res_eng

Franco-American bi-lingual author/composer/actor/singer/dancer living in Paris

SYNOPSIS

Prologue:

A very long time ago, Prince Pygmalion, a sensitive artist, dreamed of becoming a sculptor. His father, Kephalos forbade it, insisting that his son assume royal duty on the throne as a military king like himself. Yet, like many young adults, Pygmalion had a strong will of his own. One night he fled his father’s kingdom, and chose to live incognito as the sculptor he wanted to be. Kephalos sent spies throughout the world to find his son. After nineteen long years they finally located him. To trick his son into returning home, Kephalos commands his spies to tell Pygmalion that he is dying. In a act of grace, Pgymalion decides to return to his father’s deathbed and make peace before it is too late.

ACT I

Song: PYGMALION, LE FILS DU ROI! (Pygmalion, The Prodigal Son)

The opening number presents most of the cast, setting and intrigue. A poor, sick watchseller WOMAN reminds us that we cannot buy time that is already spent. SUODES and RATA, Kepahlos’ two Ministers enter ordering the citizens (DAMON, EUGENIE, PHIDIAS, and the Watchseller woman) to prepare the parade for Pygmalion’s arrival. The poor citizens, treated like slaves, do all the work. CASANDRA, the journalist, interviews KEPHALOS and his alcoholic queen RHEA as they join in the festivities. yet while they await a docking ship, Pygmalion has secretly arrived and hides in the crowd, discovering that his father, dancing about in perfect health, lied to him to make him return. Refusing to take part, he leaves the parade to enter the city more discreetly.

The next day, Pygmalion sits in the palace with Kephalos and the two Ministers, and quickly learns that after all these years, nothing has changed. Kephalos is preparing war against Mesopotamia to acquire their oil reserves, and hopes he’ll entice Pygmalion to join forces with them. Singing with Suodes and Rata, Kephalos tries to convince Pygmalion that war can be fun.

Song: UNE PETITE GUERRE (Nothing’s More Profitable Than A Little War)

Once the Ministers have taken leave, Pygmalion shares the joys of his travels and sculpture with his father, asking if Kephalos still dreams of sailing the world. Kephalos dismisses his son, reminding him that royal duty takes priority over idle dreams, then turns the subject to his complaints of the unsurmountable tasks he encounters running a kingdom, adding “how can I prepare a war in a 35-hour work week?” They sing of their individual trials in life.

Song: ON N’A PAS LE CHOIX (We Don’t Have a Choice)

Rhea, the queen, always told to remain silent, calms her nerves in a glass of booze. GANYMEDE, Pygmalions’s best childhood friend arrives to greet him. While catching up with his old pal, Ganymede learns that although Pygmalion has made a good life for himself as a sculpter, he hasn’t had luck with women, and still doesn’t believe in love, as he and Pygmalion sing:

Song: COMMENT CROIRE EN L’AMOUR? (How Can you Believe in Love?)

AURORE, Ganymede’s pregnant wife, who at one time was Pygmalion’s childhood girlfriend, joins them. Pygmalion, taken back at first, toasts the couple’s happiness. Kephalos asks Ganymede about his contract with the quarry. Pygmalion learns that Kephalos ordered a fountain of Bacchus to garnish the marketplace, in opes to distract the citizens attentions toward a thing of beauty while he quietly prepares his war. He explains that the fountain is to be unveiled at the annual Aphrodite festival in six months and invites the men to view the area where the statue is to be erected. Left alone for a moment, Aurore tells Pygmalion that Iris would love to see him again, sending him into a rage. Pygmalion refuses, reminding her that Iris abandoned him many years ago. He joins the men. Rhea returns with Eugenie the maid, and together with Aurore, the three women lament about men and their stupid ways in song.

