{"id":515,"date":"2007-08-22T14:41:00","date_gmt":"2007-08-22T14:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stallioncornell.wordpress.com\/2007\/08\/22\/neverland"},"modified":"2026-07-01T12:08:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T18:08:15","slug":"neverland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/neverland\/","title":{"rendered":"Neverland"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I wrote a musical.<\/p>\n

Not many people do that these days. That\u2019s because a new musical is expensive to produce and exceedingly likely to flop. Once upon a time, show tunes were hit records, and musical adaptations swept the Academy Awards. Nowadays, a musical comes along every decade or so that captures the public imagination, but most of the time, nobody pays attention.<\/p>\n

When I was working at the Tuacahn Center for the Arts<\/a>, I decided that Tuacahn ought to devote its time to producing new musicals. So I wrote one that I thought they could use. And, for a variety of reasons, they didn\u2019t. I still think they should, though, since the musical is actually pretty good.<\/p>\n

\"PeterPan2\"<\/a>The show is called “Neverland,” and it\u2019s a sequel of sorts to the classic story of Peter Pan. I chose Peter Pan as a subject because:<\/p>\n

A) It was a concept that would have built-in name recognition and mass appeal, and:<\/p>\n

B) The characters in Peter Pan are now in the public domain, so there\u2019s no sticky copyright issues to worry about.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d rather not summarize the story, as I still hold out hope that the thing will actually get produced someday, but I thought you folks might be interested in the four songs from a demo CD we recorded. An old friend of mine who now teaches at BYU hired the singers and musicians and orchestrated the arrangements, and I wasn\u2019t present for the recording session \u2013 I wrote all the songs, but I don\u2019t know any of the people who are singing them.<\/p>\n

Neverland<\/a>
\nIn many ways, this is the weakest recording of the four, only because the soprano’s got a really hooty voice that makes it hard to understand the words. I like the arrangement, though, with its groovy Celtic feel and the beautiful use of the tin whistle. When the harmony kicks in, I really dig it. This song opens the show.<\/p>\n

Hook of the Jolly Roger<\/a>
\nGoofy fun, and it includes some transitional dialogue from the show. That’s my old friend, the guy who orchestrated this whole thing, playing Smee. Only drawback: Both this song and the fourth song, Dead<\/span>, rhyme “dinner” with “innards.” What’s my problem, I wonder?<\/p>\n

A Princess Bride <\/a>
\nOriginally written for an aborted stage adaptation of the movie The Princess Bride <\/span>– there’s that sticky copyright issue again – the song was altered to fit Princess Tiger Lily’s dilemma, as she has to choose between a prince and Peter.<\/p>\n

Dead (The Lost Boys Funeral Song)<\/a>
\nI’ve sung this song in public many times. This version needs percussion, but otherwise, it works pretty well. Dead<\/span> demonstrates that no one really dies in Neverland – a lost boy who is killed at the end of Act I is the one who sings the last verse. It also has the word “stallion” in it.<\/p>\n

So whaddya think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SoI wrote a musical.Not many people do that these days. That\u2019s because a new musical is expensive to produce and exceedingly likely to flop. Once upon a time, show tunes were hit records, and musical adaptations swept the Academy Awards. Nowadays, a musical comes along every decade or so that captures the public imagination, but ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4768,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions\/4768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}