Positively Operatic

THe Millennial Musical

Scene I: Boy Meets Girl

Written by: Tennessee Williams

Songs by: Richard Rodgers & Oscar

Hammerstein II

Girl: Mary Martin

Boy: Laurence Olivier

Brooding Boy sits on a roof overlooking Times Square on New Year's Eve 2000. Lonely and depressed, he prepares to leap to his death, but his song of farewell to the world is interrupted by the chirpy melody of Girl entertaining at a rooftop party next door. She is singing an ode to the ages and he is reminded of all that is good in the world. He promptly gets off the ledge and joins the neighbors' party. At midnight, Boy and Girl look across the room and their eyes meet. The clock strikes and all the lights in the city go out.

Scene II: Boy Gets Girl

Written by: George S. Kaufman and Will Shakespeare

Songs by: George and Ira Gershwin

Girl: Ellen Terry

Boy: Kevin Kline

Ophelia: Diana Rigg

Anton: Edwin Booth

Gotchadollar: Ralph Richardson

Attempting to cross to each other in total darkness, Boy and Girl stumble into the arms of other guests: Boy into the arms of daredevil aviatrix Ophelia Bearclaw, who likes his spunk and whisks him off in her autogyro parked on the terrace; Girl into the arms of Bolshevik cat burglar Anton Turnyurheddinkov, who mistakes her for his gang's new "second story man" and hustles her off to rob the penthouse of capitalist dog J.D. Gotchadollar. Fearing she has lost Boy forever, Girl forsakes love and adopts the guise of a man. Meanwhile, Boy convinces Ophelia he has a fear of heights that saps his manly virtues when he gets above 88 stories. She makes an emergency landing on Gotchadollar's terrace just as Anton and Girl climb onto it. Ophelia sees Anton wearing a locket identical to hers and recognizes him as her long-lost brother. Then Gotchadollar appears to claim both Ophelia and Anton as his children kidnapped by Russian servants years before. As the family reunites, Girl removes her disguise and kisses Boy.

Scene III: Boy Loses Girl

Written by: Neil Simon

Songs by: Andrew Lloyd Webber

Girl: Elizabeth Taylor

Boy: Leonardo DiCaprio

Thelma: Marilyn Monroe

Oscar: Walter Matthau

In the bloody streets of revolutionary France, Boy loses sight of Girl due to the rush of people and the heavy use of atmospheric fog. With neither his love nor a cent to his name, the Boy falls in with Oscar, a crotchety, cigar-smoking bear of a man, who takes him to live at his seedy hovel in the gutters of Paris, overrun with singing cats. To alleviate the poor kid's sadness, Oscar introduces the Boy to the sensuous and chesty Thelma, a blond typist in the service of the proletariat.

Scene IV: Dream Ballet 2000

Choreography by: Pina Bausch

Score by: Ennio Morricone and Cole Porter

Scene Design: Marc Chagall and Andy Warhol

Costume Design: Edith Head and Leon Bakst

Dancing Girl: Isadora Duncan

Dancing Boy: Gene Kelly

Chorus: Mikhail Baryshnikov, Bill T. Jones, Liz Lerman, Mark Morris, Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn, David Parsons, Yvonne Rainer, STOMP, Twyla Tharp, et al.

Girl watches Boy walk out of her life to join the D-Day landing at Omaha Beach. Miserable, she escapes to the Louvre and drifts into a daydream where, as Dancing Girl, she is transported into a brilliantly colorful, three-dimensional painting. Boy, transformed into Dancing Boy, beckons Dancing Girl to partner in a stirring pas de deux. As they pause to rest on a nearby bench, Vaslav Nijinsky leaps through an open window and Anna Pavlova appears as a white-feathered swan. They are followed by a throng of Denishawn dancers in Egyptian costumes, from which move Doris Humphrey and Martha Graham. Silver pillows drift from the ceiling and thousands of carnations sprout from the floor as more dancers tumble past: ballerinas turning into modern dancers mid-leap; dancers stomping around in combat boots; break dancers whirling on their backs; jazz dancers strutting with derby hats. Dancing Girl and Dancing Boy are separated in a vortex of sound and movement, and Girl awakens from her dream in a taxi cab on the way to --

Scene IV: Boy Gets Girl Back

Written by: Howard Brenton and David Hare

Score by: Felix Mendelssohn and Elvis Costello

Girl: Joanne Whaley

Boy: Gary Oldman

MC: Derek Jacobi

-- a strangely empty Millennium Dome in Greenwich, England, just before midnight on the same New Year's Eve they met. Alone inside the preposterously enormous white elephant, lovingly recreated by set designer John Napier, Girl reflects on her successful takeover of Manchester United Football Club from "evildoer of the fading eon" Rupert Murdoch. Though it has left her immeasurably powerful, rich, and in charge of some of the fairest lads in England, she is still lonely. Then, a strange figure appears. Sporting a Real Madrid jersey under his tux jacket and dapper kilt, it is -- Boy. He drags a duffel bag stuffed with gifts from his sojourn in the South Pacific where he led a successful high-seas rebellion against marauding European hordes. Boy and Girl rush to each other and begin a touching duet. They are joined by the crowd, their cars finally parked on the lawns of lay people who couldn't afford the ticket, and Derek Jacobi, who leads the countdown to the new millennium. A shrunken head rolls from Boy's duffel bag and Girl kicks it through the goal at the front of the stage! The throng cheers, lifts the couple into the air, and the curtain falls.