A/N: This is the transcription for Paul Shapera's Steampunk Opera. I do not own Paul Shapera, probably because slavery was abolished a while ago. Either way, this is only for entertainment purposes and will not be monetized ever.
If any reader is interested in producing the play, remember to mention Paul Shapera and let the audience know about his collection at MochaLab. Paul Shapera isn't Nintendo when it comes to copyright infringement, but respect that man. He's the one who makes wonderful music, not us!
It's best to use actors and not props for Jasper and the other Dolls.
-Act 1-
(Scene: The steampunk city of New Albion. Our Narrator appears to take us on a guided tour. The music is a tango with some industrial elements lightly in the background)
NARRATOR:
Several hundred years before
A gambler and a monk embarked
On a long trek through the endless prairies of the North
They had a fierce debate
About God and chance and fate
and to resolve it agreed a game of cards indeed be played
The game went on all day
And through the next and next they played
And around them a shelter was built to shield the rain
A street around the shelter formed
Then a church, a house, a bar
And that is how the city of New Albion was born
New Albion today
With bustling streets, machines, cafes
And the nice, the wise, the eccentric and insane
The Mafia's run by
A red haired dwarf with just one eye
Whose affairs he decides with a pair of silver dice
Over the Zeppelin Union Pilots
A castrati boss presides
And we hear his song each afternoon as he flies by
There's prisons made of lead
And gargoyles of iron shreds
And Annabelle McAlistair who's raising up the dead
Annabelle McAlistair who's raising up the dead
The Lodge on Ashland Street
Is where the Alchemists Guild meets
And to join you have to craft a glass pearl from a young girl's dream
A group of thieves they heard
Broke in the lodge to steal the pearls
But In the morning they were found there sitting staring unperturbed
The twilight fog they say
An aphrodisiac contains
Nonsense, but yet they copulate in doorways anyway
There's inventors and inbred
In upper class it's been said
And Annabelle McAlistair who's raising up the dead.
Annabelle McAlistair who's raising up the dead.
(Scene: Inside Annabelle McAlister's laboratory. It's littered with all manner of Victorian era scientific equipment and machinery. Seated in a chair in the center of it all is a machinelike mannequin. Annabelle is frantically rushing about the lab in preparation.)
ANNABELLE:
Winding all the dials and the wires and the spires and the
tests for the connections and injections still to run
Capacitors and meters and the alkali and beakers
The restating of equations for the phase about to come
Please come back to me there's so much we could be
Please come back, with voltage i invoke
Please come back from empty cracks and berths of black
Come to me, I'm summoning the Ghost
Be my angel, my angel
Be my angel, rescue me
be my angel, my angel
be an angel be with me
chorus:
Please come back from bowels of black
From silent shores to me once more
Through veils and gates and seas of slate
To blood wet moors where i await ashore
Years of all my theories and hypothesis and inquiries
No gathering cadavers and they kicked me out of school
All alone with theorems and experiments and endless tests
Years in labs and numberlands but now I've reached the goal
Please come back so we can have a life at last
Please come back, i grab at heaven's throat
Please come back, i beckon, beg and cry and laugh
Come to me, I'm summoning the ghost
Be my angel, my angel
Be my angel, rescue me
be my angel, be my angel
be an angel be
chorus:
Please come back from bowels of black
from silent shores to me once more
Through veils and gates and seas of slate
To blood wet moors where i await ashore
(She sings quietly and tenderly to the mannequin construct)
Please come speak to me
Please come speak to me
All the things we can share and conceive
if you'll come speak to me
I remember you from school
You were dashing and i so uncool
You didn't know i was alive until that one night
we spoke and you kissed me
But then i was expelled
You married her as well
and now you've died, but i can bring you back to life
and soon you'll speak to me
(She gradually gets more and more impassioned)
Be my angel, be my angel
Be my angel, rescue me
Be my angel, be my angel
Be an angel be with me (3x)
Please come back so we can have a life at last
Please come back, i grab at heaven's throat
Please come back, i beckon, beg and cry and laugh
Come to me, i'm summoning the ghost
chorus:
Please come back from bowels of black
From silent shores to me once more
Through veils and gates and seas of slate
To blood wet moors where i await ashore
(Annabelle throws the switch)
NARRATOR:
And so around 3 AM,
a recently deceased man
found himself wound in the land of living again
Bound in a body,
of gears and wheels but oddly
he has no voice and his steel joints barely can bend
The one sound he makes in fact
He streams radio broadcasts
He plays a country station if you give him a pat
Our dearest Annabelle is
quite thrilled and ecstatic
She has a friend who just was dead and yet she brought back
(Narrator sings to an oblivious Annabelle who is dressing the life size mechanical doll up to take out)
What may please does not content
all resolves but never ends
all that comforts is not true
all you love does not love you
(Annabelle takes her doll with her everywhere like a romantic partner. The Mannequin itself is quite stiff and helpless.)
