DFL

 

November 14, 2021

DFL lies behind me. It was a good experience without being a good show. Drew has a future as a composer and musician (and, now that I think of it, a patient and kind man) but I don’t think the show has a future. The guy playing Absalom pointed out that the music is sophisticated and the books and lyrics are not; it would be hard to imagine an amateur production wanting to deal with the music or a professional one wanting to deal with the book. It comes apart like a Parker House roll. In the lobby afterwards, though, at 11 PM, nobody got past the criticism, “it’s too long.” People didn’t believe me that they cut forty minutes between dress and show. I did, finally, get to do the scenes which had been left unrehearsed. Absalom startled on stage because he’d never heard my voice before. I did my own best chorus work at performance, hitting about 85% of the right notes. Everyone said the chorus sounded terrific. One takes their word for it. At one point I realized I was on the edge of falling asleep on stage. The fault was not mine. 

If consulted during the creation of the piece, I could have cured one problem in half an hour. Don’t do the full story; take a piece of it. David and Jonathan seemed to be the hot point: do that and leave the rest out. There’s material there for a dozen operas, especially if you’re going to spend your time speculating about matters ignored by the text and probably not of interest to the historical people mentioned in it. The Absalom story would be good, and how Solomon overcame his brothers to get the throne– any of that, but not all of that.