Final thoughts on STONE SOUP

Like I said, I was very pleased with how this one wound up. I think the cast learned a lot, and gave great performances. I think the audiences loved it.

How do I rank it, compared to the other three musicals David and I have done? Well, I think it’s overall the best music. It’s probably the most solid script (BREMEN is too flimsy, PIPER too didactic and paced oddly, and EMPEROR … well, most of it is what I wrote in 1999, and I’m just better than that now.). Yet, for various reasons, I’d rank this behind EMPEROR as an experience – it was just blissful all the way along. And I still think PIPER has the most potential. I genuinely feel that with some major rewrites, a few new songs, and some good orchestration, PIED PIPER could be a WICKED-style Broadway hit.

Seriously.

But, anyway, SOUP …

I understand that the cast found this blog midway through the run, and some feelings were hurt.

Well, I’m genuinely sorry about that. But I’m not going to apologize for what I wrote. I created this blog to discuss my own writing and what it’s like being a playwright. I wrote the negative things I wrote to help myself deal with how I was feeling.

Could I have done that in a private journal, rather than presenting it to the world? Yes. I could have. Maybe I’m a jerk for not doing it that way.

But, as I look through the old entries, I don’t think I actually said anything that hurtful. There were times where I mentioned the places where actors needed to grow, and, clearly, I was upset with what I thought was lack of energy and caring in dress rehearsal. But I don’t think I was mean or personally vicious (except for that one sound joke, which was too mean, but I also thought it was clever … god, I can really be a bastard). The post-dress post was the response of someone who felt hurt and helpless because something he had created and worked hard on was about to be presented to the public in a sub-par form. And, y’know, if what I had seen on Tuesday was the best they could give me, I would have been okay with it … I think. I mean, I wasn’t upset when that middle school in New Jersey blew lines and made mistakes in CASEY AT THE BAT (though, admittedly, I always seem much calmer when someone does a play of mine “wrong” if it’s not the first production). I just knew this cast had it in them to do more.

And I was right. They did more. They did very well. I’m thoroughly proud of them and their work. So I hope no one hates me. I certainly don't hate you, in fact, you have my eternal gratitude for treating my play so well ... (after Tuesday)

There’s a review of the show up on In the Spotlight. This is a website devoted to arts in the Pioneer Valley, and currently one of the only places reviewing local theatre at all (it’s really shameful that local papers would rather run AP articles about Tom and Kate than send some intern to see a free play and dash off 500 words).

The review is quite positive, though, being paranoid, I wonder what he really thinks. Of course, any review that doesn’t go on for paragraphs and paragraphs about how brilliant I am seems misguided to me. David’s music, justifiably, gets more praise than my script (though, if you read the text of the review and not the info in the header, you’d think I wrote the music, too). In fact, his one problem with the play is a critique of my plotting …

One narrative quibble: it is unfortunate that the townspeople coming together to contribute to the soup happened off-stage. It would have been nice to see the younger performers have a bit more contribution to this part of the original story.

First of all, I’m thrilled to have a genuine criticism in a review. Seriously. In my experience, critics wear, for lack of a better word, kid gloves while critiquing children’s theatre. Back in the Tom McCabe days, the critics wrote real reviews -- often mean, poorly thought-out reviews, but that’s neither here nor there. But when I am reviewed, I usually get sweet, pleasant puff pieces that make me feel nice, but not much like a real playwright.

Second of all, this particular criticism is completely valid. This script has a giant gaping flaw -- it’s supposed to be about the transformation of this town, yet we see very little of how the town was before the soldiers arrived. As for the way the town comes together … well, I’ll get to that in a minute.

So, why not more scenes depicting Stone’s Throw as walled off and solitary? All I have is a few moments where Sarge tries to ask villagers for directions to a restaurant and is told “I can’t help you.” Then Hildy explains why everyone is standoffish.

I know: cardinal sin of a playwright. Telling instead of showing.


Why? Well, mostly time constraints. I wanted this play to be wacky. I wanted it to have three separate plot threads, one for every soldier, that come together for a crazy act one finale. That’s time consuming. Now, normally, I might have sacrificed wacky to make room for meaning, except that I was tipping the scales in favor of wacky this time, since the rest of the season CH_RL_TT-’S W_B and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST are both kinda heavy.

Secondly, my cast was already crowded with three leads, their love interests and a set of obstacle characters. Characters who demonstrated the problems in Stone’s Throw would be classified as atmosphere characters. And I just didn’t have room in the cast for them, so that had to be the role of the chorus of “Students on Stage.” I have learned, over 10 years of writing for them, not to give SOS too much to do that really bears on the plot. They’re unreliable and frequently inaudible. Hey, they’re often really nice kids – this time, they seemed extremely likable. But they aren’t really actors, with a few exceptions.