Song: VOUS N’AVEZ QU’A LA FERMER (You Just Have To Shut Up)

Pygmalion, Kephalos and Ganymede return. Pygmalion announces his desire to sculpt the fountain or else he will travel to wherever a sculptor has the right to sculpt. Kephalos reluctantly accepts, and orders Rhea to call Cassandra the journalist to make an official anouncement. Pygmalion leaves them to find his sculpture tools. Aside, Ganymede reminds Kephalos that Phidias was already contracted to sculpt the fountain. Kephalos responds that by allowing Pygmalion to sculpt the fountain, he will keep him at home long enough to change his mind about joining the war effort. After all, time puts everything into place, or so he thinks...

Cassandra announces on TV that Pygmalion will sculpt the fountain. The citizens are furious, especially Phidias, displaying a signed contract that no longer is valid. Instead, the enslaved citizens are forced to install Pygmalions’ sculpture studio. While doing so, they dream in song of the things they would do if they were free.

Song: IL N’Y A QUE 24 HEURES DANS UNE JOURNEE (There are only 24 Hours in a Day)

The music becomes a jam session, lead by Damon. Pygmalion enters and joins the citizens as they dance to their own music. Fearful that he might be a tyrant like his father, they stop immediately. Pygmalion befriends them, encouraging Damon to play his music at the Aphrodite festival. Wary of the king’s reaction, Damon remains fearful until Pygmalion reassures him that he will act in his defense...

Meanwhile, on the sly, Kephalos, eager to sleep with anyone willing to advance his plans, meets his part-time lover Cassandra in a quiet hideout. Whispering loudly, he reprimands her for the favoritism remarks she made on the evening news, which she made to get back at him for forgetting her birthday. She begs her royal lover to join her later that evening. Kephalos (physically unattracted to her) declines, until he learns that she knows too much about his war plans which she overheard during one of their pillow-talk sessions. He begrudgingly accepts her invitation.

Back in Pygmalion’s studio, Ganymede and Aurore encourage Pygmalion as he begins to sculpt the fountain. Aurore presents a basket of Tupperware containers, telling Pygmalion that like old times, while he sculpts she will feed him. Ganymede tries to hide his healousy of this arrangement. Pygmalion thus begins his work, verbally sharing his feelings with the marble taking form under his touch, dreaming of the kind of love he wishes for. His dreams and wishes slowly transform what was intended to be the fountain of a male Bacchus into the statue of a woman.

Weeks pass by. One day, Aurore (wearing her embroidered cloak during each visit) arrives with more Tupperware-packaged food while Pygmalion is fighting Galathée, the marble statue as he now calls her, complaining that she won’t respond under his touch as he would like. Aurore calms him down, advising him in song to relax and enjoy each moment as it unfolds and let himself be guided by Galathee, rather than tell her what to do.

Song: CHER COMMANDANT (Dear Commander)

Pygmalion heeds her advice to relax, and for the first time finally sees Galathee’s face in the marble. He speaks to and kisses her tenderly under the horrified gazes of Kephalos, Suodes and Rata, hiding nearby (breaking their promise to not disturb him while he worked). Kephalos orders his Ministers to remain silent about his son, who has apparently lost his mind. Yet once left to their own devices, the Ministers cannot hold their tongues. They sing out the news. Cassandra overhears them and records their comments, blackmailing them into paying her for silence as she joins them in song.

Song: VOUS N’AVEZ RIEN DIT (You Said Nothing)

Furious at having been stood up on her royal date (Kephalos once again left her hanging on their date), Cassandra spreads the word. Naturally chaos ensues throughout the kingdom and even all the way to Mesopotamia that Pygmalion is nuts, as Kephalos becomes a target of ridicule. Back in the palace, Rhea, constantly told to be silent when she offers advice, just wants another drink. Kephalos tries to regain control of the situation, and orders Ganmede to extract another marble from the quarry, planning to force Pygmalion to sculpt a fountain in time for the Aphrodite festival and thus quiet the rumors about the “woman statue” Pygmalion is in love with. Kephalos reminds everyone who is king as he sings:

Song: DURA LEX SED LEX (The Law is Tough, but it’s the Law)

Aurore begs Kephalos to allow Pygmalion to sculpt as he desires. He refuses. Ganymede burns with jealousy as his wife Aurore takes Pygmalion’s defense, and storms out on her.

