book and lyrics by Brett Nicholson
music by Scott Ethier
CAST:
Steve Routman (Oscar), me, and fellow members of the Workshop
In Year 2 at BMI, a lyricist and composer work together all semester toward writing a full musical. Throughout the 2nd year, you present songs from your work-in-progress.
I was amazingly fortunate to have Scott Ethier as my partner. Scott is not only a brilliant composer; he is a prolific writer. His energy is limitless. I would take the train out to Queens to meet him, he'd come straight from playing auditions or a Wicked workshop or conducting an orchestra. We'd pound the piano and the pencil, writing until Scott had to go play a show or midnight cabaret.
Scott is smart, funny, and his classic-form structures are wonderful to write to.
The recording you’ll hear is a song called “Get What’s Comin’,” along with some of the book scene that leads into it.
You can follow along with the script by clicking the Scene/Song label below.
Love and
War:
The Story
New York City, 1961. The Garment District is flourishing, with mob syndicates riding the wave of immigration and profits. The pickings are easy, and there is no shortage of mafia crews to compete for the action.
Down in the East Village, an up-and-coming literary magazine has just named its first female editor: Katherine Ferrini, a hardworking, intelligent, self-assured young woman with a very bright future. Katherine is finally living her dream.
Then Katherine is told that her father —
an aging mid-level mobster known as Frankie
“The Clothespin,” for the signature
calling card he left on his victims’ noses
— has been shot. Katherine walked away from
that life as a young girl, and has been estranged
from Frankie for 15 years. But she decides to visit
him.
She learns that her father is in serious trouble. He was wounded in a heist gone bad, in which his own heist got heisted. Now he’s in deep with his own mafia bosses, as well as a rival gang who wants to put Frankie out of commission.
Katherine’s reaction surprises everyone — herself most of all. Instinctively, she jumps into action, taking control of her father’s crew and planning a job that will wipe out the rival gang and clear Frankie’s debt in one fell swoop. Apparently the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and Katherine has a real knack for the “family business.”
While trying to balance her career and a secret life as the Ferrini crew’s shadowy “mystery Capo,” Katherine meets Michael, a dashing young accountant with a wry smile. When she finds herself falling for him, she realizes her double life cannot go on forever. Katherine decides that after this big job, she’s handing the reins back to her father and returning to her own life, one where she and Michael can have a future.
Katherine and the Ferrini crew burst into a waterfront warehouse, intent on seizing an enormous shipment of cash and designer unmentionables. But the rival gang had the same prize in its sights, and the two crews come face to face in an explosive Act I finale. In the chaos, to her complete horror, Katherine finds herself standing gun-to-gun with the leader of the rival gang -- the man who is trying to kill her father.
It is Michael.
Katherine must choose between love and family — make that Family — as she tries to save her father, her career, and the man she loves, in the original musical comedy “Love and War.”
New York City, 1961. The Garment District is flourishing, with mob syndicates riding the wave of immigration and profits. The pickings are easy, and there is no shortage of mafia crews to compete for the action.
Down in the East Village, an up-and-coming literary magazine has just named its first female editor: Katherine Ferrini, a hardworking, intelligent, self-assured young woman with a very bright future. Katherine is finally living her dream.
She learns that her father is in serious trouble. He was wounded in a heist gone bad, in which his own heist got heisted. Now he’s in deep with his own mafia bosses, as well as a rival gang who wants to put Frankie out of commission.
Katherine’s reaction surprises everyone — herself most of all. Instinctively, she jumps into action, taking control of her father’s crew and planning a job that will wipe out the rival gang and clear Frankie’s debt in one fell swoop. Apparently the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and Katherine has a real knack for the “family business.”
While trying to balance her career and a secret life as the Ferrini crew’s shadowy “mystery Capo,” Katherine meets Michael, a dashing young accountant with a wry smile. When she finds herself falling for him, she realizes her double life cannot go on forever. Katherine decides that after this big job, she’s handing the reins back to her father and returning to her own life, one where she and Michael can have a future.
Katherine and the Ferrini crew burst into a waterfront warehouse, intent on seizing an enormous shipment of cash and designer unmentionables. But the rival gang had the same prize in its sights, and the two crews come face to face in an explosive Act I finale. In the chaos, to her complete horror, Katherine finds herself standing gun-to-gun with the leader of the rival gang -- the man who is trying to kill her father.
It is Michael.
Katherine must choose between love and family — make that Family — as she tries to save her father, her career, and the man she loves, in the original musical comedy “Love and War.”