FROM THE ARCHIVES
a perfectly good lyric: Part two
“Musicals aren’t written – they’re rewritten.” I was living this old adage, as I worked on a rewrite of the last section of our song, “A Perfectly Good Umbrella.” I was working to remove the word, “insignificant” from an early line of the section, so as not to lessen the impact of the word when used in the final line of the same section.
In the rewriting process, I realized another fault of the lyric: it took too long to arrive at the rhyme for “see” – it eventually goes to the final word, “me,” but because of an extended ending for a musical climax, it took too long for the ear to recognize it as a rhyme. Again, it didn’t land.
Rhymes aren’t in the lyric just to show off. Rhymes are a tool to help your listener connect to the song. As you listen to a song, your ear becomes accustomed to the structure of the song, and when the lyric comes to that resolution of the rhyming sound you know is coming … it’s very satisfying. All of this is subtle, and usually the listener is unaware of the craft behind it – they just come away feeling like they liked the song. But the rhyme scheme plays a big role in that satisfaction. In my previous version of this lyric, I’d added an extended lyric in between the set-up (“see”) and the final resolution of the rhyme (“me”), giving the ear time to forget the sound it was listening for.
This is what I came up with in the rewriting process, with a final rhyme to end the phrase, and then a big extended ending afterwards. I was pretty happy with this rewrite. Eric made the change in the music, and the big ending sounded even bigger, for having ended the phrase first. But the rewriting process wasn’t over yet!
Once we’d cast the show, Producer Michael Laun brought the cast together in Sacramento for a weekend a few months before we went into production for the World Premiere. During the weekend, we rehearsed the music and worked with the actors on the scenes, and then presented a staged reading for an invited audience. “A Perfectly Good Umbrella” was beautifully sung by our new Carrisford, Josh Powell. Big applause! Then, the scene had a brief little tag with just a few lines of dialog wherein Carrisford returns the umbrella to the Beggar. It was a critical moment for the plot structure, and Bill (our Book Writer) had written a few delightful lines to accomplish the task. It all played perfectly during rehearsals.
But that’s one of the benefits of trying the material out in front of an audience. During the presentation of the staged reading, the flow of the moment felt a bit off. We knew the song was good. We knew the little tag scene was good. But what we realized, while feeling the audience reaction, was that what they really wanted to do at the end of the song was applaud with full abandon. A blackout would allow them to do that. But we had that little scene to finish off, which was keeping the audience from enjoying their resolution.
Our rewrite – and this really was the final rewrite, and the version used in the Premiere production – we incorporated the little scene tag into the song itself, letting the action of the scene prompt the big vocal ending to end the song. This gave Carrisford a larger arc to play during the song, and allowed us to punctuate his big Act Two song with a blackout, instead of having to put in a little tag of a scene after the applause break: a much stronger choice, dramatically.
The new placement of Bill’s delightful dialog also prompted another rewrite of the lyric. Finally, more than a decade after the first draft of this song, we had the final rewrite.
Sometimes – no, pretty much always -- a perfectly good lyric is just not good enough.
Josh Powell soars with "A Perfectly Good Umbrella"