Kephalos calls in his Ministers and instructs stuttering Rata to travel to Mesopotamia to spread false information to the people there to help him buy time.

Meanwhile, back in Pygmalions’ studio under the moonlight, Galathee, a beautiful woman in marble, has been completed. Pygmalion’s sleeping body melts into an embrace with her. Phidias arrives with a hammer, ready to destroy the statue, but upon seeing Galathee, cannot follow through with his plan to destroy such beauty. He hides as Kephalos arrives with the second marble, awakening his son and confronting him with not having followed his father’s orders! Instead, he sculpted a woman and not even a fountain ! Pygmalion defends himself, saying that it’s easier to run everone else’s life when you haven’t the courage to live your own. Then he explains in song who Galathee is to him; she represents the dream that Kephalos has always tried to destroy, but never will.

Song: GALATHEE

Kephalos remains unmoved, and orders Pygmalion to sculpt a fountain in time for the Aphrodite festival or be locked up in an insane asylum, then leaves him. Phidias comes out from his hiding place, and having witnessed the scene between Pygmalion and his father, explains how he was contracted to sculpt the fountain, a fact Pygmalion was unaware of, yet which inspires an idea. He tells Phidias to sculpt the fountain while he disguises himself to take Phidias’ place in the quarry.

Three months pass by. The day of the Aphrodite Festival arrives. Two statues: Galathee and a veiled fountain decorate the marketplace. Cassandra presents the festivities to the TV cameras, while the Watchseller-woman, Aurore and Eugenie, bored, dance around the maypole. The Watchseller-woman places a sextet beneath the fountain. Damon and Phidias are forced to play the old fashioned music they loathe. Kephalos unveils the fountain, and discovers Phidias’ name engraved on it’s base. Hiding his anger, the musical prayer ceremony begins, where each person places flowers beneath the fountain and prays to Aphrodite. Kephalos finds the sextet lying near the fountain. Pygmalion implores Aphrodite to give life to Galathee.

Song: APHRODITE

After the prayer song, Pygmalion encourages Damon and Phidias to play the music they rehearsed at the many jam sessions they organized. Reluctantly the citizens burst into song, and everyone has a good time dancing and singing, except Kephalos, who loses control.

Song: ZOI, HORIS AGAPE

Sudenly, there’s an explosion. Kephalos quickly interrogates stuttering Rata, and learns that he mixed up the code, spreading the wrong signals while in Mesopotamia. Certain that the explosion is a counter attack, Kephalos announces that they are at war. Just then, as he handcuffs Pygmalion to his wrist to force him to fight alongside him, Aphrodite answers Pygmalions’ prayer and Galathee comes to life, reaching out to Pygmalion from her stone pedestal, as Kephalos, Suodes and Rata sing the military march.

Song: ON EST CON-VOQUE A LA GUERRE (We are Stupidly Called To War)

The citizens join in song with Kephalos, the Ministers, Pygmalion and Ganymede and march to war in song. Rhea, durnk, passes out. Pregnant Aurore rushes to her side while Galathee waves goodbye to Pygmalion from her pedestal, as he and the others march toward what could be their deaths.

ACT II

We are in Mesopotamia. Four months have gone by. Explosions and chaos surround Kephalos and his Ministers as they crawl on all fours beneath the castle of the enemy, searching for cover, afraid to admit they are losing the war. An exploding bomb hits Rata, who dies in the arms of Suodes, his father. The Men sing of returning home.

Song: A LA GUERRE ON N’A PAS LE CHOIX (At War, We Don’t Have a Choice)

Back home, Cassandra, in army fatigues, announces on TV that the war has ended; a ceasefire treaty has been signed and the men, those still alive, are returning. We then discover Galathee, Pygmalion’s beauiful statue come to life walking across a lonely city destroyed by war, and Aurore, Ganymede’s wife, now a mother carrying her newborn baby. Together, they hope for better days.

