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On Broadway

 "Falsettos" is about the catastrophe of sex. How sex disrupts a life. The writer--William Finn--sits on a knife's edge. He is somewhere between compassion and disdain. His shifting attitude toward his own characters is a part of the drama.


The song "This Had Better Come to a Stop" describes a collective emotional breakdown. Marvin has left his wife, Trina, and moved in with a young man, Whizzer. Marvin expects Whizzer to behave as a housewife: make the dinner, check the little boy's face for acne. Whizzer resents the new set of expectations--and he voices his discomfort in a passive-aggressive way, by being routinely late. Meanwhile, Trina is caught in the past; she continues to litigate old disputes, even as her new partner encourages her to "move on" (whatever that may mean).

Sometimes, writers (particularly musical-theater writers) feel that they need to spoon-feed an audience. The writer has arrived at some simplistic conclusions--and the job of the ticket-holder is just to digest a few easy morals. But I'm not sure that there are morals in William Finn's writing. Finn simply describes what he sees. He can write in such a way that you, the viewer, feel just as tense as the people on the stage:

Late for dinner, late again
Late for dinner, late, late, late, late
Late for dinner, late again
Late for dinner, late again
Late for dinner, late again
Late for dinner, late, late, late, late

You might find yourself wringing your hands as you listen. Marvin's judgments (and Marvin's self-loathing) are a kind of assault. A syntactical choice makes you, the viewer, FEEL assaulted.


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