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The 11:00 Number

 One way to define the 11:00 number is this: "the final star turn."


Think of "Rose's Turn" or "So Long, Dearie." A major star has a life-changing realization--in "real time." (Starting now, it's gonna be my turn.... or.... Dearie shoulda said so long....so long ago...)

Howard Ashman did something fun with the 11:00 concept. In "Beauty and the Beast," his star--Angela Lansbury--did not actually have the leading role. But Ashman wisely entrusted the fireworks to her. Lansbury could articulate the climactic discovery--"you can change, you can learn"--while the real stars could *enact* the discovery, through a dance. Ashman won the Oscar for this song. (Walt Disney himself had tried for years to dramatize "Beauty and the Beast," but he couldn't wrap his arms around the story. I credit Ashman with locating something universal in the fairy tale: Anyone can be errant and prideful, and this doesn't have to be a permanent situation.)

I think that Stephen Schwartz studied Howard Ashman. And I think "The Prince of Egypt" is an attempt to reproduce the success of "Beauty and the Beast."

After the ten plagues, Moses is all but defeated; he is bitterly sad. It's his wife--voiced by Michelle Pfeiffer--who articulates the big epiphany, in the movie's climax. "Though hope is frail, it's hard to kill." As the Pfeiffer character tells about hope, Moses *shows* what hope is, by dusting himself off and arranging for the parting of the Red Sea. It's a smart move.

Here is the song; like "Beauty and the Beast," it won the "Best Song" Oscar. (A part of me believes that Schwartz ought to have shared the prize with Howard Ashman's ghost.)

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