Starting Here Starting Now - The Songs

Music by David Shire: Lyrics by Richard Maltby, Jr.

ACT I

THE WORD IS LOVE / STARTING HERE STARTING NOW
In this number, there is no sense of contact among the three singers. They are three independent people, separately coming to the realization that they are in love.

Starting love…

I’M A LITTLE BIT OFF
A woman is totally overwhelmed by her feelings for a man, but is trying to convince herself that she is in control. She knows that she is A Little Bit Off, but at the beginning of the song is not willing to give in to her emotions. By the end of the song, however, her resistance vanishes and she is all over him.

I MAY WANT TO REMEMBER TODAY
Both women have now met the same man and are hopelessly falling for him. In this song, they both rationally describe how they feel (unaware, of course, of each other) and gradually become more excited and less in control.

BEAUTIFUL
Realising that he now has two women in love with him, the man tries to get away with exploring both relationships. He begins by singing a duet with the first woman, in which they reveal their perfect love for one another. He gradually makes his way to woman #2 and sings the same duet with her. It is not until the very end of the song that both women meet, face to face, and the gig is up.

WE CAN TALK TO EACH OTHER
Focusing all of his attention on Woman #1, in hopes of winning her back, he tells her that the thing he loves most about their relationship is that they can talk to one another. The joke, however, is that as he goes on and on about how they talk to each other, she cannot get a word in edgewise.

JUST ACROSS THE RIVER
The three characters have realized that they are not made for each other and now look across the river and into the future for the person that they will spend the rest of their lives with.

…Ending love…

CROSSWORD PUZZLE
A woman holding a NY Times’s reveals that ever since her Hecky left her, she has been unable to focus on the crossword puzzle. As she tries to answer some clues, she is continually distracted by thoughts of him. Slowly, it is understood that the reason Hecky left her was because, being the intelligent woman that she is, when they did the crossword together, she always got all of the answers before him. This lead to much frustration and arguing and eventually Hecky couldn’t handle it anymore. As she stumbles through each clue, she becomes more upset and less in
control of her emotions.

AUTUMN
In this painful song, Woman #1 sings that although the hills are green, she feels a frost in the air and an emptiness in her heart as if it were autumn. As she explores her feelings and opens her memory, she reveals that the man she loved left her in autumn and it has been autumn ever since.

I DON’T REMEMBER CHRISTMAS
In an equally emotional song, a man tries to convince himself that he is free from all of his memories of an ex-lover. As he looks around his home, however, every object reminds him of all the painful things he doesn’t remember (rainy days, Easter, Thanksgiving, good times, her touch, Christmas). It is clear that no matter how much he convinces himself, she will always live in his memory.

I DON’T BELIEVE IT
In this song, the characters rotate as commentators and couples. Each couple is trying a little too hard to make the audience believe that they are really happy. The commentators point out the signs or distress signals that give each couple’s discontentment away, deciding in the end that they just don’t believe it!

I HEAR BELLS
In this song, a man shares with the audience the beautiful world of bells and music that exists only in his head. He reaches out to the audience for them to join him, but realizes that he is alone in his world. He knows that people will think him mad, but it seems that there is no other world he would rather live in.

I’M GOING TO MAKE YOU BEAUTIFUL
The woman here is a Bloomingdale’s cosmetics salesperson. As she makes up an imaginary customer, she becomes increasingly offensive, obsessed and neurotic. The authors describe this number as a sort of musical nervous breakdown.

PLEASED WITH MYSELF
In this number, the three characters are head-in-the-clouds in love (not with each other, though). They are full of optimism and energy and remind the audience what it is like to simply feel happy to be alive.

ACT II

HEY THERE, FANS
This vaudeville-style song energetically welcomes the audience back for act two. The man should be working very hard to be the ultimate entertainer, and, at the end of the song, welcomes the women back from the break.

TRAVEL
This number opens with a bit of informal dialogue with the audience. The dialogue describes how the song works: every time that the Man says the word travel the key of the song modulates up a step. This is a big, open-throated song about life and adventure.

WATCHING THE BIG PARADE GO BY
The woman in this number watches an invisible parade pass her by. Her vision is full of so much energy and descriptive language that the audience should actually see it. By the end of the song, however, the singer realizes that as much as she loved the parade, she was not a part of it, and it came and went. She admits to herself that she is not a participant in life, but only someone who watches from the sidelines.

FLAIR
This song is about the extraordinary inner desires of an otherwise ordinary man. The man’s movements as he sings should fluctuates back and forth between his everyday mannerisms and his secret desire to be dashing and dapper like Fred Astaire.

WHAT ABOUT TODAY
In this passionate, fiery number, a woman recovering from a break up urgently points out that while everyone tells her she will feel better soon, such advice is not helping her get through today.

ONE STEP (Cast)
Each person enters this number nervously with much trepidation. Gradually, they discover that with every step they take, they gain more confidence and presence. The number continues to build before the eyes of the audience into an unbeatable showstopper, complete with top hats and canes.

TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY
Now, the future is just within reach for the two women, and in this song they physically grasp for it. Though they are not without fear, they are so full of anticipation that their words come out hushed and breathless. Ready or not, they are diving into life head first.

A NEW LIFE COMING
This song is based upon the Doppler effect, the scientific phenomenon that makes you hear a change in pitch when you pass a source of a sound, like a train whistle or a station bell. Crouched in train-like positions, the cast sings this song about riding towards whatever is waiting around the corner. They see life as a joy ride waiting to be explored.