Chapter Text
“So. . .” says Charley, after the hellos and the hugs, after the coffee is poured and the news of the kids asked for and given, once they’re seated on Mary’s ancient sofabed (in daytime incarnation). “What do you think?”
Mary shakes her head with a wry, helpless not-quite-smile. “Oh, Charley. . .”
“That good, huh? I’ve always said that if the audience is stunned into silence, that means the show is truly amazing,” says Charley.
“What am I supposed to say?” asks Mary.
“I honestly want your honest opinion. Who else am I supposed to ask?”
“You’re not planning to try to get this produced? Are you?”
“You think that would be. . .what? Needlessly self-destructive?” Charley rubs the back of his neck nervously. “You’re right, obviously, but see. . . I mean, I wrote it for catharsis, obviously, but then I guess I got into the swing of it, and I ended up really writing it. And now it’s sitting there, taunting me. And I just want to know, is it good? I think it’s good. But what do I know?”
“As a piece of writing?” says Mary. “Yes, it’s good. It’s tight, it’s funny, it tells a story. Maybe a little heavy-handed with the moral, but hey, it’s a musical, who has time for subtlety?”
“Mary! My oldest friend! Speaking with the tongue of Joe Josephson!” Charley’s performance of being stabbed in the heart is a little too oversold to be either convincing or funny, but it’s the thought that counts.
Mary rolls her eyes. “Sorry. Seriously, though? ‘Franklin Shepard, Inc.’ is probably the best song you’ve ever written. And maybe the most honest thing you’ve ever written.”
“Although not the most factually accurate,” says Charley. “I just wrote down all the things I wished I’d been on the ball enough to say while the cameras were rolling.”
“I notice you did me the same favor,” says Mary. “I wish I’d told Frank off half as coherently as the way you wrote it.”
“I mean, I wasn’t at the famous party,” says Charley. “All I know is what you’ve told me. Which wasn’t much. . .”
“I don’t like to dwell on it. It wasn’t exactly my finest hour. What I can remember of it, which, frankly. . .” She grimaces and shrugs. “At least you made me the voice of righteous fury.”
“Mary.” Charley reaches out a tentative hand to touch her shoulder. “You shouldn’t beat yourself up. Especially now, after all the hard work you put in to get better.”
“Yeah. Just call me Little Mary Sunshine.” She puts on a smile-for-the-back-rows grin, complete with jazz hands. Charley snorts.
“Anyway, I love ‘Franklin Shepard, Inc.’ Especially the stage notes.” Mary grins. “‘Snorts, becoming like a manic, drooling octopus.’? Pure genius.”
“Too bad no audience will ever know it.” Charley smiles ruefully. “Anyway, the first thing a director does is cross out all the stage notes.”
“Frank would love it. He always did enjoy your stage notes.”
“Yeah,” Charley agrees soberly. Then, in a more upbeat tone, “Hey, did we ever play you the pantomime song? It was a parody – well, let’s say an homage – to those ballets in Golden Age musicals. I challenged Frank to write a song where the ‘lyrics’ were a very specific sequence of stage notes. I guess you could say it’s the closest I’ve come to choreography.”
“Was this in Take a Left?”
“No. It would have been for Our Time.” Charley frowns, then waves away the thought of the musical they never finished. “Anyway, the point was, the choreography came first, and the music was fitted to it, to tell that very particular story. Frank’s music was brilliant, of course. Working to a challenge, weird constraints: that kind of thing always brought out his best work.”
Mary nods sympathetically. “It sounds wonderful. I wish I’d seen it. Even if it was just you reading the stage notes while Frank played. I bet that would have been hilarious in its own way. Good Frankly Frank material.”
“Anything to spare the theatre-going public my singing voice?” Charley jokes.
“Hey, now, you can carry a tune, that puts you one up on Rex Harrison,” Mary replies.
“Great praise from a seasoned drama critic.” Hand over his heart, Charley bows to her from his seat. “But I’ll stick to my day job far away from the footlights, thank you.”
“Says the Pulitzer Prize winner.”
“Hey, when you’ve got a good thing going. . .”
“Speaking of which, I like what you did with the ‘Good Thing Going’ song,” says Mary. “The lyrics are moving, but it’s the kind of traditional musical theatre song Joe Josephson would go for. But then for the real-life audience it’s more than that, because obviously it’s about Frank and Charley’s partnership and all the stuff the audience has already seen happen, that the characters don’t know is coming.”
“Yes, exactly,” says Charley. “And the other thing I was imagining going on there is that the tune of Good Thing Going would be some kind of version of the song they’re auditioning for Joe in Opening Doors, the one he complains that you can’t hum the tune. Joe doesn't recognize that it's basically the same tune, just slowed down and made sentimental instead of comic.”
“Wait, didn't that actually happen in real life once?” Mary asks. “Frank used to rant about how Joe couldn't recognize a tune if you change the tempo and put it to different lyrics.”
“Yeah, he snuck the tune of 'Commies Under the Couch' into Musical Husbands as the Act 1 closer. It was originally a joke, but Joe never noticed, and in fact, he loved that number so much he wouldn't let Frank change it. So I don't know if the joke was on Joe or on Frank, in the end.” Charley shrugs. “Anyway, I thought that says a lot about what it was like working for Joe. I was thinking that same tune could show up in the graduation song, too, or a version of it. Although I don’t know, maybe that would be like saying that the characters never really had any new ideas and just kept recycling the old ones, which is the opposite of what I want to say. But of course, that would be up to – to the composer.”
