In honor of this year's later switch from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time in the U.S., I decided to take this month's column to look at the one thing none of us can control --- Time.

Apart from love, unrequited love, happiness and the myriad of other topics often breached in musical theater songs, Time gets its' share of notable mentions as well. It's something we race or endure in hopes of getting to the next milestone in life. Let's look at how some of our musical theater songwriters approach it...

In ANYTHING GOES, Cole Porter wrote:

Times have changed
And we've often rewound the clock
Since the Puritans got a shock
When they landed on Plymouth Rock!

After this intro, we get lists of things that have indeed changed with time, at least by 1934 standards.

But Time does change things. In the revised version of GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES entitled LORELEI, the show opened with Carol Channing singing a Jule Styne/Comden & Green song called "Lookin' Back" that set the period and set up the show's flashback design. Similarly, Robert Goulet opened Kander & Ebb's musical THE HAPPY TIME with a lilting title tune that introduces us to various characters and places we are to see, a device used years later in shows like RAGTIME. (If only THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN' had provided some sort of musical road map... well, maybe not!)

Angela Lansbury in "Mame" Bill Ray/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images Source: nytimes.com

In contrast, the poignant torch song "Time Heals Everything" creates an unforgettable Jerry Herman moment in MACK & MABEL that truly stops the show, a number very similar to one he wrote for MAME in the same part of Act Two, the heart breaking "If He Walked Into My Life", in which Mame looks back on the passing years with a new perspective.

Time is elusive. Some characters wallow in the expanse of it while others fret about it's shortness.

In SUBWAYS ARE FOR SLEEPING, the leading man sings about "Time...I'm just taking my time" as he extolls the virtues of life on the fringe of society while in Alan Jay Lerner & Frederick Loewe's classic score to MY FAIR LADY, the legendary dustman "Alfred P. Doolittle" begs his buddies to "Get Me To The Church On Time". In the upcoming DIRTY DANCING musical I'm sure they sing loudly about having "the time of my life" at the summer camp, even if the audience isn't. "Baby June" and her sister "Louise" promise that "we'll have a real good time" whilst they entertain you, and in most productions of GYPSY this certainly holds true.

By comparison, in LES MISERABLES, the tragic character of "Fantine" look back on her past with a mix of regret and awe in "I Dreamed A Dream":

There was a time when men were kind
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting
There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting
There was a time
Then it all went wrong

In Bock & Harnick's delightful score to SHE LOVES ME we find several examples of time keeping, from the passage of the seasons in the "Letters" sequences, to "Mr. Maraczek's" memories in "Days Gone By" to the frenetic race to Christmas in the "12 Days To Christmas" sequence. The character of "Georg" has a minute by minute mini nervous breakdown worrying about his date that will take place "Tonight At Eight", and the ticking clock 2/4 tempo underscore emphasizes his growing impatience and anxiety. He sings:

Two more minutes, three more seconds, ten more hours to go!
I'll know, when this is done,
If something's ended or begun,
And if it goes
All right,
Who knows?
I might
Propose
Tonight
At eight!

The clocks in our lives never stop ticking, and in musicals this holds true as well. Many a song uses the clock tick as a rhythmic device, cleverly setting the tone. The opening number of Frank Loesser's THE MOST HAPPY FELLA employs a clock-like meter as "Cleo" sings about her long days as a waitress in "Ooh My Feet". There's a song in Gannon & Kent's score to SEVENTEEN where the local teenagers lament "If we only could stop the old town clock so it wouldn't go tick and it wouldn't go tock" so they can stay up later and not have to follow curfew.

Kelli O'Hara and Harry Connick Jr. in "The Pajama Game" Photo by Sara Krulwich Source: nytimes.com

Speaking of "tick-tocks", there's the dance number in Stephen Sondheim's score to COMPANY entitled "Tick-Tock" featuring the immortal Donna McKechnie in its original incarnation, while an earlier McKechnie show, Bacharach & David's PROMISES, PROMISES had a cut number called "Tick Tock Goes The Clock". In the opening number of Ross & Adler's THE PAJAMA GAME everybody is "Racing With The Clock" at a frenetic and invigorating pace, setting up the tone of the show perfectly.

Of course, time can mean many things to many people. In LA CAGE AUX FOLLES Jerry Herman created an anthem to positivity in "The Best of Times", a song that audiences eat up, even when the cast laments repeating the refrain so many times in succession. Jones & Schmidt wrote a great number entitled "Time Goes By" for their musicalization of OUR TOWN entitled GROVER'S CORNERS, but few will ever see or hear it. In TOO MANY GIRLS, Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart wrote a tune called "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" while Sammy Cahn & Jule Styne wrote a jazz standard in 1947 entitled "Time After Time" that is still performed daily. (Not to be confused with the other Time After Time songs, most notably by Cyndi Lauper and Ozzy Osbourne!)

Carol Channing in "Hello Dolly" Photo by Richard Braaten Source: nytimes.com

Time can be fragmentary, broken into the tiniest pieces. We learn in HELLO, DOLLY! that "It Only Takes A Moment" to fall in love, while in Rodgers & Sondheim's score to DO I HEAR A WALTZ? the leading man sings "Take The Moment" and means it. Sondheim wrote a song for his show SATURDAY NIGHT called "A Moment With You" while the 1955 pop song "Moments To Remember" is a featured part of FOREVER PLAID, a loving tribute to male singing groups like this song's originator, The Four Lads.

Ah time, we love it and hate it. But in either case, it proves a great device to move along a musical, or to stop and reflect on the past with sadness.

And to close I'm going to use lyrics to a song I love. "The Minute Waltz" as recorded by Miss Barbra Streisand way back in the days of my youth...