About the Play: The Lion
Traditional music theater scores are said to need a good old fashioned “I want” song – maybe what is needed in the midst of a slightly more … nuanced … world is something akin to what Benjamin Scheuer gives us in The Lion. Scheuer tells us “Ben’s” wish in the third line, “There is nothing I want more than to play like him.” The “him” in question is his father, who, “in another life would have been a musician.” Young Ben, age eleven, adores his father, especially when they are making music together. But, like so many other stories of fathers and sons, these wants and adorations change, and sometimes disappear. And so when Ben’s father gets angry and walks away from him after a bad report card when he is fourteen, Ben’s want changes: he doesn’t want to be like his father anymore.
Ben articulates his evolving wants throughout The Lion. He wants to be a better communicator, he wants to make noise, he wants to disappear, he wants to go away, and, ultimately, he wants “this thing” to go away. Continue Reading …