Song: LES ROSES D’ESPOIRS FANES (The Roses of Wilted Hopes)

Galathee unites all the women (except Rhea, who is currently in detox at the Betty Ford clinic) having devised a plan to ensure that the men, once returned, will never engage in war again. What resembles a scene from Lysistrata (in ancient Greek theater, Lysistrata incited the women to refuse the pleasures of love to the men until they signed a treaty promising never to return to war) takes a comic turn when Cassandra, having quit her journalism job, turns the meeting into a Tupperware party, offering her own solutions to the mounting problems thay are faced with while the men are at war.

Song: SUPPERWARE

The men return from the war, each crippled in his own way; Damon blinded; Ganymede limping; Phidias unable to speak; Kephalos with headaches; Suodes in tears over the loss of his son, Rata. Galathee finally holds Pygmalion in her arms, but he, unable to respond to her affection, suffers like the other broken men from post-war syndrome.

Two months pass by. Damon, Phidias, Ganymede and Pygmalion are gathered at Pygmalion’s studio, where they spend their days drinking to drown the horrors of war, unable to pick up the pieces of their lives, as they sing of the one thing they know that doesn’t kill.

Song: LA MUSIQUE N’A JAMAIS TUE PERSONNE (Music Never Killed Anyone)

Galathee tells Aurore she’d rather return to marble than live a life with a man incapable of loving or feeling. Frustrated, she says she knows of a way to help Pygmalion and the other men get better and she leaves with Aurore to implement her plan.

Back in the palace, Kephalos, with help from mourning Suodes, is adding up the unending list of expenditures the lost war cost him. he conjures a way to regain control of the situation and of his citizens, who are now all against him. The first thing he says he must do is get rid of Pygmalion, who he claims is responsible for all that has gone wrong. Yet even Suodes finally loses his belief in his king when he says he plans to send Pygmalion, his only son, to the Betty Ford clinic.

Song: DURA LEX, SED LEX reprise

Kephalos tries to win Cassandra back, knowing her alliances with the press can only help him regain the control he’s lost in his kingdom, yet she refuses his propositions, reminding him of the numerous times he stood her up in the past.

Back at Pygmalion’s studio, the Watch-seller woman (we discover is IRIS), ill and coughing (disguised in Aurore’s embroidered cloak) visits her son, Pygmalion. She tells him how years ago she encouraged her husband Kephalos to follow his dream and sail the seas of the world. As a result, Kephalos’ father banished her from the kingdom and ordered Kephalos to marry Rhea, whom he never loved. Iris tells Pygmalion that she was forced to abandon him, yet lived on the outskirts of town selling watches just to be near him as he grew up, knowing he would be in danger if she was ever caught seen with him. Yet she knew one day they would be reunited to share the lullaby she sang to him as a child.

Song: MON PRINCE A MOI (My Prince of Mine)

Iris informs him that Galathee instructed her to come. Just as Pygmalion finally discovers how much he is loved and must believe in love, Iris dies in her son’s arms. Kphalos arrives, determined to lock his son away, yet Suodes has assembled the citizens in Pygmalion’s defense. Kephalos freezes as he discovers Iris, lifeless in his son’s arms. Suddenly, Rhea returns from the Betty Ford clinic announcing that after too many years of saying nothing, decides it’s her turn to lay down the law. She orders Kephalos to choose between passing the crown to Pygmalion and giving Iris a funeral worthy of a queen, or living through a royal divorce.

Iris is buried with dignity, and Kephalos finally makes peace with Pygmalion, asking forgiveness for the lives he’s ruined behind the belief that duty overrides dreams.

The citizens gather before their new King Pygmalion and Queen Galathee. Pygmalion appoints Eugenie and Damon as Ministers of Education ad Commerce, and all celebrate. Rhea hands the sextet to Kephalos asking where it came from. He says it must have been Iris who left it for him, explaining that it is an instrument to measure your position by following the stars. He invites Rhea to join him on his voyage, as he plans to finally live his dream sailing the seas before it’s too late. The entire cast waltz and sing along with the happy ex-king Kephalos.

Song: DANS MA GALERE (In My Barge)

FIN

Book, Music and Lyrics

Matthew Gonder