Cory Stillman
Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss first rose to fame as the co-creators behind the hit musical SIX, a hilariously modern retelling of the lives of the six wives of Henry VIII, presented in the form of a singing competition. That show was already an acclaimed interrogation of contemporary ideas around gender and sexuality, so it is unsurprising that Marlow and Moss have joined forces once again for Why Am I So Single?, an equally playful and irreverent show on a much more intimate scale.
“When we tried developing ideas that were about big #important themes, we kept hitting walls and couldn’t find a voice that felt authentic,” says Marlow. “We realized that we just wanted to write about our tragic little dating lives and our silly little friendship. And then a big part of our writing process, and what ended being quite a central theme in the show, is why a story about a platonic relationship, one where two friends sit on a sofa eating pizza and talking about their failed dates and how much they love each other, doesn’t feel as #important as story with big themes and renown characters.”
That kind of thematic curiosity is essential to Marlow and Moss’ work, which often employs metatheatricality to dive deeper into the artform and the stories it is trying to tell. The creative duo are acutely aware, however, of the fine line any show must walk when leveraging such self-reflexive elements.
“The show is about two musical theatre writers who believe they have no great love story in their lives,” says Moss. “In the prologue, we see them decide to ‘dress their life story up with musical numbers, so people will think it’s actually important’. And so, when the actual story starts, there’s no ‘why are they singing?’ question, because it’s already been answered in a (hopefully!) delightful game with the audience. And it’s a game that is, at heart, self-deprecating, not self-aggrandizing.”
Indeed, Moss and Marlow have cemented themselves as masters of self-deprecation in the world of musical theater, embracing sarcasm and comedy as effective shorthand for the kinds of emotional beats that often drive comparable shows. It’s an approach that very much stems from the close friendship Marlow and Moss share, and which has obviously resonated with audiences.
“Sadly, we’re both allergic to earnestness and sincerity, and so anytime we try to say anything remotely serious or heartfelt or emotional to each other, it’s usually wrapped in a thousand jokes and bits to make the whole affair of ‘saying how you feel’ less excruciating,” says Marlow.
Check out our full conversation with the Why Am I So Single? co-creators below to learn more about their friendship and how it manifested itself onstage.
Hi Toby and Lucy! Excited to dive into your Grammy-submitted work. Why Am I So Single? feels like a natural evolution of your voice post-SIX. Did SIX influence this project at all?
Toby Marlow: Yeah! I guess in a way, Why Am I So Single? is kind of a direct response to SIX. We wrote SIX originally as students, and it was kind of just meant to be this fun, silly show (albeit rooted in something we very much cared about), but tonally very much doing a “bit” and communicating our ideas and arguments through irreverent undercutting humor wherever possible. We never expected it to have any wider cultural significance beyond being a bit of fun at the Edinburgh Fringe.
So then, when SIX was kind of branded as #important in this way that was much bigger than we ever intended, I think we felt a pressure to write something next that was equally #important about #important things, as musicals are so BIG and should therefore be about BIG things.
However, when we tried developing ideas that were about big #important themes, we kept hitting walls and couldn’t find a voice that felt authentic, and we realized that we just wanted to write about our tragic little dating lives and our silly little friendship. And then a big part of our writing process, and what ended being quite a central theme in the show, is why a story about a platonic relationship, one where two friends sit on a sofa eating pizza and talking about their failed dates and how much they love each other, doesn’t feel as #important as story with big themes and renowned characters, and how that feeling is shaped by what we are told and therefore what we internalize as #important stories.
You have created shows that entertain first but carry deeper truths underneath. How do you balance those layers in a way that appeals to audiences?
TM: Honestly, I think that’s just because of who we are and how we communicate. Sadly, we’re both allergic to earnestness and sincerity, and so anytime we try to say anything remotely serious or heartfelt or emotional to each other, it’s usually wrapped in a thousand jokes and bits to make the whole affair of “saying how you feel” less excruciating.
And I think that extends to our tastes in storytelling. I feel like often if a piece of theatre is too didactic, people switch off. But if you wrap, or “Trojan horse”, something you want to argue to an audience in humour, a silly conceit, or just something you yourself would find entertaining, it can be much more effective. And in terms of balancing that, it’s really just anytime the show starts to drift into something too earnest or schmaltzy, we try to come up with the stupidest way to undercut the moment, often an incredibly naff joke, which is always SO much fun to write.
Both the form and tone of Why Am I So Single? feel fresh in a musical theatre landscape that often clings to convention. Were there structural risks you took that you hope are recognized as innovative?
Lucy Moss: One of the main risks we took was pushing the usual boundaries of metatheatricality. Often in musicals, people are alienated by the ‘why are they randomly bursting into song?’ question. Equally, when stories become self-referential or meta, people can be put off. It can seem smug. But in WAISS, we used metatheatricality to both resolve the usual alienation, to side-step smugness, and most importantly, to help land the entire message of the show.
