A World of Possibility — The Musical (Three Acts)

Why a musical, and not just the play

Some material is prose. Some material is dramatic dialogue. Some material asks to be sung. Barney's life has all three. A Depression-era St. Louis boy reads Richard Halliburton's Royal Road to Romance by the light of a tenement-flat bulb and thinks one day I'm going to go everywhere — that is a song. A twenty-two-year-old soldier dances with a nineteen-year-old French girl at the stroke of midnight at the USO in Paris — that is a song. A sixty-eight-year-old widower, alone in a house designed to hold the paintings, pulls out a legal pad and begins to write the story of his own life — that is a song.

The Broadway play and the musical are not in competition. They are parallel treatments — the same material approached through different theatrical languages. A production could mount either one, or both in repertory. The same research base and the same three-part structure serve both.

Musical idiom by act

Each act draws from a different musical tradition rooted in the period and setting:

Act I: Depression-era St. Louis blues, WWII-era radio standards, an Armed Forces Network jazz vocabulary, and — for Paris — Edith Piaf–inflected chanson.
Act II: 1960s jet-age lounge music, 70s soft rock, the bossa nova of the cruise-line era, and a recurring leitmotif for the paintings themselves — strings over a slow piano, wordless, the sound of the eye recognizing greatness.
Act III: Sparer, late-Sondheim harmonic territory. Solo voice and piano for the autobiographical passages. A full-company closing number that reprises every thematic motif from the two previous acts, assembled over the Christie's hammer.

Act structure

Act One · The Making

1934–1959 · St. Louis and Paris

Opening number: Ask Barney About St. Louis — the ensemble as the city at the 1904 World's Fair, the older Barney Frauenthal hawking his guidebook over a Sousa-march dance
The twin birth scene with an Alec/Bernice duet: One and a Half Paychecks
Young Barney's I-want song: Over the Next Hill — solo, ballad, the book as a child's lighthouse
The track sequence (Cleveland High to NCAA) with a driving 9/8 meter chorus: Nine Point Six
The army — Fort Leonard Wood as gospel-inflected chain-gang blues
The Paris half-act — the Louvre, a waltz for the Winged Victory, and the Act One finale at the USO

Intermission

Act Two · The Empire

1959–1999 · INTRAV, the Cruise Lines, and the Collection

Opening: B or B — 1967, the company-boardroom company number; Barney sells the B-or-B year to his sales team
The Orient Adventure — a travel-brochure pastiche with the ensemble as passengers around the world
Chop Suey — a duet between Barney and the painting itself (soprano on the two women), the dealer's office as a pas de deux
Ghost Ranch — the Abiquiu scene with Georgia O'Keeffe: The OK Pin, an alto torch song in counterpoint with Barney's speak-singing
Act Two finale: The Sale — 1999, the Kuoni signing on Barney's 65th birthday, built to a full-company reprise of Over the Next Hill

Act Three · The Legacy

1999–2018 · Hunts Point and the End

Opening: The House for the Paintings — Jim Olson's drafting-table lullaby, the collection as guardians
Pam's exit song: Six Words
Writing the Book — Barney at a desk, a slow blues, A Mind Like a Steel Trap (Except It's Rusting)
Rebecca's I-want song: Eleven Months
April 9 — the bedroom scene, solo piano, a cappella close
Finale: A Wonderful Life — the Christie's hammer becomes the downbeat; the ensemble reassembles every motif from the three acts; a full-company button on the ninety-one-point-nine-million-dollar bid

The song list

All songs · in running order

Ask Barney About St. LouisEnsemble
One and a Half PaychecksAlec & Bernice
Over the Next HillYoung Barney
Nine Point SixYoung Barney & Track Ensemble
Fort Lost in the Woods of MiserySoldier Ensemble
The Winged Victory WaltzYoung Barney (instrumental)
Midnight at the USOYoung Barney & Martine
Two Hearts Baked Into the PaintYoung Barney & Martine
B or BBarney & INTRAV Ensemble
Orient AdventureEnsemble
Chop Suey (The Fence I Had to Jump)Barney, Bill Zierler, Two Women
The OK PinGeorgia O'Keeffe & Barney
The Sale (Finale, Act Two)Company
The House for the PaintingsJim Olson & Barney
Six WordsPam
A Mind Like a Steel Trap (Except It's Rusting)Barney
Eleven MonthsRebecca
April 9Barney, Rebecca, Christiane
A Wonderful Life (Finale)Company

Halliburton called himself the horizon chaser. I'm twelve years old in a room the size of a closet. My father can't say he loves me. My mother tells me I'm lucky. My sister could take the neighborhood with one hand. And the streetcar passes the window in the dark. They say the world is big. They say the world is wide. They say the world is out there somewhere with the lights on, waiting. Over the next hill. Over the next hill. The place I haven't been. The thing I haven't seen. The version of me I haven't been yet. It's over the next hill. I've never seen the ocean. I've never touched a painting. I've never eaten anything my mother didn't make. I've never boarded a ship. I've never stood in Paris. I've never asked a stranger to dance. But I will. I will. I can feel it the way you feel the weather turning. The way you feel a streetcar coming before the tracks begin to ring. Over the next hill. Over the next hill. My dad thinks I should be an engineer. My uncle thinks twelve thousand is a lot of money. And I think — I think they haven't seen what I have seen on the back page of the library book where Halliburton stands on the edge of a mountain at the edge of the world and says come with me. Over the next hill. Dad, I hear you. Mom, I hear you. Uncle Ed, your Westinghouse paycheck is a beautiful thing. I just — I just think I'm going to go everywhere. I think I'm going to go every where. — Young Barney, Act One, ca. 1946