3. “Clean the Kit”
It is the first day of the season and Father O’Donnell is coaching his team’s first practice. The scene introduces all the players on the team who will be at the core of the show’s drama, particularly John Kelly, the team’s star player gets punished for being less interested in the game than he is in Mary McGuire, one of the girls on the sidelines. The first part of the song deals with John’s frustrations: teenage angst, school and the hopeless future he thinks he will face if he doesn’t achieve his goals of becoming a world famous football player. Elton’s lyrics fit the character perfectly: you can believe that a teenager would sound off in this way using words such as these. Elton tends to use a kind of syntactical shorthand, leaving out bits of sentences and expecting us to fill in the blanks from the context:
Soon I’m gonna be a man, be a player not a fan
Cos that’s all I’ve ever wanted since my life began
Gonna be a soccer star, maybe drive a fancy car
Build a mansion in the country for my Ma and Pa
(But for now I’ve) Gotta clean the kit
I’m so sick of it.
Now this might work if this was the second stanza, but it doesn’t make perfect sense, even if it makes sensible meaning, when used like this in the first verse. The second stanza deals more with John’s frustrations with his life at school, a natural reaction to his punishment:
Each day I have to go to school, have to try and keep my cool
While I study for exams in how to be a fool
It’s no wonder I’m annoyed, cos the state is overjoyed
Just to teach a poor boy how to join the unemployed
I’m so sick of it
School and cleaning kit.
One notes too that the scansion of the first line in the second verse doesn’t match that of the same line in the first, nor does it match any other scansion of a line in the song using that verse structure.
So what could be done to solve these two problems? It seems to me that the song would follow a more sensible progression were these two verses switched around. The irregular scansion could be justified as an way to get into the song and it seems more logical to see a character moaning about a situation before they try to dream their way out of it. This would segue perfectly into the next section of the song in which John outlines his very sketchy plan for getting what he wants. It might be interesting too to note that this song offers a third structural echo of West Side Story by giving us a spot in which the hero’s desire for something more is communicated to the audience in song – the equivalent of that show’s “Something’s Coming”.
Of course, this song is developed into a musical scene that goes further than that kind of musical soliloquy does as the scene shifts to an interaction between John’s teammate, Thomas, and his group of cronies who threaten to give self-proclaimed athiest but Protestant-identified Del Copeland a going over should he try to be a part of their Catholic soccer team. In conceiving the way that the characters are established, this is perhaps yet another nod to West Side Story, where Tony is ‘othered’ from Riff and the Jet gang in the same way that John is established as a character who is in some way different from Thomas and his group of thugs, although (as with Tony and Riff) John still feels he needs to Thomas because of their deep friendship.
The scene returns to the locker room as Mary sneaks in to talk to John. Having heard enough of his teenage whining, she blasts him with a lecture that is worthy of a teenage girl who thinks she’s a bit more mature than the boys her own age. It is a solid piece of character work from Elton.
This leads into a subverted courtship song, in which the pair fight their attraction for one another before deciding to try and be friends – and possibly even more. It is in at this point in which the show diverges from West Side Story in its structure, in terms of both the score and the narrative.
4. “Don’t Like You”
There are two things that I really love about this song. The first is this exchange between John and Mary:
John: Well, I wouldn’t say yourself was much to shout about.
Mary: Do your fly up, sonny, cos your brain’s hanging out.
I love this because the response is so on the money and it is a lyric that one would never expect, but one which captures the initial dynamic of this pair of characters perfectly. The second is the line that serves as a kind of punchline to the number just before the final button:
Mary: Would you mind not pressing that thing against me?
Again, this is a line that makes Mary an intriguing character. I’d wager that many a teenage girl has thought that when a boy has been carried away by his hormones, but how many would actually say what’s on her mind rather than suffering through the situation or giving into his advances?
Where this song disappoints is in its tendency towards triteness in the list of insults that the two characters trade: it is hard to accept Mary, who has been established as a sharp and intelligent young woman by lines like those quoted above singing some of the other repetitive and glib lyrics that the rest of the song provides her. Although lyrics like these are might be funny punchlines for a scene on a standard television situation comedy, here they need to be more consistently witty to compensate for the lack of new, compelling dramatic action in the song itself. This song does not reveal something about the characters and their relationship that we don’t already know or expect because this song only serves to reinforces the attitudes shown by the characters toward one another near the end “Clean the Kit”. This song only begins to further the action of the play during the instrumental bridge between the main song and its coda, during which the characters begin to shift their attitudes to one another and shift through an awkward acknowledgment of friendship to the beginnings of a romantic relationship. However, the impetus for this growth does not come in the lyrics but from pantomimed action that takes place during the instrumental break, hence the need for virtuoso wordcraft in at the start of the song to accompany the pleasant melody provided by Lloyd Webber.
