Or perhaps I should say, the off-the-charts adorableness of Rosalie Graziano and Matias Polar as Jane and John Allison?
The last shot of the day we did at the press photo shoot was a shot of Jane and John reading “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass”, the two books that respectively serve as the template for each of the newlywed’s through-lines in “Speakeasy“.
The kiss was the last shot Lissa Moira, our director, called for. It had been a long evening’s shoot, and Peter Welch, our photographer, was already packing up, but Rosalie and Matias were game enough to pose a little longer just for me. I felt like I was shooting two 1930’s Hollywood musical comedy actors. They really do look like they hail from that era in these pictures, don’t you think?
The melodies for “Hope” were with me for many years before I completed the music for “The Song of Job 9:11”. I conceived of the song when I was 18 or 19. The four lines quoted at the top were lyrics that came to me pretty much in that form at the time. But although the main melodies were conceived then, for decades I was stumped when thinking up additional lyrics for the piece.
I plead guilty to being a bit of a Christmas Carol Grinch. OK, I used to be a BIG Christmas Carol Grinch, really loathing most carols and sometimes resorting to lip syncing rather than singing out loud when drawn into a festive sing along. This bad attitude probably stems from having been raised in a secular household blissfully devoid of Christianity. I still enjoyed all the pagan accouterments of the holiday, the decorated (Solstice) tree, the presents, a belief in Santa until I was five (OK, that may not be pagan). But being an aggressively atheistic kid, and stubborn, I didn’t enjoy singing about “Christ the Lord” or “God” or “Baby Jesus”. I admit my atheism at times was as obnoxious as the aggressive certainty of an overzealous Evangelist.
Now, I’ve put atheism behind me, but I still consider myself “spiritually unaffiliated” and still am a little allergic to the “C” and “J” words, as well as still a bit of a snob when it comes to the whole baby in the manger kitsch factor. Nonetheless, 22 years together with Ed has welded me firmly to a family that loves singing carols together, and has taught me to temper my unfestive disdain, and join in with the music.
And truth be told, the music to most Christmas carols is very beautiful. I still cringe a bit at the words, especially when it seems the lyrics of foreign carols have been mostly rewritten to interchangeable Christchild adoring homogeneity in English where there was a greater thematic variety in the original, and I still bristle at Beethoven’s Ode to Joy having been rewritten as a Christian Hymn (“Sacrilege, I say!”), but I’ve grown way mellower with age and will be happy to sing along with the program with all the Elders this holiday.
It is though a bit of an irony that I of all people, this longtime carol-phobe, have found myself writing what I only in hindsight realized were three perfectly seasonally appropriate carols. They are songs from my musical “beTwixt, beTween & beTWAIN” (about which I have posted before 
“beTwixt, beTween & beTWAIN” is a musical adaptation of Mark Twain stories, in Act One short stories based in the American West, in Act Two a musical adaptation of Twain’s episodic travel memoir “The Innocents Abroad”, about the first American cruise ship journey across the Atlantic and all around the Mediterranean Sea.
But really, how to guess which songs will eventually be nominated? Oscar prognosticating is a fun sport in certain corners of the internet, but this is one of the most notoriously difficult categories to predict. Every year there seem to be strange left field choices (two years ago 
Being in the midst of rehearsals for the reading of “Speakeasy” when I saw “Carol” I couldn’t help but find the parallels to my musical. Now, I don’t want to overstate any comparisons. The obvious similarities may really be the only truly legitimate ones: both “Carol” and “Speakeasy” are about homosexual love during the more repressive eras in 20th century America (1950’s for “Carol”, 1930’s for “Speakeasy”). Other than that there are huge differences in medium (movie vs. musical theater), genre (intimate drama vs. big ensemble musical comedy) and more especially tone (serious, realistic vs. absurdist, magical realist). Not much in common there. A bit self serving perhaps to want to make comparisons between my musical theater workshop and an instant modern movie classic, just because they both depict lesbian love. Or lesbian love in repressive times.
And yet indulge me just a little. There were moments in “Carol”, especially in the depiction of Therese, played by Rooney Mara, where I felt echoes of the character of Jane Allison from Speakeasy as well as her inspiration “Alice” from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”.
Both Therese and Jane find themselves attracted to and attracting the attentions of an unlikely, older, alluring woman who also has a very commanding personality. In “Carol” this is Cate Blanchett’s Carol, in “Speakeasy” this is Duchess Bentley. One is an upper society suburban housewife, the other an outspoken black lesbian nightclub singer. About as different perhaps as two people can be except for their lesbianism, and the first adjectives one might use to describe the two (haughty, elegant, silky for Carol; bawdy, brash, fun for Duchess) are unlikely to duplicate; yet both women similarly appeal to their younger more reticent counterpart with their commanding personality, the life force they contain in surplus, and the deceptive ease with which they appear to take their mutual attraction for granted.
The Jefferson Lodge Ball is closely based on the historical Hamilton Lodge Ball of Harlem. This annual ball and costume contest started in the late 1860’s and continued through the 1930’s. Drag balls were held in major cities throughout the United States by the 1920’s, but Harlem’s Hamilton Lodge Ball was the most famous, reportedly attracting up to two thousand costumed men (and women) in drag and up to three thousand spectators watching from the balconies.
Notes from a Composer 