About Beethoven, the musical play

Beethoven! the musical stage play is the story of a man’s pursuit of music, as he struggles against increasing deafness and other periodic ailments. Whilst he is a naturally gregarious person, and loves keenly a number of ladies (even leading to proposals of marriage), his hearing problem makes him more and more isolated. Compounding this is his lack of money sense, and a sometimes–too–quick temper – which causes him to fall out with his friends and run through a string of servants. Fortunately his friends are extremely loyal on the whole, and stick with him, doing their best to help him where and when they can.
Act 1 establishes a number of Beethoven’s character traits, in the context of his increasing reputation, and follows some of his initiatives in trying to live what might be called a regular life - that is, mixing in society and entering a state of matrimony, as well as trying to earn a living in a well-regarded vocation.
Reflecting these aspects, we find Beethoven in various situations, relating to his friends, and where we can learn, either from the context of the scene or from himself, something of the man and his music.
We meet him in a typical situation. He is thirty years old. Although he’s been aware of it for a few years, his hearing loss is still more of an irritation than a real impediment. As the act unfolds we follow him as he falls in love with a number of fair admirers, gaining a sense of his alleged money difficulties, his increasing success, his temper, and something of his philosophy, humour (he was an inveterate punster), and habits. Up until nearly the end of the Act, deafness is treated more or less incidentally, through the occasional miss–hearing of words and the recurring motif of the cuckoo. It’s only in the last scene that we begin to see how much it’s affecting him, when we contrast the gaiety of a country dance with his faltering response to its rhythms.
The main themes of Act 1 are love and music, with deafness as a shadow in the background.

Act 2 takes us into the latter part of Beethoven’s life, particularly the conflict between his desire for marriage and a normal life and his growing view that this would diminish his art. Interleaving these matters is the self-consuming saga of his efforts to gain guardianship of his nephew, together with something of the trauma which results from this, and a little fun.
The act ends with both a quiet and a triumphant affirmation of Beethoven’s time–transcending greatness.

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Note: This play has not been produced and, apart from one song, lyrics are not included.