Purchases from Amazon.com
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT:
1. The Beautiful Game Original London Cast CD.
2. The Beautiful Game Vocal Selections.
Pages:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
About David Fick
teacher + curator + writer + director + performer = (future maker + ground shaker) x (big thinker + problem shrinker) x (go getter + detail sweater)
Musical Cyberspace 
THE BEAUTIFUL GAME: 2000 OCR Track by Track
3. “Clean the Kit”
It is the first day of the season and Father O’Donnell is coaching his team’s first practice. The scene introduces all the players on the team who will be at the core of the show’s drama, particularly John Kelly, the team’s star player gets punished for being less interested in the game than he is in Mary McGuire, one of the girls on the sidelines. The first part of the song deals with John’s frustrations: teenage angst, school and the hopeless future he thinks he will face if he doesn’t achieve his goals of becoming a world famous football player. Elton’s lyrics fit the character perfectly: you can believe that a teenager would sound off in this way using words such as these. Elton tends to use a kind of syntactical shorthand, leaving out bits of sentences and expecting us to fill in the blanks from the context:
Now this might work if this was the second stanza, but it doesn’t make perfect sense, even if it makes sensible meaning, when used like this in the first verse. The second stanza deals more with John’s frustrations with his life at school, a natural reaction to his punishment:
One notes too that the scansion of the first line in the second verse doesn’t match that of the same line in the first, nor does it match any other scansion of a line in the song using that verse structure.
So what could be done to solve these two problems? It seems to me that the song would follow a more sensible progression were these two verses switched around. The irregular scansion could be justified as an way to get into the song and it seems more logical to see a character moaning about a situation before they try to dream their way out of it. This would segue perfectly into the next section of the song in which John outlines his very sketchy plan for getting what he wants. It might be interesting too to note that this song offers a third structural echo of West Side Story by giving us a spot in which the hero’s desire for something more is communicated to the audience in song – the equivalent of that show’s “Something’s Coming”.
Of course, this song is developed into a musical scene that goes further than that kind of musical soliloquy does as the scene shifts to an interaction between John’s teammate, Thomas, and his group of cronies who threaten to give self-proclaimed athiest but Protestant-identified Del Copeland a going over should he try to be a part of their Catholic soccer team. In conceiving the way that the characters are established, this is perhaps yet another nod to West Side Story, where Tony is ‘othered’ from Riff and the Jet gang in the same way that John is established as a character who is in some way different from Thomas and his group of thugs, although (as with Tony and Riff) John still feels he needs to Thomas because of their deep friendship.
The scene returns to the locker room as Mary sneaks in to talk to John. Having heard enough of his teenage whining, she blasts him with a lecture that is worthy of a teenage girl who thinks she’s a bit more mature than the boys her own age. It is a solid piece of character work from Elton.
This leads into a subverted courtship song, in which the pair fight their attraction for one another before deciding to try and be friends – and possibly even more. It is in at this point in which the show diverges from West Side Story in its structure, in terms of both the score and the narrative.
4. “Don’t Like You”
There are two things that I really love about this song. The first is this exchange between John and Mary:
I love this because the response is so on the money and it is a lyric that one would never expect, but one which captures the initial dynamic of this pair of characters perfectly. The second is the line that serves as a kind of punchline to the number just before the final button:
Again, this is a line that makes Mary an intriguing character. I’d wager that many a teenage girl has thought that when a boy has been carried away by his hormones, but how many would actually say what’s on her mind rather than suffering through the situation or giving into his advances?
Where this song disappoints is in its tendency towards triteness in the list of insults that the two characters trade: it is hard to accept Mary, who has been established as a sharp and intelligent young woman by lines like those quoted above singing some of the other repetitive and glib lyrics that the rest of the song provides her. Although lyrics like these are might be funny punchlines for a scene on a standard television situation comedy, here they need to be more consistently witty to compensate for the lack of new, compelling dramatic action in the song itself. This song does not reveal something about the characters and their relationship that we don’t already know or expect because this song only serves to reinforces the attitudes shown by the characters toward one another near the end “Clean the Kit”. This song only begins to further the action of the play during the instrumental bridge between the main song and its coda, during which the characters begin to shift their attitudes to one another and shift through an awkward acknowledgment of friendship to the beginnings of a romantic relationship. However, the impetus for this growth does not come in the lyrics but from pantomimed action that takes place during the instrumental break, hence the need for virtuoso wordcraft in at the start of the song to accompany the pleasant melody provided by Lloyd Webber.
Purchases from Amazon.com
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT:
1. The Beautiful Game Original London Cast CD.
2. The Beautiful Game Vocal Selections.
Share this:
Related
About David Fick
teacher + curator + writer + director + performer = (future maker + ground shaker) x (big thinker + problem shrinker) x (go getter + detail sweater)