Larry's Party

Ian C. Nelson is librarian emeritus and former Assistant Director of
Libraries (Collection Management & Budget) University of Saskatchewan
Library and Dramaturge for the Festival de la Dramaturgie des Prairies.

This attempt to transpose the splendid bestseller by Carol Shields into
a viable musical falls short of its mark for the simple reason that it
sticks literally too close to the original. Respecting the clever
chapter divisions made popular by the novel seems to have seriously
impeded the dramatic punch of a script that needs to carry an audience
along with it immediately rather than in armchair musing. It seems like
too much biographical information is given and too often in direct
address to the audience (a constant danger in a musical that is already
by nature a presentational form).

Sometimes the songs (with lyrics also given to repetition and reprise)
merely reproduce what we have already been told by the spoken text. For
example, the story of Larry’s mother having accidentally killed her
mother-in-law with a dish of tainted beans is given in full only to be
taken up once more in a song that could easily have been the single
vehicle for this nugget of family history. That song might have also
carried a few other family details that instead are wedged rather
blatantly into other snippets of scenes. Likewise, in sticking to the
general flashback mode of the story, Ouzounian has a tendency to place
his songs as a summary of the action instead letting some of them do
dramatic duty. “Holy Women” in the scene “Larry in Love” could
readily have worked as an introduction that would have propelled Larry
and the woman who is to become his second wife into their new
relationship. Similarly, the placement of “Where Did It Start?”
could certainly have been used to more dramatic effect at the moment of
divorce rather than as a late-in-the-script flashback. Though
repetitive, the lyrics are often effective. A good sense of the dramatic
power of the musical form is found particularly in the scene entitled
“Larry’s Friends.” The music for four original songs is included
in the text.

This is a book destined probably only for musical theatre collections.
General readers will prefer the novel.