The show is about two musical theatre writers who believe they have no great love story in their lives. In the prologue, we see them decide to ‘dress their life story up with musical numbers, so people will think it’s actually important’. And so, when the actual story starts, there’s no ‘why are they singing?’ question, because it’s already been answered in a (hopefully!) delightful game with the audience. And it’s a game that is, at heart, self-deprecating, not self-aggrandizing.
By the end, however, the two characters have learned that they are in a great love story, a platonic one. And so the metatheatrical device shifts from a self-deprecating joke to one that grounds the heartfelt message: they aren’t musicalizing their lives to trick the audience, but rather to persuade audiences (and, indeed, themselves) that their friendship love story is worth making a song and dance about.
Your songwriting is known for its pop sensibility and dramatic function. How important is it to you that each song not only stands on its own, but also deepens the story?
LM: Making each song stand alone and furthering the story is, for us, the entire challenge of a musical! The songs have to work on their own. But no matter how much of a catchy, funny, silly banger it is, it will fall entirely flat if the story is treading water. In fact, between our workshop and the West End production, we spent about 5 months pulling the story apart and putting it back together again, because we realized that the story engine only kicked in two-thirds of the way through the first act.
Part of the fun of Why Am I So Single?, too, was getting to dabble in many different musical theatre genres – and use the conventions of those. The whole conceit of making a ‘big fancy musical’ – sort of required a different gimmick for each number. So genre-wise, it was very important that they stood on their own as legible genre references, whether they were an Old Hollywood jazz standard pastiche like ‘Shhh!!!!’ or a big Studio 54 disco number like “Disco Ball.”
You famously write everything side by side, lyrics, melodies, even jokes. How does that creative intimacy shape the cohesion and clarity of your work in a way that might be harder to achieve in traditional writing partnerships?
LM: I mean, it’s a pretty painstaking and laborious process! Especially when you’re writing something so close to the bone. It involves a lot of emotional vulnerability, which can be pretty tough. But it does feel like it ends up with a piece that ‘feels like a singular voice’ – which is one of the things we value most in songwriting and playwriting. The songs feel like they’re written by the same voice as the lyrics; the lyrics feel like they are a translation of what the music is saying, rather than two separate pieces coming together; the humor and well of emotion are two sides of the same coin that couldn’t work without the other. What brought us together in the first place, many moons ago, was a seemingly uncanny shared sensibility – of what was funny, of what was well-judged tonally, of what is cringe, of what is fun. And then, over the years, we’ve learned so much from each other too, so there’s even more crossover in terms of our sensibilities and abilities.
Why Am I So Single? centers queer friendship, platonic intimacy, and the emotional chaos of modern love, narratives rarely spotlighted in mainstream musical theatre. How important is it to you that audiences begin recognizing these kinds of stories?
TM: I feel like it’s important because we are all so intensely shaped by the kinds of stories we consume on stage and screen, and we’re equally shaped by the lack of certain kinds of stories we consume.
There’s actually a song on the album called “I Got Off the Plane” where the two leads basically embark on a tirade against the TV show Friends because of how it shaped their relationship to romantic love growing up, but also how much they love the TV show so much despite how it affected them. They go on to sing how the paradigm of the perfect cis hetero couple, Rachel & Ross, exists everywhere in all the culture they consumed growing up. For Nancy, constantly seeing women only as romantic leads who exist just to be won by a man made her internalize over time that she will have failed in life if she doesn’t find a boyfriend, and for Oliver, never seeing a queer or trans character as a romantic lead made them internalize over time that, as a queer/trans person, they’re destined to never find love.
Obviously, TV shows with straight people in them aren’t the reason they’re single (they quickly realize everyone else who watched the same stuff as them has ended up in happy relationships, so clearly they’re single because of their own problems), but the point still stands that only ever seeing cis straight people as protagonists, and only ever seeing their romantic relationships as the only important ones, does make relationships that don’t fit into that model feel like they are less significant or valued. Which, for us at least, is funny because intensely close friendships between women and queer people and trans people have been some of the most significant and valued relationships of our lives. It felt so special to be able to celebrate those friendships through this show, and I hope we continue to see more stories spotlighting these kinds of friendships.
Do you feel a shift in the industry toward valuing work that reflects queerness, identity, and non-traditional forms of love?
LM: A difficult question. It seemed like that for a while, or perhaps that is just naivety talking – but it feels like this kind of shift (one could say progress!) isn’t linear, and involves a lot of back and forth and renegotiation. Just when you think the tide is turning, an even bigger swell in the opposite direction happens. Having said that, there are definitely so many people hungry for this kind of work, as well as so many creatives making and championing it. But it feels more urgent than ever – even now, just 6 months after the WAISS album’s release.
Comments
Loading…