Abell’s The Melody That Got Lost is a surrealistic drama with music that severely critiques modern conformity to middle-class values and the insipid qualities of middle-class imagination with a picnic filled with trash. The picnic scene begins when a typically boring Sunday dinner fades into an outdoor setting with a hiking song: “Over hill, we hike along/Swinging along to a merry song.” Edith and her Mum appear talking about Johnson’s raise, economizing, children, Johnson’s reading of advice manual, and Edith’s boredom – “He’s just dull.” As the women talk, Johnson and Edith’s father enter, and they all stand amidst picnic trash of paper, and bottles, empty tins. The irony is that they cannot see where they are and suppose that they are in a beautiful natural setting:
Father: Don’t you think we might sit down for a minute on that little green mound and enjoy the beauties of nature!
[Johnson and Father come and sit down. Mother and Edith get up and go over to them. Mother looks at Father and points at his trousers.]
It’s all right, my dear. I’m sitting on my handkerchief.
[Mother and Edith sit down and form a tableau. Music is heard off.]
[Father still speaking] Yes, you can’t get away from nature; the finest thing in the world.
Mother: [After a pause] Yes, it makes one forget all one’s worries and troubles.
Johnson: Do you think so? It’s quite nice to get out into nature as long as you know you haven’t got to stay there.
The play ends when Edith finds the missing Melody in her handbag. If she and Johnson choose, they have a future. This is The Melody:
You can’t go on, you know it’s wrong.
The work you do can’t bring a song.
Working for a top hat and trousers striped and pressed,
Just make you depressed,
Gives no melody.
Each hour everyday, just try to do
All that the Melody says to you.
Each hour of every day this sweet refrain
Sweeps all your troubles and cares away.
Remember, it’s not me for you,
Remember it’s not you for me, Remember the Melody tells us
It’s just we for us
So we’ll forget the strife and all our fear.
We’ve found the Melody of Life.
Featured Image: Abell’s design for Melodien der blev væk’s 1935 production.
See the Original production performed in 1935. Kjeld Abell. The Melody That Got Lost. Sidney: Allen & Unwin, 1939