1420 Austin Bluffs Parkway / Colorado Springs, CO 80917
Office: (719) 262-3240
Drew Martorella, Producing Director: (719) 262-3275
240 N. Franklin Street / Colorado Springs, CO 80903
(719) 473-3219
A musical adaptation of Plato's "Symposium," set in a mythical 1930s New York.
Book by Murray Ross, Mark Arnest and Lauren Arnest
Lyrics by Lauren Arnest, Mark Arnest and Murray Ross
Music by Mark Arnest
The Setting / The Story / Background / Production Particulars / Original Cast Recording / Contact Information / Home
The lights go up on Agathon's very elegant Manhattan penthouse, decorated in Greek revival style: tile floor, reclining couches, columns, and a view from the window overlooking Athens/New York. The guests enter during the hangover music, shunning the proffered cocktails. They are all wearing tuxedos, except Agathon, who wears a smoking jacket.
It's the night after an awards ceremony in which Agathon was honored as best dramatic playwright. Pausanias, Phaedrus, Aristophanes, and Eryximachus - the creme de la creme of high society, plus the famous philosopher Socrates - meet at Agathon's penthouse. Hung over from last night's festivities, they decide not to drink and instead to entertain each other with conversation (alas, they will not stick to their resolution, and everyone but Socrates will be good and schnockered be the evening's end). Eryximachus proposes a contest in which each of them will speak about love.
The youthful Phaedrus begins with the cheerful "Wherever Love Goes," in which he proposes that love makes us better than we would otherwise be, because lovers want to appear honorable to their beloveds. Pausanias follows with the jazz-influenced "Two Aphrodites," in which he explains that there are two goddesses of love: the lesser Aphrodite, who causes us to chase after women and boys, and the greater Aphrodite, who leads us to young men. Eryximachus develops the theme of two loves in his "Medicinal Love," in which he proposes that love and his field of medicine are virtually identical: Both seek harmony and moderation of extremes.
The famous comic playwright Aristophanes follows with a comic fable about our origins. At one time, he says, people were round, with four arms and four legs apiece, but Zeus cut us in half to make us more manageable. He then turns serious, saying that we now pine away for our other half. He expresses our loneliness - and the joy of finding one's other half - in "Lost and Found." Agathon then sings "This Is Love," a ravishingly pretty but insubstantial song in which he describes love's effects - which are, basically, to make everything seem better.
The stage is set for Socrates. He doesn't sing; instead, after a dialogue in which he leads Agathon to realize that he's all wrong about love, he conjures Diotima, a mystery woman who taught him everything he knows about love. Diotima presents two distinct stories. The first is a comic tale about love's origin and nature, as a spirit that leads us to beauty. The second, the aria "All About Love," explores the ideal nature of beauty itself. She vanishes as her aria fades into mist.
The evening seems to be over, but suddenly a very loud and very drunk Alcibiades bursts in. Informed of the contest, he praises not love but Socrates. In the comic tango, "Nothing at All," he describes his unsuccessful attempts to seduce Socrates. He gradually realizes that he's been praising love after all - love as embodied by Socrates, a difficult, challenging love that appeals to what's best in each of us. Socrates, says Alcibiades, reminds him of that old song, "you know, that one where wisdom reigns over passion, love equals virtue, and so-on." He launches into the "Anthem," and soon everyone joins in. However, the alcohol takes over, and during the second verse, they all pass out - except for Socrates, who puts blankets over his sleeping friends, turns out the lights, and exits.
A symposium was a Greek drinking party. Plato's dialogue, which recounts a probably-historic event in 416 B.C., is the most famous discussion of love in classical literature. The characters are, for the most part, historical. Aristophanes, of course, was classical Greece's most famous comic playwright. If Plato seems unsympathetic to him, it's nothing compared to the way Aristophanes savaged Socrates in "The Clouds." Agathon was a tragic playwright, though only a few lines of his work have survived, and Pausanias was his lover. Unlike most Greek male couples, they maintained their relationship into Agathon's adulthood. Phaedrus is a minor Socratic figure, who's also a character in another of Plato's dialogues, called- you guessed it - the Phaedrus. Eryximachus figures in some other writings of the era. Diotima (who appears in the original in flashback form) seems to be Plato's invention, though the type she represents - the mystery woman - is fairly common in Greek literature. Alcibiades was Athens' golden boy - Pericles' god-son, and the focus of the city's military a political hopes. Unfortunately, he turned out to be a scoundrel.
For a lot more background, click here for links to related sites. These include the texts of the "Symposium" and the "Phaedrus, "Plutarch's life of Alcibiades, Aristophanes "The Clouds," and gateways to musicals and gay culture on the web.
Length: Approximately 90 minutes with no intermission.
Set: One set, preferably in the round.
Staging: The prop requirements of "All About Love" are minimal. The only stage magic is Diotima's entrance and exit, which should be mysterious and perhaps shrouded in smoke. However, this was not the case at the original production - she rang a doorbell to get in - and nobody seemed to mind.
Cast: Six singing men, one non-singing man, one singing woman, one optional non-speaking woman. These are Socrates (non-singing), Phaedrus (light tenor, short tap routine), Pausanias (baritone/tenor), Eryximachus (baritone/tenor), Aristophanes (bass/baritone), Agathon (lyric tenor, short dance routine), Diotima (soprano), Alcibiades (strong baritone/tenor). A flute girl (non-speaking) is optional.
The vocal ranges given above are negotiable, since, due to the miracles of computer notation programs and MIDI, the songs are more or less transposable (Aristophanes, for instance, was a baritone in the original production). Only Diotima requires a first-class voice with a two-octave range (though obviously, it never hurts to have actors who can sing!). Lead sheets are available for all the songs.
The musical accompaniments for the original production were taped, augmented by a live pianist. The songs, however, could be arranged for live band, or some other hybrid form of live plus tape. Contact Mark Arnest.
Click here for information on the "All About Love" CD.
Contact CU-Colorado Springs Theatreworks or Seat of Our Pants Productions for information about staging "All About Love."
|
|
1420 Austin Bluffs Parkway / Colorado Springs, CO 80917 Office: (719) 262-3240 Drew Martorella, Producing Director: (719) 262-3275 |
240 N. Franklin Street / Colorado Springs, CO 80903 (719) 473-3219 |
"All About Love" is copyright © 1998 Mark Arnest, Lauren Arnest and Murray Ross. All rights reserved.