Hard act to follow...

In live theater it is almost a given that both plays and musicals need a first-act closer that will get a (perhaps reluctant) audience back into its seats after intermission.  If it is boffo enough the ploy usually works.  When it’s out of this world there is nothing like it.  The best example of this (for me) was the Broadway production of "Sunday in the Park with George," Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical production based upon Georges Seurat’s painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grand Jatte which hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago and is justifiably revered by one and all.  The finale of the first act of the musical brings to life this painting with a full-throttle, full-throated ensemble rendering of the title song that is so beautiful it tears your heart to pieces and blubbering is not unheard of from some audience members.  Personally, I’m lucky that my tears run silently.
 
A similar reaction occurred last weekend at the Saturday night performance of “Once,” the 2012 Tony Award winning musical that still survives on Broadway.  I don’t know why I missed it in its first year but at least I can finally say the pleasure is all mine, even if belated.  Others will have different reactions, of course, but for me there are 2.5 zowie moments during the course of the play and the finale of the first act is one of “those” moments you wait for in the theater.  It’s a song named “Gold” and it is about love and loss and missed chances and it is so beautiful the memory of it makes me tear up as I sit here with itchy feet from the skeeters I currently have to deal with in the backyard.  "Once" won eight Tony Awards and I think it probably deserved every one of them (I didn't see any of the other nominees) and that first act finale is truly a killer-diller.