Liars and Saints

 "Guys and Dolls" is so masterful, it's able to break the rules. Famously, it assigns its 11:00 number to a minor character. This is not "Rose's Turn." It's just a high-energy diversion shortly before the conclusion of the evening. Nicely-Nicely Johnson, an unreformed thug, needs to find a stalling tactic at a prayer meeting. So he imagines what a conversion experience *might* look like. And he does some playacting. I dreamed last night I got on the boat to Heaven-- And, by some chance, I had brought my dice along. And there I stood, and I hollered, "Someone, fade me." But the passengers, they knew right from wrong. This show is a celebration of language: "So nu?" "I got the horse right here," "Luck, be a lady tonight," "Take back your mink," "If I were a banner, I'd wave." I imagine Frank Loesser did a little dance of joy when he landed on the following: "Someone, fade me." And it...

 "Adelaide's Lament" is an extraordinary song because it squeezes someone's entire adult history into a couple of footnotes. The song is ostensibly about "psychosomatic cold/cough symptoms," but really it's about being human. You can give her a shot for whatever she's got-- But it just won't work. If she's tired of getting the fish eye from the hotel clerk-- A person can develop a cold. Miss Adelaide has been "playacting" the role of a tourist wife at a certain hotel--so she can spend time with her boyfriend. The hotel clerk isn't fooled. You can feed her all day with the vitamin A And the Bromo Fizz... But the medicine never gets anywhere near Where the trouble is... If she's getting a kind of a name for herself-- And the name ain't "his"-- A person can develop a cough. Adelaide understands that her forbearance is viewed as desperate behavior. To me, the rhyming of "Bromo Fizz" with "trouble is...

 "Guys and Dolls" is--like "The Sopranos"--about two semi-separate worlds. One world is the disreputable universe of gambling. The other is the "domestic front," the turbulent world called Loveland. What makes the show extraordinary is Frank Loesser's gift for language. Loesser was not a gambler; it's not clear that anyone in history has ever been anything like the characters in a Damon Runyon story. But Loesser absorbed Runyon's influence and had fun with words. In Loesser's vision, an aggrieved girlfriend shouts, "Take back your mink!" Elsewhere, a Paulie Walnuts type tells his friends about a promising horse on the tracks: And just a minute, boys: I've got the feed box noise. It says the *great-grandfather* was  Equipoise ... Shows class! Shows class! This guy says the horse shows class.... Most famously, a troubled soul addresses the goddess Fortuna, right before a craps game: You're on this date with me. The pickings ...

Dear Baby, Your other dad has been playing, for you, "(I Love You) A Bushel and a Peck." Just a few thoughts: *This song is so famous, it has taken on a kind of folksy status. But just know that it didn't bubble up out of the collective unconscious. It was carefully crafted by the lyricist Frank Loesser--idol of Stephen Sondheim's, man responsible for "Baby, It's Cold Outside." Frank Loesser is the gold standard on Broadway, now and forever. *A bushel is an actual form of measurement. It's 32 quarts. A peck is 8 quarts. *Loesser became inspired by units of measurement. "Peck" is followed by "barrel," which is followed by "heap." I love you a barrel and a heap.... *The speaker is overwhelmed by love--and so there's a loose, nutty, stream-of-consciousness quality to the writing. "I love you a bushel and a peck...a bushel and a peck and it beats me all to heck....beats me all to heck how I'll ever ten...

"Guys and Dolls" closely resembles Lena Dunham's "Girls": Both works concern themselves with intrigue, deception, self-deception, misbehavior. Lines of dialogue have "top spin": A character doesn't always mean what she believes she means. "I'll know when my love comes along," sings Sarah, "I won't take a chance." But of course the opposite is true: Sarah has *not* recognized her love, and she *will* end up taking a chance. "I thought that each expensive gift you'd arranged was a token of your esteem," sings Adelaide, in concert, "but when I think of what you want in exchange, it all seems a horrible dream!" This is a few yards shy of "ingenuous." The speaker knew well, all along, what her gentleman wanted from her; the gap between speech and thought is indicated by a strip tease. The speaker seems to be saying, "Get out," but, at the same time, she is making herself naked f...

To me, something seems missing in all the Frank Loesser discussions. It's this. Frank Loesser was a Pulitzer Prize-winning lyricist. He also had an Oscar. Sondheim--among many others--holds Loesser up as one of the greatest lyricists of all time. Loesser's masterwork--"Guys and Dolls"--is the stuff of Broadway legend, and it's been said that even a terrible high-school production can't run G-and-D's charms. The thing that bothers me in the Loesser debates: Who ever said that Loesser was holding up his male and female speakers as exemplars of moral behavior? Who said that these two characters need to be taken as gods? Why are we meant to conclude that Loesser's writing "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is akin to an endorsement of everything the man and woman say in the song? When people go down this fallacious road, it makes me think of "Macbeth." Should we stop producing "Macbeth" because some of the characters do thing...