Rilla of Ingleside, The Musical
We see the front of a well kept Edwardian home, with a lush garden. In the distance, a gunshot sounds and a young woman runs from the house onto the porch with a shocked and frightened look on her face. A storm is brewing and flashes of lightning and booms of thunder occur periodically. Blue lights appear on the audience and slowly ebb closer to the stage and the woman. She stumbles back up the steps in fear, but the watery lights reach her feet. She raises her skirts and sees in horror that they are stained blood red.
Gertrude Oliver awakes in her bed with a start and a choked scream. Next to her, Rilla Blythe is slowly waking up and stretching her arms towards the heavens. Sunlight is pouring in the window and we hear the faint twittering of birds.
RILLA: spoken Good morning Miss Oliver!
(song: FIFTEEN, featuring Rilla Blythe and Gertrude Oliver)
sung Good morning!
Good morning!
The wonderful fresh day peaks over that hill and gives warning!
It's morning!
spoken Oh just taste that sunshine!
sung Oh how I love this shiny new day
An unwrapped present, an alluring bouquet
What joyous capers and larks do await?
What unanticipated meeting or bizarre twist of fate?
Good morning!
What wondrous adventures will this day bring?
Oh how the trees laugh, oh how the birds sing
How good is it to wake from the dark and the dreary?
To find a world filled with the bright and the cheery?
It's morning!
MISS OLIVER: spoken Credulous fifteen!
RILLA: sung Oh fifteen! Oh fifteen!
To be a girl of fifteen!
It's obscene! It's a dream!
To be marvelous, rapturous fifteen.
The morning is cloudless, so golden-blue and so right
If I were a poet oh the things I might write
Oh how I could soar if I only had wings
It's morning, oh morning, what beautiful things might this day bring?
RILLA: Oh fifteen! Oh fifteen!
MISS OLIVER: spoken Incorrigible fifteen!
RILLA: sung It's obscene! It's a dream!
To be a girl and to be...
MISS O: spoken Naïve...
RILLA: sung Irrepressible...
MISS O: spoken Gullible...
RILLA: sung Indelible, unbelievable...
MISS O: Boisterous...
MISS O, RILLA: Fifteen!
RILLA: spoken Oh Miss Oliver, I trust you slept well!
I had the most breathtaking dream
MISS O: Oh really? Do tell.
RILLA: sung I dreamt that my parents let me go to the dance
It was incredibly delectable, oh what a chance!
You should have seen the dress I did wear
And I put a filet of roses in my hair
The weather was divine, not hotter nor colder
If only it might be... If only I were older.
If only I were...
Fifteen, Oh fifteen
If I were a girl of fifteen
Awesome in between Queen
If only I weren't
Humiliating
Patronizing
Detesable
Fourteen
MISS O: spoken is it better to be disappointed to find your good dream was fake
Or to have a nightmare and be sick with relief upon your awake
My dear Rilla, I too had a dream
One so vivid and frightening, so real it seemed
It was frightfully vivid; I heard a gun sound and a crowd
I rushed to the porch and saw lightning and cloud
The dark sea ebbed towards where I stood in the mud
I pulled my skirts from it's forked tongue, they were drenched in blood
I never thought that the would have come close to here
But come steadily they did and with them, death and fear
RILLA: I hope it doesn't mean that there is a storm coming to ruin the party for everyone else!
MISS O: Impossible!
RILLA: sung Promising!
MISS O: Stubborn!
RILLA: Persevering
MISS O, RILLA: Incurable, lively, incorrigible...
SUSAN BAKER: spoken Marilla Bertha Blythe! Your father would like a word with you.
RILLA: Coming Thuthan!
Exit Rilla
MISS O: sung Fragile, breakable, blind and vunerable, Fifteen.
spoken Oh what could it mean!