Come To Me, Bend To Me

 

I was in the show in college, and remember a similar plaintiveness and emotion from the person who sang this. I had not realised it was cut from the movie. Beautiful song.  Perhaps the best in the show.

Let me ruin it all for you. (You're welcome.)

I was surprised upon hearing a decade or two ago that "Brigadoon" is not considered a well-written show, neither songs nor dialogue.  Yet after thinking about it, that is correct. Its Scottish dialect is pretty well butchered - just a bunch of standard stereotypical words like heather and dearie and lassie thrown in for effect. The lyrics are downright terrible in places:

Angus: Lads, say a prayer, I'm afraid Harry Beaton is dead! 

Tommy: Looks like he fell on a rock and it crushed in his head.

I am afraid it was Walker Hamilton who got that line. He was better known for tackling an attempted rapist running away in the dark a month or so after, only realising during the chase that the criminal might be armed, but pressing on anyway. When the bell rang, Walker answered, I guess, both in heroism and in humiliating singing. 

Back to the show. We got to wear kilts! And learned all the kilt jokes!  What is worn under the kilt? There's nothin' worn, lass, it's all in fine workin' order! And everyone had a try at bad Scottish accents, which the director eventually disallowed, because we were all terrible at it and he didn't want it to become comic. Added bonus, bad Broadway songs are easier to parody: "Jeanie's shacking up, Jeanie's putting out..." 

Yet really, listen to how inappropriate the music is behind Edward Villella in the deathly serious moment of the Sword dance. Starts off great, then gets silly.

Ridiculous. There were some great moments in the music, such as the last modulation of  "Almost Like Being In Love." But the rhyming in "Vendor's Calls" and "I'll Go Home With Bonnie Jean" are terrible, and the whole standing joke about the guy from Georgia in this with a different accent as comic relief - really? And death by inadvertent tripping as a plot solution?

Nonetheless, I've been singing them in my head all week, and even fifty years later all the terrible songs and limited staging comes back to me a few times each year. So much still brings tears to my eyes.  Though more and more music brings tears to my eyes these days.  Don't stand near me in church at Christmas.