"Sin" Scene 15

“Go to Hell.”  Santana wanders in to see Devlin and Faith embracing and declaring their love for each other.  A three-way battle of wills takes place…Santana tells Devlin it’s time to go with her to hell. Faith, confused, wants clarification—who is this woman (Santana), what does she want and why can’t Devlin just walk away from her?  Devlin explains the deal he made with Santana, to Faith’s shock.  Faith, in a moment of passion, volunteers herself to go to hell instead of Devlin, considering it a test of her spiritual conviction.  Santana is delighted at the idea of soul-swapping, especially if it means she gets Faith’s soul after all, but warns Faith to keep her attitude in check.  Devlin sees what’s happening and tries to sacrifice himself so Faith can be free…Santana reminds him that she already owns him—and potentially both of them actually--and he can come along now or later.  Devlin realizing all is lost, appeals to Faith, who seems to be the only one with any hope left. 

This was an important moment,  wrapping up of the whole “Devlin and Faith” thread.  Since the second scene the show, the narrative has been focused on Devlin, and then Faith, as they meet, get involved, fall in love, fight their challenges, and here is where it all comes to a head.  It’s also a climactic moment in Santana’s plan—at least on the surface of things her goal was to get Faith’s soul, with Devlin’s soul as a bargaining chip, but suddenly it looks like she could have them both.  It's all a game to her but she’s also on the verge of losing her patience with what she sees as impetuous children.  One way or another a decision will be made and it’s all part of her bigger plan. 

This was another really tough scene for the performers, endless lines of expositional lyrics trying to explain a really complicated situation.  I figured the best way to do it was to just have each of the characters yelling their lines with minimal melody, creating a sung-through conversation.  My gambit was that even if you didn’t get all the dialog you’d understand the tone of the situation from the tension in the music and coming off of the actors. 

Because the moment is supposed to be tense, I created high-speed backing track with lots of crunchy guitar, again going against the grain of what I’d usually do with my music and leaning a bit into the “power rock” genre unwittingly.  Even I knew it was getting a bit over-wrought and so there’s “more cowbell” added, an intentional in-joke on my part.  Chris Smith got the joke anyway.  The cowbell was also a good metronome; since the music was thick sometimes the singers lost their way and it helped realign everything. 

As the characters are trading off lines Faith and Devlin eventually sing the melody of their personal themes.   Faith sings her “I Sing About You/I Won’t Wait Forever” theme, Devlin’s is “Why Should I Care.”  Santana sings a simple up-and-down melody that is sort of an illustration of the direction everyone is going to go—up to heaven or down to hell. 

Musically it was a lot of fun to put this together.  I started out as a drummer in grade school, it’s where I learned rhythm patterns and rhythm notation anyway.  I used a lot of stuff I hadn’t done in years to create the crazy drum fills—even though it’s all digital I thought it lent some energy to the show, it feels fairly “live.” 

I also went crazy with the piano, I don’t know where it came from, I’m not a performer, I just copy what I hear, but it was fun to record it.  I was jumping around in my loft to try to keep the energy up.  I added a bunch of fake strings, there was no reason for it but I can’t remember, I was copying something.  With both “Sin” and “Ecstasy” I was trying give the backing tracks a live quality, in the spirit of the recording of “Pippin” for TV, from 1982. I always liked the sound of that recording of the show, they released it in stereo and I listened to it about a million times in the 90s and 2000s while working in animation, studied the sound actually.  Bob Fosse always used Ralph Burns for his scores and he was fond of using a lot of heavy brass, I suppose that was what I was going for.  Another in-joke was tossing in the flutes from “Windy,” the 60s song by the Association…there was no reason, I just thought it fit, and since the moment itself was supposed to be crazy, why not? 

I doubt most people really listened to the music tracks (rightfully) paying attention to the performers and trying to keep up with the busy lyrics/exposition dump, so here’s the instrumental version of the song for posterity:  https://youtu.be/HlHCNQVG1PU

The demo is, again, the “clean” version, and probably the best version to get the lyrics from.  I’m honestly not that much of a fan of the song to begin with so I don’t feel it’s important to showcase all the versions…the second most clean version is the 2011 sing-through.  As usual, this cast really worked to sell the lyrics with their vocal performances and did a fantastic job, the tension is palpable, or it certainly was the night of the show.  There was a bit of an issue with Kay’s staging.  It made sense in rehearsals to have everyone switching mic stands but the night of the show it got a little muddled—well, at least it was some business, rather than having them all just stand in place, which they’d been doing the whole night (since it was a sing through and not a fully realized staging).   https://youtu.be/JWr6X6jhQ6E

For the 2015 version, we stuck to the mics again just by necessity (we had to use the available mics last minute, rather than headsets)  but that confinement worked out in a way—we still didn’t have to bother with the podiums or books so we were ahead of the game.  Here, though, Saudia—who was a seasoned master of the microphone and taught us all a lot about how to use them well—led the way…the business she came up with sold the whole song and made it work.  One of my favorite moments in the show is when Faith sings, “I’m not scared of you” and Santana (Saudia) says, “What…?” with such contempt.  Moments like this, from each of the cast members, are what made this show work more than any other element, I believe, and as usual I’m indebted to everyone for giving it their all.   https://youtu.be/g8ITR4J1Ad8

I’ve also included the final “prayer” of Faith…this is something she did throughout the show, showing how she was thinking things over.  It created a throughline of Faith speaking to “God,” working out if God is someone you can really speak to at all.  By this point in the show even Faith’s “faith” is slipping and she appeals to “Luis” one final time for assistance.  Will she get it?  You find out in the next scene, and “Sin” starts towards its conclusion….