We enter into Act II of LA CAGE faced with this terribly sad situation of Albin having discovered that his son doesn't want him present at the introduction of his fiancee and her parents, and Georges having gone along with it. We've spent a lot of time getting here, and then we've had a 15 minute intermission to sit in the emotions that Albin's "I am What I Am" stirs up. But now the creative team needs to find a way forward. How do you do that, when you've invested so much in building pathos for Albin? How do we in a sense reset, so that Act II can finally be about the dinner?
The answer they come up with is really clever: they let Albin be sad, but now heightened in his classic Drama Queen way. He's walking along the boardwalk with their maid/aspiring superstar, dressed and postured perfectly for grief. That one choice to inject a bit of drama and humor into the moment is itself the way of moving the story just a single forward from the grief of Act I.
And then, as the two men finally talk face to face about what their (monstrous) son has requested, we get a replay of Georges' beautiful "Song on the Sand," which he sang to Albin in Act I in place of actually saying what was going on. In that moment it had been a way of expressing his own sadness about all this, the depth of his love. But now, while it still has that wistful emotional quality, Albin shares in the moment, finishing lyrics that Georges begins and then singing with him. It's not just Georges that remembers Albin lovingly, it's Albin remembering Georges. And the song ends with them facing each other, playing upon one another's melody and then singing in unison, "And I'm young and in love." It's a moment every bit as emotional as the end of Act I, the purest expression of their love.
From the standpoint of the creators' bigger goals with LA CAGE, it's a brilliant maneuver: having put these two men through some real suffering at the hands of their awful son, we can have these them sing a proper love song to each other and see it land perfectly even with a super straight audience. There's a writing lesson there: If you want your audience to identify with your characters or give themselves over to their journey, let them watch those characters suffer.
But the other thought I have watching is that, from the standpoint of moving the plot along, is the aid that humor can play. Seeing Albin ham it up in his grief still acknowledges his grief. The creators build on what has happened, rather than dismissing it. That's such a key in all this: In a story your characters have to carry every new wrinkle that you introduce. So often I read scripts (and, ahem, also write them) where you can see the writer realizing they've written into a corner they didn't and their solution is to find some way to dismiss the problem or the new emotions they've introduced. That never works. Even if the audience doesn't catch you doing it, intuitively they know something is wrong.
I think that also means that when you feel you've painted yourself in a corner, you may very well be on the right track, rather than the wrong. The harder it is for us as writers to find a way forward for our characters that acknowledges and builds on what we've already introduced, the more it's going to land when we do.
And if we can't see any way to that resolution, before we give up, can humor help us? Instead of going at the problem head on, what if we go at it sideways?
TOMORROW: MORE HEARTSTOPPER (I love this show!)
