My New Musical

Ever since La La Land, I’ve been racking my brain to think of ideas for new musicals. Critics are buzzing at all the La La awards, blonde men everywhere are taking up jazz piano and high school kids are dancing on car hoods in campus parking lots nationwide. The studios are salivating to make more big-budget musicals, confident the public can’t get enough of these all-singing, all-dancing spectaculars.

With all these thoughts rampaging in my brain, last night I suddenly woke from a vivid, yet claustrophobic, dream with a brilliant idea for an original new musical: Spicer. I wrote the outline in a rush over a cup of Guatemalan coffee and raisin croissants. There are still some rough edges and character backstories to work out, but the basic plot of this foolproof blockbuster’s really coming together.

We open on our hero, Sean Spicer, returning home from a bad day at work. He’s just spent hours fending off pesky questions about constitutional niceties from irritating, poorly dressed reporters. A frustrated Spicer breaks into song (on his well-appointed balcony) with the soaring tune, ‘Truth is Just a Concept’. (I see Bruce Willis doing a soft-shoe routine). Spicer wistfully sings of his desire to live in a fantastical world where reality shapes itself according to his fondest imaginings.

In a montage, we then see Sean receive a series of enigmatic messages: A strange envelope appears on his lectern, a note-bearing pigeon waddles up to him on the White House lawn and, finally, his lunch order of gnocchi at the Capital Grille mysteriously arranges itself to form a woman’s name. When Sean puts together all the clues, they reveal the cryptic message: ‘Meet me. Jefferson Memorial. 11:30 – Nancy’.

Sean’s baffled. He doesn’t know anyone named Nancy, has no clue about her intent, and the 11:30 meeting time is frustratingly vague in terms of day or night. Unable to resist his curiosity (revealed in the haunting song ‘Strange Temptations’), Sean takes a town car to the memorial just before midnight.

No sooner has Sean arrived than he’s astonished to see the ghost of Nancy Reagan hovering above the illuminated pool! (Must check if the Jefferson Memorial has an illuminated pool). Nancy encourages Sean to believe in himself and if believes strongly enough, then even his strangest pronouncements will come true, even the really crazy ones about Russia. Nancy proceeds to lead a motley assortments of tourists in the big ensemble ‘When You Wish Upon A Czar’.

The nearly-transparent Nancy takes Sean by the hand and leads him on a magical flying tour above Washington, D.C., the lights of late-night congressional aides sparkling and glittering enchantingly below. As a spirit, Nancy magically flies right through solid objects, but she forgets Sean doesn’t share her ability and their flight ends abruptly when he smashes headfirst into the Washington Monument.

Sean wakes up with haunting memories, nagging questions about whether Nancy was real and a massive, throbbing welt on his forehead.

We then move from this introduction into the story’s ‘second act’, where Sean must convince doubters of Nancy’s existence, pursue his strange obsessions with alternate realities and cope with excessive demands from his temperamental boss. This results in a series of challenges and accompanying big musical numbers, including a sprightly duet with John McCain (‘Just Cause You Say It, Don’t Make It So’) and a romantic interlude with a freshman congresswoman from Florida (culminating in the duet ‘Gator Snappy’).

The ‘third act’ wraps up as Sean triumphantly proves he’s right to the skeptics by summoning Nancy Reagan’s ghost to manifest herself at the Bethesda naval shipyard. There’s a big, climactic song-and-dance number on the deck of a state-of-the-art aircraft carrier (‘Be A Drone!’) and finally a joyful Sean tearfully bids farewell to his aides and joins Nancy in a vaguely defined spiritual fantasy world.

The whole thing can be fleshed out with some patriotic dance numbers and maybe a big musical salute to the Kremlin, for that colorful, exotic touch.

I just have to work out some of the plot details and get to work on the lyrics. Maybe I can find someone on the internet who writes music?

If this takes off, I can already see a bunch of sequels. Anyone down for ‘Mnuchin, the Musical’?