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Broadway

 Maybe the most celebrated "I Want" song, among theater nerds, is "Little Lamb." It's when a child, Louise, reflects on her birthday, in "Gypsy." She gathers her toy animals around her:


Little cat, little cat,
Oh, why do you look so blue?
Did somebody paint you like that?
Or is it your birthday, too?

Little fish, little fish--
Do you think that I'll get my wish?
Little lamb, little lamb...
I wonder how old I am?
I wonder how old I am.

Louise has one great wish--independence from her mother--but the thought of saying the words is unbearable. Also, Louise is just guarded and secretive; the evasiveness in the song helps to flesh out Louise's character. Sondheim trusts the audience to make some inferences. And he ends with a great, chilling line, worth thousands (or millions) of "Tim Rice words": I wonder how old I am.

"Kimberly Akimbo" plays a similar trick. The heroine is dying, so she addresses the "Make a Wish" Foundation of New Jersey. The writer understands that we tend not to share (or even to recognize) our own deepest wishes, so he has the heroine do a kind of "filibuster" act for several verses. "I want to be a model for a day.....I want to take a fancy cruise....on a swanky, chartered yacht....I'd like a pet of some kind....How about a monkey?"

After all this throat-clearing, Kimberly looks directly at the audience, and admits what she really wants: "A simple, home-cooked meal. A table set for three. A wispy paper napkin, resting on my knee....We'll live like normal people live. However normal people live? For a day...."

It's overwhelming to make this confession, and Kimberly surely senses that "Make a Wish" cannot help. So she ends with self-sabotage; she asks for a treehouse. "Thank you for your consideration.....smiley face...."

This is silly and heartbreaking--and it seems to shed light on the messiness of human life. I like when a writer dares to "tweak the formula."


P.S. It's interesting to contrast "Little Lamb" with "Some People." There is nothing secretive or evasive about the character who sings "Some People." And so the song's style is nothing like "Little Lamb."
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