Performance Review - The Music Man - Kate Sommer

I attended Scapa Lafayette’s production of The Music Man at 2pm on Saturday, April 30^th at the Opera House in Lexington, Kentucky. The author of the show is Meredith Willson and the director was Alberta Labrillazo. The cast is made up of SCAPA and Lafayette students including Troy Walton, Cooper Fitch, Shannon Calkins, Kurtis Brown, and Lily Rasmussen.

Synopsis

Act 1

The show follows salesman Harold Hill as he arrives in River City, Iowa. Harold Hill is known amongst salesmen for showing up in a city and promising parents to teach their kids how to play instruments. He takes orders for instruments and uniforms and once they arrive and everything is paid for he disappears. The show opens with a group of salesmen on a train discussing consumer credit and then they switch to the topic of Harold Hill. It is revealed as the train reaches River City that Harold Hill is sitting on the train with them and they don’t realize it until Harold is off the train and it has begun moving again. Harold goes to the center of the city and after meeting up with Marcellus, an old friend, he decides he’s going to need to create a problem to convince the people of River City that they need a band. He finds out that the city just got a pool table and decides that he will convince the people that this will be a source of trouble in their town. Marcellus also tells Harold that Marian Paroo, a librarian who gives piano lessons, is the only person in the city with musical training. Harold follows Marian home in an attempt to flirt with her and win over her affections but he fails.

The next day at the town’s July 4^th celebration Harold shows up saying he will save the town from the sin and corruption of the pool table by forming a boys’ band. The Mayor, who bought the pool table, gets the school board to ask Harold for his credentials but Harold distracts them by getting them to form a barbershop quartet. Harold also convinces Tommy, a young boy known to be a troublemaker and hated by the mayor, to become his assistant and sets him up with Zaneeta, who happens to be the Mayor’s eldest daughter. Harold tries and fails again to win over Marian. The board again tries to get his credentials and he throws them off again by leading them in song. The ladies of the town then find him excited about the dance committee he’s putting together and once he mentions Marian they try to convince him that she’s not the woman for him. They talk of a rumor they heard that she used to be a relationship with a man named Madison because he gave the town the library but left all the books to her.  

The next day Harold comes to the library to visit Marian and declares his unrequited love for her while leading the teenagers in the library in dance. By this time, with Tommy’s help, Harold has signed up every boy in town for the band including Marian’s little brother Winthrop. Marian finds evidence against Harold and tries to show it to the Mayor but everyone is distracted when the instruments arrive. Marian sees how excited and confident her brother is when his cornet arrives and she rips the page incriminating Harold out of the book before she gives it to the Mayor.

Act 2

Later on Marian talks to Harold about her brother and his cornet and how he says you don’t have to bother with the notes. Harold explains that this is “his revolutionary new idea” called “The Think System”. With the Think System you don’t have to worry about knowing notes, you just have to think and play. Later that night, Marian is sitting on her porch waiting for Harold to come when a salesman named Charlie Cowell shows up claiming he has evidence against Harold to deliver to the Mayor. Marian tries to flirt with Cowell in an attempt to delay him so he doesn’t have time to deliver the evidence and still make his train.

Harold then shows up and Marian confronts him about the rumor Cowell told her that Harold had a girl in every county of Indiana. Harold reminds her of the untrue rumors she heard about her and Marian decides that what Cowell told her wasn’t true. Marian and Harold later meet at the footbridge and Marcellus interrupts them saying that the band uniforms have arrived and Harold should get the money and run. Marian reveals to Harold that she’s known he’s a fraud since 3 days after he arrived and she gives him the page she tore out of the book. After they walk away from each other Harold realizes he’s in love with Marian.

Meanwhile Cowell is at the ice cream social telling the townspeople that Harold’s a fraud and they soon start to search for him. Marian and Winthrop come across Harold Winthrop tells him he wishes he never came to River City. But Marian says she believes every word Harold said because they came true in the way the kids talked and acted all summer. She and Winthrop urge Harold to get away but he decides to stay telling Marian he never fell in love until he met her and Harold is led away in handcuffs.

The Mayor holds a meeting in the gym in which he asks what they should do with Harold and asks where the band is. Marian tries to defend Harold. Tommy comes out dressed as a drum major leading a band of kids. Harold leads the kids in Minuet in G and even though the kids have limited musical ability the parents are delighted by the fact that their kids are playing music and even the Mayor is won over.

Technical Aspects

Set: Had many different backgrounds to represent different areas of the city. They had many different physical sets including a train car, the front porch of Marian’s house, a store front for the center of the city, a stage for the school gym, and a bridge. Each of the sets represented a different area of the city and all were used well by the cast. Marian slammed the door of her house, Harold ran onto the stage to get people’s attention, and at the beginning of the performance in the train the performers used the sound of the train to create a beat.

Lights: They used many different colors of lights to represent different feelings. When they were outside they used yellower lights to portray natural lighting. Often when Harold and Marian were together they used red and blue lighting together to create a feeling of romance. When they were outside at night they used blue lighting to create the sense of moonlight.