“I really like the ‘Opening Doors’ number, too,” says Mary hastily. “It’s a great piece of storytelling. Really captures something about what it was like. New York in the ’60s, how it feels to make art and try to make a living at it. . .the three of us.”
“Thanks,” says Charley. “I’m pretty happy about how that one turned out, too.”
“Did Frank really do a commencement speech at your high school?” asks Mary.
“No. I did. They invited him, but he declined. So, they asked me, as our class’s next-most-famous member. Frank didn’t go to the reunion either, of course.”
“And you told them what?” asks Mary. “‘To not turn out the same, to grow, to accomplish, to change the world’?”
“What else was I supposed to tell them?” Charley throws up his hands. “Do your best but it doesn’t matter, because you’ll end up old and cynical and full of regret no matter what you do? That’s not me, Mary. I refuse to let that be me. I work damn hard at it.”
“I know. That’s among the many reasons I love you,” says Mary, reaching over to ruffle his hair.
He lets her do it, but his voice is bitter as he replies, “Good old faithful Charley, New York’s last idealist.”
“Don’t say it like that,” says Mary. Charley turns up an open palm in her direction, ceding the point.
“You know, it was going to that graduation – going back there and seeing all those kids – that got me thinking about writing this play,” he says. “Thinking about how hopeful we were back then, how simple it all seemed. How eager we were to step into that shiny, unknown future. Wondering how we managed to screw it up so badly.”
Mary grimaces sympathetically. “I wish Frank had gone to the reunion.”
“Because what the class of 1980 really needed to inspire them was to see two middle-aged supposed role models punching each other out on the playground?”
“It would have been a chance to reconnect. To make things right.”
“Oh Mary. . .” Charley shakes his head. “Frank and I had our one last chance. A couple of them. And we blew it, every time.”
“Still – ”
“Let’s talk about the script, okay?”
“The script that has nothing whatever to do with you and Frank and your friendship?” asks Mary archly, but at Charley’s look, she capitulates. “Fine, sure. The script. I don’t know, Charley. Is it a good play? Yes, I think so.”
“But. . .I can see on your face, there’s a ‘but’ coming,” says Charley. “Let’s have it.”
“Charley.”
“Mary.”
“All right, all right. The thing is, I know you’re angry, and you have every right to be, but you’ve made Frank out to be a monster.”
“No, I’ve written the story of how Frank – the Frank we knew and loved – became a monster,” says Charley.
“No, I know, but. . .” Mary sighs. “I love that the story’s told backwards, it really gets the audience thinking about how did this guy get to be where he is? But Frank – in the play – is so awful for the first quarter of the play. The first time he’s at all sympathetic is in the apartment scene, by which point, no one’s going to care. I mean, I care, but I know the real Frank.”
“But that’s the whole point!” says Charley. “He ends up awful but he didn’t start that way, so what happened? And by the end. . .Do you think I didn’t show it well enough? How Frank used to be? How we used to be when we were together, all three of us?”
“No, that part. . .yeah. It’s good. And I’m not saying. . .I mean, it’s a classic story arc, it’s basically a literal tragedy, frank destroys himself through his tragic flaw. But usually in tragedy you sympathize with the guy first and then watch in horror as he spirals down the drain.”
“And you leave the theatre depressed. This way, at least the last thing you see is the best of Frank,” says Charley.
“And you still leave the theatre depressed, because you know that guy’s already destroyed,” says Mary.
“I never said this was a happy story.”
“Yeah, and no one goes to Hamlet thinking they’re going to be uplifted,” Mary agrees. “I just think you’re going to lose the audience before you get to the emotional payoff. And. . .” She hesitates.
“Say it,” says Charley tightly.
“Frank isn’t actually a monster.”
Charley says nothing; he gets up, turns his back to pace to the far side of the living room, then walks back. He stands there looking down at her, working his jaw.
“This is not me taking sides, Charley,” she says. “You asked for my opinion. In my opinion, you need the audience to sympathize with Frank sooner.”
“So it will play in Peoria?” Charley sneers. “If I wanted to write a crowd-pleaser, I could have stuck with Frank and saved us all a lot of grief.”
“So the audience will care how the hell he got here from there. So they’ll see why you care. Charley, the play is clever. It’s well-crafted. And it has heart. Your heart. But all that heart is for Mary and Charley until scene 5. They obviously care about Frank, but there’s no clue why.”
Charley clutches at his hair with both hands, takes a couple of deep breaths in that pose, then looks up at her again. “Okay, point taken. But I don’t know how to write that. The reason to sympathize with Frank in ’80 or ’78 or even 70-ever-loving-3 is that he knows what he’s lost, even if he can’t admit it. As far as I’m concerned, that’s it. And that’s what I wrote. You want something else, you write it yourself.”
Mary gives him an exasperated look. “I could, you know. It’s your play. But it’s my story, too.”
“You know what? Why not? You write a draft.”
“You’re joking. You’re not joking.”
“I’m not joking,” says Charley. “You’re right. You've got as much right to tell this story as I do. And maybe you need to tell it, just like I do. Even if you only tell it to me.”
Mary holds up both hands in protest. “I’m not actually a playwright, you know.”
“But you’re a writer. How hard could it be, right?” He gives her a token smile.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” she says.
“I know," he says. He picks up the script and hands it to her. “Come on, I want to see your version.”