Best Friend/First Mate

In St Love And The 1001 Books You Need To Read Before You Die, Doctor Melody Carmichael (Amy Currie) accidentally spilled magic liquid on her collection of childrens' books, opening up a mysterious portal allowing fictional characters to come through to St Love Hospital. Earlier in the story, Melody caught her fiancee Ludwig Lestrange (Dan Beeston) kissing her best friend Nurse Lotte Buble (Natalie Bochenski). She is sad and angry - she's lost her fiancee and her best friend. She's been hanging out with Captain Hook (Luke Allan). Captain Hook's first mate Smee was killed earlier in the story, leaving Hook similarly sad and friend-less. Melody needs a friend, but the bloodthirsty Captain Hook is just not a good match. Or is he?

In Best Friend/First Mate, Amy and Luke do an amazing job of rhyming and lyrical construction; Amy sets 'em up, and Luke jumps right on board. I love the setup for the chorus - "I want a best friend / I want a first mate" is just classic. Even though the first verse seems to set Melody as low-status and Hook as high-status, that chorus brings them together with a shared problem.

The singers do a far better job than I do on music; I lost time at least four times in the song. Luke and Amy keep rock solid timing, and I generally get back on track, but I have to say it was a pretty sloppy effort on my part. One very nice musical technique shows up at the end when Luke sings "That sounds great". Just taking his melody line and repeating it a few times in the music gives a really nice wrap up to the song.

(If you're curious about what the underscoring sounds like for this show, you can listen to a chunk of the pure piano recording from the scenes immediately following this one. Just head over and listen to Revenge on Uncomposed.)

The moment of seduction comes right near the end. And it's a pretty weak seduction.

Melody: You're just not a friend
Hook: I'm the best friend you'll ever have, my dear

Yep, that's it. Seriously, that's right up there with "Hey, steak is really tasty!" Not much of a clever argument. But I bought it as legitimate; it didn't feel lightweight, even though the words on their own kinda were. That's what grabbed me about the song - a significant emotional shift was made without much clever dialog, just some nice singing.

Right at the end, Nurse Buble is shown to be eavesdropping, so the audience realises she overheard Melody deciding to kill her - that's the source of the big "Awwwwh!" at the end. It scored pretty high on the Awwwwh-o-meter, which for me is an indication the audience is really engaged with the story and characters.

In the space of two minutes, Melody goes from missing her friend and thinking that Hook is a bad person, all the way making Hook her new best friend and agreeing to knock off her ex-best-friend. Can you imagine doing that as quickly and convincingly with just dialogue?