Costumes: All of the costumes were fit to the time the performance was set in: the early 1900’s. All of the girls had long dresses and many of them had fancy hats to go along. All of the boys wore long pants and a vest and most of the men wore full business suits. They made jokes in the performance that it was wrong for girls to show their ankles or for boys to let their socks fall down which calls to the thoughts of what was proper attire back then.

Music: Music was used in the performance along with other technical aspects to create mood. Music was used in the background in some scenes of walking to give an extra something to performance and also to portray lightness in the feeling of the scene. The show is a musical so music was also used to express feelings through words and dance as well. Dancing closely usually indicated intimacy and the lyrics of a song let us know what characters were thinking and feeling.

Overall the performance was very good. It was a love story but was different than most because of Harold not being truthful. But also, Marian wasn’t blindsided by the truth, in fact she knew almost the entire time, which is very different than most stories with a plot line like this. It also shows the importance of trying something new and especially the importance of music. The main plot of this musical is the goal of creating a band in this town that otherwise has very little musicality. The reactions and excitement of the children shows how important it is for children to be able to try something new and especially shows how music can positively affect children. Even though the children knew pretty much nothing about their instruments the fact that they could simply make a noise out of it excited them, and this is the main point of music. This also affected the parents because while they were opposed to Harold, the second their children began playing their instruments they became enraptured and were so proud that their children could play an instrument.

Overall I give the performance a 9 out of 10 because it was very good and well produced but, like most shows, it was not perfect and there were some volume and pronunciation issues that could be fixed. 

Siren Song 

Margaret Atwood

This is the one song everyone

would like to learn: the song

that is irresistible:

the song that forces men

to leap overboard in squadrons

even though they see the beached skulls

the song nobody knows

because anyone who has heard it

is dead, and the others can't remember.

Shall I tell you the secret

and if I do, will you get me

out of this bird suit?

I don't enjoy it here

squatting on this island

looking picturesque and mythical

with these two feathery maniacs,

I don't enjoy singing

this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,

to you, only to you.

Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!

Only you, only you can,

you are unique

at last. Alas

it is a boring song

but it works every time

Atwood's use of the siren in her poem has incredible significance. A Greek mythological beast, the sirens were feared for their ability to wreck ships and kill hundreds with nothing more than their voice, singing a "siren's song" that was said to be irresistible to even the strongest of fortitude. In this poem, the siren is not only a literal siren and the narrator, as we soon find out, but also symbolic of love itself. The poem is an allegory, as it delves deep into the effects love has on humans and the way our society handles such emotion. It suggests how easily we fall victim to the "damsel in distress" stereotype, as the siren song is nothing more than a cry for help, albeit a flattering one. The need to save the damsel evokes our suppressed warrior spirit, fueling the desire to be the knight in shining armor the author thinks lays dormant within all of us. This desire quite easily leads to rash actions, culminating in becoming yet another "beached skull". All of this is the result of love. Love is deceptive and dangerous. Like courting a siren in a rocky cove.

Weighing the Dog - Gates Sweeney

It is awkward for me and bewildering for him
as I hold him in my arms in the small bathroom,
balancing our weight on the shaky blue scale,

but this is the way to weigh a dog and easier
than training him to sit obediently on one spot
with his tongue out, waiting for the cookie.

With pencil and paper I subtract my weight
from our total to find out the remainder that is his,
and I start to wonder if there is an analogy here.

It could not have to do with my leaving you
though I never figured out what you amounted to
until I subtracted myself from our combination.

You held me in your arms more than I held you
through all those awkward and bewildering months
and now we are both lost in strange and distant neighborhoods.

The beginning of this poem uses an actual dog as the subject, but by the end of the poem, the dog is no longer the entire picture, it's actually something much more complex. Near the end, the speaker explains how he left someone and how that effected him as a person. The last line explains how the two have separated to two different paths. Throughout the entire poem, the tone is found to be uncomfortable, which is heavily aided by the lack of a rhyme scheme, which creates an awkward feeling while reading. By doing this, the author may have been trying to convey the way life goes on and how it isn't smooth but it's rather awkward and bumpy. I think the author believes that natural love has bumps in it and it can be awkward sometimes, and I think I agree. 

Love Poem-Sydney Taylor

True Love
Robert Penn Warren

In silence the heart raves.  It utters words
Meaningless, that never had
A meaning.  I was ten, skinny, red-headed,

Freckled.  In a big black Buick,
Driven by a big grown boy, with a necktie, she sat
In front of the drugstore, sipping something

Through a straw. There is nothing like
Beauty. It stops your heart.  It
Thickens your blood.  It stops your breath.  It

Makes you feel dirty.  You need a hot bath. 
I leaned against a telephone pole, and watched.
I thought I would die if she saw me.

How could I exist in the same world with that brightness?
Two years later she smiled at me.  She
Named my name. I thought I would wake up dead.

Her grown brothers walked with the bent-knee
Swagger of horsemen.  They were slick-faced.
Told jokes in the barbershop. Did no work.

Their father was what is called a drunkard.
Whatever he was he stayed on the third floor
Of the big white farmhouse under the maples for twenty-five years.

