Before I go any further, you should know that “Grief, the Musical …a Comedy” isn’t really a musical, more a combination of stand-up comedy and theater, with music. And it isn’t really about grief; it’s a very funny love story. We just couldn’t resist the title.
Look behind any comedian you know, from George Carlin to Paula Poundstone, and you’ll find someone who has figured out a way to transform whatever it is that’s killing them into comedy. I first learned how to do this in my 20s when a more than slightly challenging reunion with my American birth mother turned me into a stand-up comic.
Flip forward 23 years, my two children are off in college and I’m living on my own in the Berkshires, doing little but work 24/7 running my audiobook company, Alison Larkin Presents.
Up until this point in my life I had avoided true love. Why? The key to dealing with a fear of abandonment is to do nothing but work and/or marry someone you are not in love with, so if they do leave you, it doesn’t matter. As I sat alone in my audiobook recording studio narrating the great classic love stories, like “Pride and Prejudice” and “Jane Eyre,” I began to wonder if my choice to avoid love had been worth it.
“I’m 50 something plus, my future’s kind of scary,
“I want a life I love, but I don’t know what to do.
“I’d rather be alone than hating being married;
“I want to find true love like other people do.” (From “Grief, the Musical …a Comedy”)
If you’ve tried online dating in the Berkshires, perhaps you’ve met the college professor who talks about himself for three hours straight and then tells you what a great conversationalist you are. Or the contra-dancer who whirls you around so fast you don’t really mind that he has egg in his beard when at long last you are relieved to be sitting down. Or the guy with the looooong vowels who speaks so carefully you ask him if he’s been drinking, to which he replies: “I get that a lot. Nooo. I’m from Connecticut.”
I was about to give up on the whole thing when I met and fell fully in love with Bhima, a brilliant, fiery scientist from South India, who left corporate America to devote his life to developing renewable energy in Vermont.
Then, one week after we decided to spend the rest of our lives together, Bhima died.
We were in the early days of the pandemic and I realized I had a choice. I could hide under the bed and never come out again. Or try to live and love more fully than ever because, like so many of us, I now knew how suddenly life could end. And love and connection are the only things that really matter.
I knew how to process the impossible by writing about it, because I had done it before. I called my friend the Emmy Award-winning composer Gary Schreiner, who wrote the music for my last solo show, and asked him if he’d write a few short songs to my lyrics. He said “Yes,” so on about six separate occasions I drove to Gary’s recording studio in New York. We’d write the new song, then he’d make a tuna fish sandwich because Gary has this special recipe that I love. Then we’d watch “Judge Judy” because Gary is a fan. Then I’d drive home to the Berkshires and continue working on the script.
I ran the idea of “Grief, the Musical …a Comedy” by Jim Frangione, who cracked up when he heard the title and started showing up outside my house in Stockbridge on his electric bicycle telling me the Great Barrington Public Theater would produce it in June. All I had to do was finish the script.
We both knew the best possible director for it would be my great friend and well-known actor/director James Warwick, who I first met when we co-narrated the only two-actor audiobook of “The Importance of Being Earnest.”
“Don’t waste your time,
“On things that you know really
“Aren’t worth a dime.
“Each day you get to choose
“How you will spend it
“Don’t waste a minute, ‘cos tonight might end it…
“Don’t waste your time.” (from “Grief, the Musical …a Comedy”)
I wasn’t planning on writing and performing again, I thought I’d given it up. But when he heard about Bhima’s death, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who saw my first solo show, told me I must tell the story about what had just happened, because it would bring people hope.
So I did.
