When we're consumed by grief it's hard to believe we'll every feel joy or hope again.
The message of "Elegies" is that they're always there for us if we can just open ourselves to them.
The musical, which Arizona Onstage Productions opens today, is about people caught in moments of grief, from a teenage boy who loses his dog to a husband calling his wife from the Twin Towers.
The beauty of "Elegies," says Kevin Johnson, the show's director, comes from the way it keeps reminding us of human resilience. Or, as one of the songs, "Infinite Joy," puts it, even the darkest time can open new windows for joy to come into your life, since "life has infinite joy."
William Finn, who is both the composer and librettist of "Elegies," is one of the rising stars of contemporary American musical theater, creator of a half-dozen shows, including the current Broadway hit "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee."
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Arizona Onstage has already produced two impressive productions of Finn's shows, "Falsettoland" and "A New Brain."
His works, says Johnson, "are not your typical musical, not lots of nice little happy tunes like Rodgers and Hammerstein. Finn's music and words are both full of big, unexpected shifts, musically and emotionally — he keeps you constantly surprised."
This is especially true of "Elegies," which is basically a song cycle in which — as Johnson says — "each song is a story in itself and they all connect and interact thematically. There are no speeches as such; the whole show is sung, and the songs create the overall story."
As Johnson got deeper into directing the show, he realized that Finn had "created not a road map but a structure through which the actors can find and reveal themselves as people, and share that moment of revelation with the audience. We haven't gotten through a single rehearsal where the actors aren't laughing one minute and crying the next, not because the show is supposed to be happy or sad, but because of the things they keep finding in themselves, in their memories and their feelings."
Finn achieves this effect with combinations of music and lyrics that are, Johnson says, "complex in form but with a simple and powerful effect." This treatment gains extra power from staying close to ordinary speech, as in the teenage boy's memories of his dog: "His ears felt like a rug, I bought him for a dollar, I bathed him in the sink, each day the dog got sicker, I gave him milk to drink, I also gave him liquor." But if Finn's simple speech can bring smiles, it can also be heartbreaking, as in "Saying My Goodbyes." "Hey — Just saying our goodbyes. The living was the prize. The ending's not the story."
If all this seems a long way from "Oklahoma" or "South Pacific," that's fine with Johnson, who says that "musical theater other local companies generally don't do is what Arizona Onstage is all about." Tucson is "a unique community, dynamic and diverse" and, he says, "this makes for great audiences."
● "Elegies"
Presented by: Arizona Onstage Productions.
Composer/librettist: William Finn.
Director: Kevin Johnson.
Musical direction: Aryo Wicaksono.
When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, through Nov. 19, with an additional 6 p.m. show Nov. 19.
Where: Zuzi's Theater, 738 N. Fifth Ave.
Tickets: $22 general ; $18 for students and seniors.
Information: 882-6574.
Cast: Betty Craig, Diane Thomas, Kit Runge, Marcus Terrell Smith, Joseph Topmiller.
Running time: 90 minutes, with no intermission.
Online: Information about "Elegies" and Arizona Onstage posted at www.arizonaonstage.org.
Look for: The review in next Friday's Accent.
