatever scraps they're given; and also that nobody is going hungry, because there's "plenty" of food.

In 1969 when the show debuted, New York City was at the beginning of a decades-long problem of homelessness that lasted throughout the Seventies and Eighties. There wasn't plenty of bread.

Even more unsettling (and depressingly truthful) is that 105 and 106 -- the Others, the Poor -- have bought into those two lines. They believe in the ideas that oppress them. These prisoners (as our stand-ins) have been on a wild anthropological odyssey; they've seen some of the worst of human behavior and impulses, and the only conclusion they draw is that everything is as it should be. They're back in jail. All is well.

Yikes!

I'm not exaggerating when I say you've never seen anything like Promenade. How I wish Fornés and Carmines would have written more musicals together! This show is both laugh-out-loud funny and seriously deep, and in a weird way, really beautiful. Don't miss your once-in-a-lifetime chance to see this thrilling piece of theatre history live!

The adventure continues...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

P.S. To get your tickets for Promenade, click here.

P.P.S. To check out my newest musical theatre books, click here.

P.P.P.S. To donate to New Line Theatre, click here.