Make A Deal With Me

The example this week is again from One Bride. Rather than being a single song, this is the second half of a fairly long scene. In the scene, Nancy (Amy Currie) has returned to the playground where, as a child, she found buried treasure; she's returned to town to dig it up. Dudley (Dan Beeston) reveals his plan to take his recently-inherited playground with its pony-on-a-spring and spinning-egg, and develop it in to a high-rise hotel. He refuses to share his wealth with his now-homeless brothers (including Nancy's love Golly). Nancy is tricked in to admitting she knows of buried treasure in the sandpit; she is torn between getting her hands on the treasure, and ensuring Dudley's brother Golly is taken care of. She strikes a deal.

In Make A Deal With Me, Dan and Amy step effortlessly from speaking to singing and back again. The tempo and the key change here and there, but somehow they keep one ear on that while still creating good dialogue and telling their story, and jump back in on the fly whenever they like. There's not really a chorus (although the "Make a Deal With Me" line feels like the chorus to me) or a repeating verse structure. It's a lot more like a sing-speak opera - usually I don't care for those, but I really enjoyed this scene. The timing and melodies they chose combined nicely with the music to progress the story.

The underscoring floated around for a while before settling on a vamp that seemed like it would make for a nice song. You can pick the point where I think the scene needs a song; at about 42 seconds, when Nancy pleads with Dudley that there must be some way he can help the brothers, the vamp gets more insistent - just asking for a song.