So, all this led up to me having to tell and not show.

I didn’t have this problem when I did PIED PIPER. I had room for three atmosphere characters there, and actually had to add a fourth because we got an extra apprentice at the last minute. So I was able to typify the problems in Hamelin with one family. In EMPEROR, the Emperor was both the obstacle and the atmosphere (and the love interests doubled as atmosphere, too). (In my defense, in STONE SOUP, there is something atmospheric about Farmer McCauld and Cow Cow, though they are primarily obstacles)

Could I have made this work this time? Probably. Definitely if I’d had only one or two soldiers, but I wanted my clown stack, so …

As for Mr. Smith’s (no relation) specific issue, that we didn’t see the town come together on stage … well, he has a point, but I’ll quibble with his quibble a little.

Much comedy plotting is about success through failure -- the guy sees the girl and sets about trying to get her. Along the way, his plans go awry, but he winds up with the girl anyway. See? Oddly, tragedy is often about out and out success -- you could claim that Hamlet spends the whole play trying to die, and only in the end does he get his consummation devoutly to be wished.

But STONE SOUP is built along the Scooby-Doo model, by which I mean A) Fred hatches a plan to catch the ghost B) Scooby and Shaggy screw it up somehow C) But it succeeds anyway, just differently from how it was planned.

So we have Sarge planning to trick the town into donating stuff for the soup. But along the way, he gets arrested and the soup gets spilled out. Then the town decides, while he’s on trial, to start the soup up again. Happy ending.

What do we see of this? Well, we see Sarge pitch the idea in song we see the town get excited. Then later, he and Hildy recommend that the soup would be best with more ingredients and we see the townsfolk start thinking about donating ingredients. But Sarge is dragged off to jail before they can add anything and only later, when everything seems grim, does the whole town run in, with the soup they’ve made themselves.

So, Mr. Smith is right that we don’t actually see the town put the water back on the fire and add their ingredients. And yes, that is the heart of the story.

Now, to stage that scene I would have had to either completely modify my second act, which is entirely a courtroom scene (this would be okay, though it’s a major rewrite). Or I would have had to contrive a way out of the courtroom and back into the town square. Possible, though I’d lose momentum, which is crucial in a children’s theatre second act.

I suppose I could have had Billy Bill wonder what Penelope and her father are doing outside and we could have jumped there had a scene where the townsfolk decide to start the soup again.

The problem is, that puts a lot of weight on the SOS. And, respectfully, despite what Mr. Smith says, you really don’t want to see that. You’d have slow dialogue, mumbled and too quiet. And it’s hard enough for grownup actors to play reluctance and indecision in children’s theatre (they don’t understand that you have to physicalize it -- it’s a dance, basically). It’s practically impossible for children to play it.

So, those are the reasons why it would have been difficult to stage that scene. Now, here’s why I didn’t want to do it:

We’d already sewn the seeds. We’d seen the town start to get interested in the idea, think about collaborating. So, we’ve heard Fred’s plan and seen it start.

But, it’s not so much that Shag and Scoob screw it up but it works out differently. It works out exactly how Sarge said it would, just with a hiccup in the middle. Seeing a plan unfold without reversal isn’t interesting or dramatic.

Had I put the scene in there, we would have had to show it, then show the principals’ reaction to it when they found out. As it is, it’s as much a surprise for us in the audience as it is for the characters. And I think audiences kinda like piecing little bits together in their heads.

And secondly, it’s a moment stolen whole cloth from It’s a Wonderful Life. We don’t see Uncle Billy going around telling everyone George needs money, we just see the results. (it’s also stolen from Miracle on 34th Street, and you do see Natalie Wood write the letter, and later you see the post office decide to route all of them to the courthouse … but it’s the use of the letters that’s surprise. Soup and money have only one purpose.) I couldn’t really have that great “it’s a miracle” moment if I’d shown the miracle happening.

Look, it’s flawed, obviously. Any time a key part of the story happens offstage, something is wrong, and Mr. Smith is right to point that out. And I think this is a story I might revisit in years to come -- I still want to do that Marx Brothers version. Maybe I’ll think of a way to make this part work better.

Whoops, this ran a little long. I guess I’ll wrap up STONE SOUP tomorrow (have to save that spoiler-packed piece about the new Harry Potter for next week or something), before I head out to start this all over again for BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.