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Notes

Hello … Hello is an affectionate but unforgiving meditation on escapist consumer culture and on that most escapist of entertainments, the boy-meets-girl musical. Though it is a musical piece of theatre, its production should resist classification as a traditional musical, and though the romance between the characters is very real, every similarity to actual romantic comedies should be carefully considered.

Hello … Hello is not an attack on the musical theatre form; it is a meditation on the human impulses that lie beneath that form.

Sentiment is defined by some as the absence of actual feeling. Hello … Hello should at all times be a-sentimental.

Characters

BEN CORDAIR, Head of Creative at Quicksilver Incorporated. CASSANDRA, a salesgirl at The Abyss.

FEMALE CHORUS, who narrates and plays fifty-one other roles. MALE CHORUS, who narrates and plays fifty-three other roles.

The performers who play these roles should not be cast only to type but also for their ability to parody type. Their singing and dancing skills are important, but, again, primarily insofar as they augment the performers’ abilities to parody the musical form. Comedic precision and a satirical bent are, in the end, the key elements.

Chorus

The chorus in Hello … Hello is inspired both by kathartic Greek tragedians and by the enthusiastic hoofers in Hollywood-style musicals. Theirs is a human voice. They sympathize with Cassandra, Ben and all of the citizens of the megalopolis, while also standing apart from them. No gladness can entice them inside the drama for long, and no catastrophe can overwhelm them. They are inquistive, engaged, intensely human creatures.

The chorus performers are required to shape-shift and to embody dozens of characters without dropping a beat; to communicate character differentiations through the tilt of a head, a slouch, a gentle lisp. For these and for other reasons, it may be helpful when staging the play to think of the chorus as creatures who occupy an existential realm somewhere between those of angels and ghosts.

Music

Hello … Hello is a musical – of sorts. It is a musical play that eschews the curiously sacred parameters of the Broadway-style musical, and instead uses music and parody in the pursuit of other, perhaps more contentious, aims. The play’s songs are inspired by Hollywood musicals from the twenties and thirties, but also by cartoons from the fifties, post-Beatles pop ballads, drum and bass and long-distance savings plan commercials. By connecting some dots between twentieth-century entertainment and contemporary reality, and by lacing the play’s lullabies and adagios with tunes inspired by (often deeply affecting) television commercials, the goal has been the creation of a self-consuming artifact, a musical that uses music to meditate on some of the more troubling impulses behind that most delightful of escapist forms: the musical.

The complete score of Hello … Hello is over a hundred pages long, and so cannot be included here in its entirety. A sampling of the songs begins on page 150; the complete score is available through Coach House Books (mail@chbooks.com or 416 979 2217).

Costumes

The performers should wear sleek, stylish outfits that are flattering yet neutral enough to allow for the transformations between the many characters they describe and embody.

Set and Props

There is no set except, perhaps, for a bed and two chairs or something that can work as both. In addition, risers, stairs and poles or cables may help the actors to render the illusions of the settings that they describe.

The only props are a tiny bassinet and a very small light source that can be palmed, then placed inside the bassinet. The rest of the props are imaginary and may be rendered through a system of gestures and movements that are simple and precise, but never slavish to the text.

Venue

An intimate venue that allows for direct eye contact between the performers and the audience is ideal.