He never came down.  They brought everything up to him.
I did not know what a mortgage was.
His wife was a good, Christian woman, and prayed.

When the daughter got married, the old man came down wearing
An old tail coat, the pleated shirt yellowing.
The sons propped him.  I saw the wedding.  There were

Engraved invitations, it was so fashionable.  I thought
I would cry.  I lay in bed that night
And wondered if she would cry when something was done to her.

The mortgage was foreclosed. That last word was whispered.
She never came back.  The family
Sort of drifted off.  Nobody wears shiny boots like that now.

But I know she is beautiful forever, and lives
In a beautiful house, far away.
She called my name once.  I didn’t even know she knew it.

This poem by author Robert Penn Warren, from Kentucky, is about a man who loves a woman from afar. Never really having a conversation with her or getting to know her, just observing and loving the idea of what she was to him. Her father was a drunkard, her mother was a Christian, and her brothers were horsemen. The narrator loved her for years, even though he never truly knew her and was heartbroken when she was married off and moved away to live in a beautiful house like he knew she was meant to.

The speaker says things about love like "it stops your heart, it thickens your blood, it stops your breath" because his love for her beauty takes over every part of him when he sees her. He seems too scared to approach her and actually tell her how he feels and how beautiful he thinks she is, saying "I thought I would die if she saw me". He is probably too worried to lose his perfect image, his perfect idea of what she is and who she is if he actually speaks to her.

Friggin Love Poem

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

Edna St. Vincent

This poor lady doesn't sound like she's had a very good experience with love or relationships at all. It sounds to me as an older Taylor Swift. "Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath" Well isn't that what all those sappy love movies all tell us, that love fills our lungs with air? "I might be driven to sell your love for peace//Or trade the memory of this night for food// It well may be. I do not think I would." It sounds like toward the end of Vincent's heated rant that she has come to some sort of peace with the fact that love can end in good ways and that it all is not burdensome. She explicitly states throughout her piece that love is full of tribulations and frustration.
I think that love is something we all aspire to find. It is full of happiness and sadness and frustration and peace. It is not all burdensome, and its really not burdensome at all. And if you find yourself burdened by someone or something you should know then and there that it is not love, and they are not for you. But relationships help us to grow as people. So a challenge isn't bad now and then. Ms. Vincent has just had bad experiences I guess.

"Love is not all" Love Poetry Blog Post Emily Salamanca

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. It well may be that in a difficult hour, Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, Or nagged by want past resolution’s power, I might be driven to sell your love for peace, Or trade the memory of this night for food. It well may be. I do not think I would. '

-Edna St. Vincent Millay [1931]



Millay implements a sonnet form in order to draw upon Shakespeare and his love sonnets, however, unlike Shakespeare, she begins by defining what love is not, rather than what love is. To Millay, love is not a physically necessary material. One can not reach for love like one can reach for a glass of water or a soft pillow. Yet, love is necessary. For the first six lines, Millay describes what love can not do and can not be. Then, in line seven, she provides a contrast. "Yet many a man is making friends with death / Even as I speak, for lack of love alone." In this, she says that without love, there is only death to be friend with. Death, being the end of life, is the only opportunity to escape love. Thus, love is life and life is love. In the following line, Millay gives a hypothetical of what would happen if she found herself breaking away from love. "Pinned down by pain and moaning for release," has an obvious sexual tone, showing that death and/or hatred, rather than love, has taken over her full body. Then, she directly addresses her lover and says, "I might be driven to sell your love for peace," thus indicating a rocky relationship that is riddled with both love and hatred. Finally, in the volta of the poem, she admits that in this scenario, she might trade necessary spiritual love for necessary physical nourishment, but then tells us that she would not. Love is more important to her than excess food. Love fills her in a way physical things can not.

I do not have the same experience as Millay, but I would certainly put love before excess in my life. She seems to have her head on straight with love as she admits that it would be a hard decision choosing between love and physical well being, but I think in general, I would tend to put love before myself. As a human being, it is not easy to not always think of myself before others, but I consciously try to put others first. This is my best attempt at the love of which Millay writes.


Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Love is Not All” (Sonnet XXX)," from Collected Poems. Copyright 1931, 1934, 1939, © 1958 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis. 

Love Poem - Anthony Tamasi

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

Robert Herrick

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
   Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
   Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, 
   The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
   And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
   When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
   Times still succeed the former. 

Then be not coy, but use your time,
   And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
   You may forever tarry.

Herrick describes love as something that should happen right away when one is young, before having "lost but once your prime." He asserts that life goes too fast, that while one that "smiles today // Tomorrow will be dying." This pessimistic attitude towards life contributes to his argument that one should marry early or they will forever be alone, waiting for love to find them once they are out of their prime.

I do not agree with this attitude; it does not matter when you marry I believe once you are a financially independent individual. Everyone is different and love comes at different times for everyone. Not everybody will find the love of their life when they are in their early 20s. The world is big and sometimes it takes a little longer, perhaps until you are out of your prime. But whether you are in your prime or not does not matter either, because true love, what marriage should be based around, is accepting of someones imperfections. 

Herrick, Robert. "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time." Literature and Composition. By Carol Jago. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. 672. Print.