ANNABELLE:
I have a dolly and we like to go on walks
We like to stroll around the park all while he listens to me talk
about the people and the places that I never got to see
'cause I wouldn't leave my house, but that's before he was with me
We share a world, which is wonderful to see it's like a dream
where no one calls me failure if i don't succeed
I have a dolly it's like flowers in the spring
and but no matter how I talk to him he never says a thing
NARRATOR:
What may please does not content
all resolves but never ends
all that comforts is not true
all you love does not love you
ANNABELLE:
I have a dolly and he goes with me outside
which used to be a problem for me oh but now I never mind
Ice cream and carriages I always thought were nice
but never had someone to share them with because the lab's my life
Annabelle, no friends, you must be brilliant and the best
you must be better and industrious, or you are worthless!
But now I have dolly a dear friend with whom I go
out for walk and talks but he's mute and just plays the radio
(Jasper is playing a song to communicate but Annabelle is unaware of it)
JASPER:
Elysium
The place where your sorrows end
Why'd you bring me here again?
ANNABELLE:
I have a dolly who can keep me company
We go to shows, parades and cabarets though people stare at me
But I've shown that I am brilliant and I've conquered life and death
The only thing my father said is that one must be a success
And now I've got a friend, a silent clockwork double
who can be there for me to lean on when i feel sad and troubled
I have a dolly, and he's very stabling if not a little just too distant
cause he never says a thing...
(The Narrator tries to give Annabelle advice but Annabelle is unaware of her)
NARRATOR:
What you hold may wish to go
What you believe may not be so
All that brings you piece of mind
may not stay for a long time
What may please does not content
All resolves but never ends
All that comforts is not true
And all you love does not love you
(Annabelle has arrived home, exhausted after so much gallivanting about with her doll. She sits in front of him trying for some kind of real communication)
ANNABELLE:
Can't you speak to me?
Won't you speak to me?
All the things we could share and conceive
If you'd just speak to me
(Jasper plays the same song as before but now Annabelle is actually listening and can hear it)
JASPER:
Elysium
The place where your sorrows end
Why'd you bring me here
Oh why'd you bring me here
Why'd you bring me here again?
(Annabelle is taken aback and understanding dawns on her. She becomes depressed.)
ANNABELLE:
Ghosts of dreams, ghosts of memory
that will not leave or lay in quiet
Ghosts that cry about the life
you let go by
Ghosts of pasts of little girls who
learned their math, grasped their facts
Tried their best to reach success
just as they were asked
The girl learns to hide, deep inside
of fractions and facts and worlds of math
A long lonely land she can understand
Annabelle in Numberland
You could have been my angel
been my angel. been my angel and been with me
Could have been my angel
been my angel, been my angel and rescued me
Ghosts of love you never knew, you
just construed like well penned plays
Ghosts of scenes, embraces, things
you only knew in dreamt up days
Ghosts of frowns for little girls when
friends came round to waste her time
Ghosts of creeds, rebukes received
Children are not what achievers need
Fractions and maths, sweet companions,
equations and facts who always stand
by as you go your road alone
Annabelle in Numberland
You could have been my angel
been my angel, been my angel and been with me
You could have been my angel
been my angel, been my angel and rescued me
Ghosts of me, ghosts of who
i could be and been with you
Ghosts of dreams, of who you thought
you'd one day be when you grew up
Ghosts of breath, of little girls
who promised, stressed they'd be their best
Ghosts of days that fade away
as failure holds your hand till Death
And deep in the place you escape where
theorems and thoughts your hopes and plans
all are derailed and then you failed them
Annabelle in Numberland
Liquids and labs, fractions and facts,
are all you had, all that you understand
and as you age all that remains with
Annabelle in Numberland
You could have been my angel
Been my angel, been my angel and been with me
You could have been my angel
My angel, been my angel and rescued me
My angel, my angel
My angel and been with me
My angel, my angel
NARRATOR:
So Annabelle destroys her
Doll, her beloved toy boy
And takes all the notes that she made and packs them away
Thus Annabelle vows that she
Won't tell a soul and stay lonely
Defeated now she sadly creeps back to her lab
Thus friends we bid adieu to
The first generation, but don't move
We've three more Acts to get through, so come let's ensue
The future beckons and won't wait
The next generation's on its way
Dead things and broken love stories for us await...