Follow Your Heart takes the place of the requisite love duet in Urinetown, and its humor stems from the fact that all of the standard love cliches are considered literally: after claiming that Bobby needs to listen to his heart, Hope puts her ear right up to his chest to show him how. Bobby sings his own verse about following his heart, referencing all of the specific anatomy that's in play: aortas, arteries, muscles, blood, etc. The stark literalism here contrasts well with the unquestionably sweet melodies, and even more powerful harmonies at the end of the song. It's a beautiful love ballad sung by a pair so naive that they don't understand the meaning of metaphor.
Although this may seem like simply another example of the post-modern musical discarding the traditional saccharine of an Act I love duet, the standard American musical has a long history of making fun of their lovers. Even theatregoers in the 1880s got sick of too many love songs, and humor has been used as a standard weapon against sickly sweetness for a very long time.
Although you may not regard them as American writers, I include Gilbert & Sullivan in this discussion because not only were each of their English operettas almost immediately reproduced here in the States, but they were often reproduced with an even sharper sense of humor, more in line with their American clientele. An early example of sarcastic humor wearing the sheep's clothing of a love ballad is provided in Gilbert & Sullivan's Iolanthe, 1882, in which Phyllis tries hide her apathy of her upcoming nuptials from her intended:
PHYLLIS:
Good lover, good-morrow!
I prithee discover
Steal, purchase, or borrow
Some means of concealing
The care you are feeling.
And join in a measure
Expressive of pleasure
For we're to be married to-day, to-day-
For we're to be married to-day.
STREPHON: My Phyllis! And today we're to be made happy forever!
PHYLLIS: Well, we're to be married.
Staying in the Gilbert & Sullivan vein for a moment, consider another of their works, Pirates of Penzance, 1879, for which I have a special affection, and which has worked its way many times into my performance and directing career. Pirates offers another ridiculous take on the naivete of young love. In Stay, Frederick, Stay, Frederick realizes that because of a contract loophole he will not officially come of age for another 60 years, and he asks his beloved to wait for him:
But you are twenty-one!
FREDERICK
I've just discovered that I was born in leap-year,
And that birthday will not be reached by me till 1940.
MABEL
Oh, horrible! Catastrophe appalling!
FREDERICK
In 1940 I of age shall be;
I'll then return, and claim you — I declare it!
MABEL
It seems so long!
In the century to follow, lovers became less naive, and often found themselves at odds with one another, love or no. In Annie Get Your Gun, 1946, a pair of engaged lovers have differing ideas on what their upcoming wedding will be like. They sing these divergent opinions at the same time, creating harmony out of discord:
A similar themed happy disagreement is posed by Leonard Bernstein's Candide, 1956, in which Cunegonde and Candide imagine their future life together in Oh, Happy We! Maybe too similar to the last example, but I can never resist including a video of Kristin Chenoweth --
In the modern era, lovers use humor not just to disagree, but to seduce. City of Angels, 1989, pits a hardboiled P.I. against a femme fatale in a duet dripping with so much sexual innuendo, that there's not room for any actual romance. Listen to a bit of The Tennis Song below:
To add the darkening shadow of post-modernism to the modern relationship (they're called relationships now), consider the following exchange between a couple working out the kinks of their relationship in Therapy, from Tick, Tick...Boom, 2001:
SUSAN:
Are
you saying we can't talk?
JONATHAN:
Are
you saying we are not talking?
SUSAN:
What
are you saying?
JONATHAN:
What
are you saying?
I'm
saying I feel bad, that you feel bad
About
me feeling bad, about you feeling bad
About
what I said, about what you said
About
me not being able to share a feeling.
SUSAN:
If I
thought that what you thought
Was
that I hadn't thought about sharing my thoughts
Then
my reaction to your reaction
To my
reaction
Would
have been more revealing.
Such openness in communication is so exhausting that it makes you nearly nostalgic for a good old-fashioned love ballad where the participants are simply lying to one another. With Bobby and Hope, we strike a happy medium.
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