Wainwrights -- The Musical

Just thinking aloud here, but wouldn't the Wainwright Family be an amazing subject for a folk opera? No other musical dynasty has aired their dirty laundry in song quite as much as this uber-talented lot have. I mean, the libretto and score are practically already written.

Of course this is just a rough sketch transcribed from a stained coffeehouse napkin, but maybe, it would go a little something like this...

Act I – Folk Mates

Scene 1 – Love/Hate among Artists

Loudon Wainwright III: “Saw Your Name in the Paper”

Scene 2 – “On the Rocks” or “Unhappy Anniversary”

Loudon: “Mr. Guilty”
Kate McGarrigle: “Go Leave”
Loudon: “I’d Rather Be Lonely”
Kate: “Kitty Come Home”
Loudon: "Whatever Happened to Us"

Act II – “Bein’ A Dad”

Scene 1 – Caught in the Crossfire

Loudon: "Make Your Mother Mad"

Scene 2 “Mother of Gloom”

Kate: “I Eat Dinner” (“I eat dinner at the kitchen table/With my daughter who is thirteen…No more smalltalk/When the hunger's gone”)
Kate: “I’m Losing You” (“I'm sending you some money to buy a pair of shoes 'cause you've grown out of the last ones/I know I'm losing you”)

Act III - Deadbeat Dad Blues

Scene 1

Loudon: “Grown Man” (“Do you hope to right your wrongs?/You can't undo what has been done/To all your daughters and your son/The facts are in and we have found/That basically you're not around”)

Scene 2

Rufus Wainwright: “Dinner at Eight” (“Daddy, don't be surprised If I wanna see the tears in your eyes/Then I know it had to be long ago/Actually in the drifting white snow/You loved me”
Martha Wainwright: “B.M.F.A.” (“I will not pretend/I will not put on a smile/I will not say I'm alright for you when all I wanted was to be good/to do everything in truth…You bloody mother fuckin' asshole…”

Act VI - Grand Finale (Carnegie Hall perhaps?)


So, could I be on to something here??? Maybe in about 10 years time, after all hatchets are buried? Well, however it would turn out, it's gotta be better than Cats. That's for damn sure.

Photo: Wainwright Family Christmas at Carnegie Hall 12/13/06

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