Irrelevant Act Opener: Difference between revisions
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You're attending a musical, and you've just gotten back from [[Intermission]]. You're ready for the tension built up in the first act to be released. The orchestra starts up again, and the curtain opens...
And the cast sings a totally irrelevant song.
Generally, the song is about love, food, drinking... you know, happy stuff, although there are exceptions. This type of song is very common in musicals, although it's starting to become a bit of a [[Discredited Trope]]. Typically, its purpose is to give the audience a chance to re-adjust their reality filters back into "it is totally normal for everyone to be singing" mode by presenting a scene where it actually ''would'' be normal for the cast to be singing; the fact that the lyrics are irrelevant to the plot also gives the people late back from the bathrooms and refreshment stands a few extra minutes to get to their seats without missing anything important. It also gives the main cast a few more minutes to prepare while the chorus entertains the audience.
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* In some versions of ''Meet Me in St. Louis'', the housekeeper sings "A Touch of the Irish", a song about women-men relationships and how Irish women handle them.
* "One By One," in the Broadway version of ''[[The Lion King]]''.
* "The Farmer and the Cowman" from ''[[Oklahoma!]]'' is really a subversion of this trope. The song is interrupted by a heated argument, then restarts and leads to [[An Aesop]].
* "Masquerade" from ''[[The Phantom of the Opera]]'' is important thematically, but doesn't really advance the plot. All the plot points are delivered in stylistic breaks from the song.
* "Moments of Happiness" from [[Cats]]. It's very hard to pin down if it even ''has'' a meaning, it's surprisingly somber, and 90% of the fandom tends to ignore it.
** Notably, it's one of three songs ''not'' based on ''[[Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats|Old Possums Book of Practical Cats]]'' but on one of [[T. S. Eliot]]'s [[True Art Is Incomprehensible]] poems, "The Dry Salvages" from ''Four Quartets''. (The others are "Memory" and "Grizabella the Glamour Cat"; the first is taken from "Preludes" and "Rhapsody on a Windy Night", the latter from "Rhapsody" and a poem Eliot decided against including in ''Practical Cats''.)
* "Guy Love" from the ''[[Scrubs]]'' musical episode has nothing to do with the plot, but just makes fun of Turk and J.D.'s [[Ho Yay]].
* "There Once Was a Pirate" from ''[[Spring Awakening]]'' was originally supposed to be the first song of Act Two, but was then cut from the productions in favor of the more plot-relevant "The Guilty Ones".
* ''[[Paint Your Wagon (theatre)|Paint Your Wagon]]'' begins the second act with the irrelevant and irreverent "Hand Me Down That Can of Beans." The song is followed by not one but two ballets.
* "A Real Nice Clambake" from ''[[Carousel]]''.
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* The first song in act ''one'' of ''Guys and Dolls'' is "Fugue for Tinhorns," a song about horse races. Yes, the show is about gamblers, but that's the wrong kind—the rest of the show is about craps.
** A more traditional one happens at the start of act two, with "[[Pretty in Mink|Take Back Your Mink]]"—one of the Hot Box numbers. (This replaced a reprise of "A Bushel and a Peck" during the original production's pre-Broadway run.)
* Lampshaded in ''[[The Drowsy Chaperone]]''. "Message from a Nightingale" is revealed to not be related to the titular [[Show Within a Show]] at all; it's the act two opener of another show completely.
* The Broadway version of ''[[Chess (theatre)|Chess]]'' opens with a children's choir singing a Hungarian folk song, which just serves as a three-minute long announcement of the setting change.
** Some versions open the first act with "Merano", which similarly serves to identify the setting and nothing else relevant.
** The London production started with "The Story of Chess" It hasn't been done in a professional production since, probably for monetary reasons.
*** They did it in the recently recorded In Concert album.
** The London production also starts the second act with "One Night in Bangkok," which merely serves to describe the location where the second act takes place.
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** Season's Of love is used in the opening to the movie as well, and that becomes somewhat relevant, since it acts as a prologue and lends some intro to the characters.
* It also happens in [[Opera]]: in the three-act version of ''The Flying Dutchman'', the second and third acts begin with, respectively, Senta's friends singing a song about a spinning wheel, and the sailors singing a drinking song.
** Fairly common in [[Opera]], really - [[Gilbert and Sullivan|''Utopia, Limited'']] opens the second act with a song parodying tenors; ''L'elisir d'amore'' uses a drinking song, and so on.
* ''[[We Will Rock You]]'' was already pretty ropily strung together, but the second act opens with "One Vision", possibly just to get the fried chicken line in somewhere. Given the lyrics, it may have been satirical to highlight that Killer Queen's control over the Gaga kids was slipping.
* "Come Follow the Band" in ''Barnum''.
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** ''Girl Crazy'', the show which ''Crazy For You'' is extremely loosely based on, had a second act opening number called "Land of the [[Have a Gay Old Time|Gay]] Caballero," whose primary function was giving a Spanish dance team something to do.
* "Catch Me If You Can" from ''[[Street Scene]]'' is an irrelevant comic relief number featuring a bunch of kids. The second act only gets more tragic from there.
* ''[[City of Angels (musical)|City of Angels]]'' opens its second act with Jimmy Powers in a recording studio singing "Stay With Me."
* "Never, Never be an Artist" from ''Can-Can''.
* The second act of [[Engelbert Humperdinck]]'s opera ''Hänsel und Gretel'' opens with Gretel's folksy song "Ein Männlein steht im Walde," which bears no relation to the action.
* "The Overlords" which opens act 2 of ''Kristina''.
* "Something To Dance About" from ''Call Me Madam''.
* "Who's Got the Pain?" in Damn Yankees
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* ''[[Urinetown]]'' parodies this, of course. The verses of "What is Urinetown?" are pertinent to the characters, and spoken parts deliver exposition in the show's [[No Fourth Wall|signature style]]. But each time a chorus comes up, the characters make more and more strangled metaphors to justify yelling "Dance! Dance!"
* West Side Story's first act culminates in a violent gang fight. Act two opens with "I Feel Pretty". Arguably justified, as it shows how quickly Maria's happiness comes crashing down around her. Averted in the film, where the song is moved to an earlier point.
* "Cabin Fever" in ''[[Muppet Treasure Island]]''. A lavish show-stopping number that [[
* ''[[The Protomen]]'' has an Irrelevant Act Closer, in the form of Due Vendetta at the end of Act I. It's just a [[List Song|list]] of a bunch of [[Mega Man (video game)|Mega Man]] characters.
* ''Show Boat'' opens its second act with "At the Fair," a very extended but irrelevant ensemble that was probably written to satisfy the demand for Ziegfeldian spectacle.
** How irrelevant? In a musical that mostly takes place in the American South, this one takes place in and is about the Chicago World's Fair.
* The first lyric Oscar Hammerstein II wrote ever for a Broadway show (though without credit), "Make Yourselves At Home" from a forgotten 1917 musical called ''Furs And Frills'', was one of these. This is more of a trivia note than an example, particularly since the song is lost.
* "Let's Make Believe We're In Love" from ''[[Footloose]]'', which takes place at a chintzy dance hall.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Theater Tropes]]
[[Category:Musical Number Index]]
[[Category:Music Tropes]]
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