The “I Want” Song
(sample)
Prince Charming is telling us all to fuck off. I almost see his point—her point. It’s been a difficult rehearsal. “Okay, third of all,” she continues— (A very, very difficult rehearsal.) “. . . third of all, fuck off to everyone here, myself included, for thinking we could wrangle this grab-asstic nonsense together in two months from literal scratch,” she continues, or continues to continue, nostrils flared. “Fourth, fuck whoever hired Brettler to crap out these songs by herself. It’s not your fault, Brettler, really. But fuck you anyway.” “Hey, thanks,” Brettler says, still hunched over her laptop. “Who picked Cinderella, anyhow?” Our irate Prince shields her azure eyes and squints out into the Brettler-only audience. “Great idea for a musical. Absolutely never been done, except by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Disney, Sondheim, and recently, Andrew Lloyd Webber. But yeah, I’m sure we can do better. At least Lloyd Webber’s sucked.” “Anna-Trish, that’s enough,” says Sara, softly. Anna-Trish spins around to face upstage, where Sara and Skylar hold each other, quaking. “I’ll tell you what’s enough, fuck the both of you,” she snarls, and yanks her shaggy chestnut ponytail undone. “Fuck me for thinking I’d pass for a dude, I just look like a reject from Hamilton. Deeply fuck whoever’s not grasping that you don’t rope an actor in and then keep dicking around with her role, her songs, her gender on occasion, and literally everything else in the God-beyond-forsaken production!” “I’m sorry, Anna-Trish, that was my fault,” murmurs Quinn, our director, a reassuring combo of contrite and unfazed. “The girl-girl concept didn’t work.” “Well, glad someone told ya! What around here even does?” Quinn barely blinks. “I’ve never launched a musical before. None of us have. This is a process. It’s a learning curve—” “I know it’s a learning curve!” shouts Anna-Trish. “Every record of new musicals going back to Oklafuckinghoma! says it’s a learning curve! So you keep it simple, stupid! You make a plan! Because we do not have the luxury of tryouts in New Haven. We have two weeks left to put up a show that did not exist six weeks ago, and probably won’t in two weeks either!” She flings her arm out across fourteen rows of empty-except-for-Brettler seats. “A whole-ass musical! I must have been out of my mind.” A timid voice emerges from the pitiful wings. Ishanvi’s. “I thought the girl-girl concept was okay.” “Everything’s okay in the abstract!” The retort is prompt, the mouth wide and arching. “We just don’t deliver! This entire fiasco’s an exercise in rolling snake eyes on ability to execute and we should have given up the first time Brettler played us synthesized noodling with the best parts ripped off from Duran Duran. So fuck fuck Duran Duran. Fuck this shambles of a show. Fuck this non-theater theater that always smells like goat piss, fuck this school for consistently flushing our dreams down the crapper. Fuck Lloyd Webber, just because. I still love Phantom, though. Oh, and fuck once again both Sara and Skylar, whichever one’s which, for giggling through every rehearsal when the only thing that’s funny is our attempt at coherence!” Pause. Then, of course, Skylar (brunette, they don’t look similar) laughs. Not a real one, a sputter, between vice-pursed lips, but of course it sets Sara (blonde) off. They do stop themselves, at least. Anna-Trish simply scowls. “Are you through?—So am I. I’m sick of this garbage; I’m done. Last night that dingbat O’Connell offered me last-minute additional ensemble in She freaking Loves Me and I’m taking it because it’s a mainstage and at least there I know I won’t fall on my ass.” She thrusts a fist high, like a reject from the Hamilton logo. “Fuck everyone I didn’t get to and goodbye. Oh, and Kayla!” She’s looking for someone who’s cowering behind a plywood flat. That someone is me. It’s supposed to be the ballroom—the flat—but right now it’s still Tevye’s house from Fiddler, from the fall. It’s got his little window. I lean out Tevye’s window. “Uh-huh?” Anna-Trish points at me with spear-straight fingers. “I’m sorry,” she states, without malice, merely anger. “You deserved so much better than this. We both did.” Then she storms down three creaky stairs. Then past fourteen rows. Then the dented metal door slams behind her, and she’s gone. Uneasy laughter from Sara and Skylar. Incredibly uneasy, in fact. “Well,” intones Quinn. “Anna-Trish McGrath will no longer be appearing. If you know anyone who’d like her role, have them drop me a line; in the meantime, that’s a five-minute break.” “Thank you,” Brettler sighs, leaning back in her seat. “It’s not her fault, guys,” burbles Ishanvi, slinking onstage, plastic scepter passing between her sweaty hands. “She really wanted Light in the Piazza this year.” “Oh, she’d have been great there,” I mumble, eyes still on the door. My first and only lead in four years, and just my luck—I’m the first Cinderella whose Prince ran away.
The time: A Saturday in spring. Thirteen days before the doomed world premiere of Cyndirella, an ‘80s-style new musical without, somehow, any trace of Cyndi Lauper. The setting: A sprawling, underfunded state college in the Midwest. The optimistically-named Fenton Hall, a former landscaping storage shack converted, in 1973, to a small student playhouse, whereupon legend says it was never renovated again. Dramatis personæ: Seven—six young women on the verge of graduation who didn’t get cast in spring shows and had the bright idea to do their own instead. Our unflappable producer-director-choreographer, Quinn Aldenshaw. Short brown hair. Wears a blazer, for some reason, like after rehearsal she’s showing real estate. She doesn’t do that when she’s dancing. I don’t understand. Still, I like her. Like any decent hoofer, she’s disciplined, almost terrifyingly so. She expects the best of herself, but she sees the best in us. She makes me feel like I can do it—whatever the ‘it’ of the moment is. We’re rarely short on ‘it’. Songwriter-playwright and also wicked stepmom, Maurene Brettler. I call her Maurene (spelled like that) to her face, but she’s a Brettler—she just is. Long ginger hair, stringy. Wire-frame glasses. A floppy brown sweatshirt with our college name across it in that arched, blocky typeface. Prior songwriting credits begin and end at setting “Sigh No More” to acoustic guitar in Much Ado last winter… beyond Much Ado, about nothing. In the dual role of my fairy guidance counselor and the King, Ishanvi Duff, bright dark eyes (this makes sense if you see her), whose whimsy in the magic part is trounced by her genuine glee to be playing an old white man. She’s always bringing in mustaches and I have no idea where she gets all the mustaches from. As the stepsisters, Skylar Sharp and Sara Schaufler, or maybe Sara Schaufler and Skylar Sharp—Brettler lets them swap lines if they think it works better, and often, they’re right. Oh, and in the role of Cinderella (not Cyndirella, so far), Kayla Sweeney. That’s me. And this show is a disaster. But that’s also me.
We pass the break in near-isolation. Quinn’s outside, making calls about lights. Skylar texts her job to juggle shifts. Sara pokes at geology worksheets. Ishanvi’s in the can. Brettler looks pale, but she always does. I shuffle into a seat beside her, not knowing exactly what to say. “It’s a good show, Maurene,” I tell her. “It’s a show,” is Brettler’s vague response. “I’ve seen better. I’ve seen worse.” A beat. “Mostly better. So far.” She hits a key on her MacBook. Tinny music pipes out—orchestrations for the ball. “I like this more, I think,” she murmurs, businesslike. “We were gonna run this bit. With Anna-Trish fucked off, I don’t know.” I listen. Thump my head. “The drums sound fuller.” She nods. “Yeah, for sure. I mean, it sucks coming out of this speaker, but when we’re hooked into the real—” She gestures around Fenton. “No, I getcha. It’s gonna sound great.” I think I see her smile.
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