DrPangloss

Just came across this. I REALLY like the music. The lyrics, however, are extremely expository and rather unfocused. I have a few dramatic questions: how does she learn that her lover is coming to run away with her? Why does she have to run away? It's vaguely outlined in the song, but only the idea of a controlling father. Perhaps this is in the dialogue before the song, but it feels very hyperbolic based solely on what I know.

The device at the end of the song--the letter to her father--that's wonderful! Rather than just singing the exposition at the audience (a friend once made up a word for that, which I really like: "facty," meaning there's nothing real going on, it's simply stating facts) let her pour her emotion into a letter. It's rather "Goodbye, Old Girl"-esque (Damn Yankees), but it works, and it can let the emotional and dramatic exposition out without the audience feeling like nothing's happening, which is what you have right now. My suggestion would be to re-write the lyrics using a letter to her father as a framing device.

My other question is: is this her "I Want" song? I, of course, know nothing about your musical, so I don't even know what's going to happen to her. But if this is the opening number and it introduces the character and her situation, let us see what she's hoping to find by running away with this guy, and simply getting away from her father can't be it. There has to be something she's running toward that she'll either get or won't get. And this is where we need to see it, otherwise we just won't care about her.

I know the lyrics aren't your department, but I come from a lyrics background first. And musical theatre is about the marriage of the words and music to tell a story. I really enjoyed your music, and the lyrics might be a little more creative if they were forced into the musical structure you've given them. Some of the best lyrics come when the music was written first. Richard Rodgers always wrote music first when he worked with Lorenz Hart, and those are some of the most inventive songs of the pre-Oklahoma era of musical comedy. So, there ya have it.