I Open At The Close Online Quiz | Humanities

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. The end: Multiple executions are avoided at the last moment by a change in the law and betrothal of the condemned. What musical comedy ends with this reprieve?

Answer: Iolanthe

The title character in the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta "Iolanthe" is a fairy princess who provoked the wrath of the Fairy Queen by marrying a mortal - who later became the Lord Chancellor of England. This gave former barrister William Gilbert yet another opportunity to poke fun at the profession as well as the peerage.

The "fairy law" had stated that any fairy who marries a mortal was condemned to death. At the end of Act II, the Lord Chancellor adds the word "don't" to the statute, making intermarriage not only legal but compulsory.

The entire House of Lords (and at least one soldier) take advantage of the amendment.

2. The end: The King is insane with grief and guilt. Having previously tried and failed to commit suicide, he expires on stage. It is unclear who will succeed him because he has no sons - and the surviving texts of the play differ as to the new king. What tragedy ends with these multiple tragic events?

Answer: King Lear

In Shakespeare's tragedy, King Lear divides his kingdom among his two flattering, conniving daughters, Goneril and Regan, leaving nothing to his honest and forthright daughter Cordelia. Murder and mayhem follow, with characters dying in nasty ways. To this day, it is uncertain what was supposed to happen after the curtain.

The character who delivers the final speech in the play is apparently going to become king. In the earlier Quatro editions it's the Duke of Albany, the evil Goneril's now-reformed widower.

In the First Folio of 1623, it's Edgar, the good son of the equally loyal (and now dead) Earl of Gloucester. Gloucester dies offstage - overcome by joy that his son Edgar is still alive. Seriously.

3. The end: A song-and-dance man and his lost and found love sing a hymn together in a luxury hotel far from home, as French aircraft bomb the place to smithereens. What anti-war Broadway show comes to this sad end?

Answer: Idiot's Delight

"Idiot's Delight" won playwright Arthur Sherwood the 1936 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. On Broadway, stars (and spouses) Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne portrayed the unhappy couple. The story is set in an exclusive resort in the Italian Alps - strangely adjacent to an air force base - as assorted travelers take refuge from the impending world war.

Sherwood was off by about three years, and had World War Two starting with an Italian bombing raid on Paris. Yet, the sense of impending doom proved all too real.

The movie version premiered in January 1939, starring Clark Gable and Norma Shearer, mere months before the real war began.

4. The end: I promised, very publicly, not to tell you. The audience is always asked not to reveal the guilty party's identity. What murder mystery play swears audiences to secrecy?

Answer: The Mousetrap

Don't disappoint the late Agatha Christie, please. As of 2013, "The Mousetrap" is still running in London after 25,000+ performances and over 60 years of generally obedient audiences. The script has been published, but see the play instead if you can, and don't go looking on-line for spoilers. I am permitted to say that the the suspects gather at an isolated inn, scrutinized by a police detective - but that's only the beginning.

5. The end: After some fine singing, the hero is shot by firing squad - with blanks, or so the heroine thinks. He falls dramatically. She exclaims, "What an actor!" Oops. He's really dead. She leaps over the castle wall to her death. Ta-dah. What Italian opera concludes with this tragic downfall?

Answer: Tosca

The title character in Giacomo Puccini's most popular work is an opera singer, making her exclamation all the more ironic. The libretto was based on a rather lengthy play by the French author Victorien Sardou, starring Sarah Bernhardt. The author wanted a French composer to set his play to music.

The publisher instead assigned the task to the little-remembered Alberto Franchetti, who (for reasons still unclear) gave way to Puccini. Completing the opera took several years and a simplification of the plot. An interim version of the libretto had Tosca going mad - but Sardou insisted that the final scene remain unchanged.

6. The end: The young hero dies. The young, beautiful, naive all-American heroine ends up with a foreigner at least twice her age - and his children from a prior relationship. What musical production ends with this unexpected and profound pairing?

Answer: South Pacific

"South Pacific" was drawn from multiple stories in James Michener's 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "Tales of the South Pacific". The Rogers and Hammerstein musical won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1950. Set on a Pacific island during World War Two - an experience fresh in the minds of some audience members - the complex and emotionally moving story has Nurse Nellie Forbush declining the obvious choice of wealthy young Marine Lieutenant Joe Cable in favor of late middle-aged French expatriate planter Emile de Becque.

The musical combines fabulous and familiar songs with trenchant comments about racism and prejudice.

7. The end: The central character is in a mental health facility, about to receive an injection that will cure him. His sister intervenes at the last moment to stop the treatment, and he remains delusional. The audience cheers. What play culminates in this oddly satisfying climax?

Answer: Harvey

The title character of this 1944 play is Harvey, a talking 6 foot-plus white rabbit ("He's a pooka, actually") who is seen and heard only by mild-mannered Elwood P. Dowd. Elwood introduces Harvey to everyone he meets, to the consternation of his family. Through the course of the play, the audience comes to understand that Harvey is a fundamental element in Elwood's kind and affable nature.

The play has been adapted several times for television and movies, including a 1950 film starring the perfectly-cast Jimmy Stewart - as Elwood. Harvey always plays himself, and brilliantly too.

8. The end: The title character is embalmed - having died first. What musical play ends with this depressing, dramatic event?

Answer: Evita

Technically, "Evita" begins with the ending - the announcement of Eva Peron's death at the start of Act I. Che Guevara reverses time to introduce a 15 year old Eva Duarte, whose rise forms the matrix of the plot. In 1972, composer Andrew Lloyd Weber and lyricist Tim Rice were considering a new musical version of Peter Pan, but opted to create Evita instead; quite a change.

The work began as a "concept album" before blossoming into a full stage musical in 1978.

9. The end: The prisoner asks for forgiveness from those assembled to witness his execution. Suddenly, a messenger arrives: the monarch has given the condemned man a pardon, and a title, and a castle, and a pension for life. In what play does the protagonist reap his ill-gotten reward?

Answer: Threepenny Opera

Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill adapted - or coopted - the general plot of "The Beggar's Opera" for political purposes. There is a sense of unreality about the play. The audience is kept at arm's length (Verfremdungseffekt in German) by tendentious dialogue. Macheath ("Mack the Knife") is absurdly criminal, but also the voice of the authors: "What is robbing a bank compared with founding a bank? What is murdering a man compared with making him your employee?" Politics aside, "Threepenny Opera" includes some fine music to go with its polemical lyrics.

10. The end(s): At the end of Act One, an airplane crashes through the roof of a garden conservatory; the heroine has arrived. At the end of Act Two, she delivers a wordy denunciation of marriage and then flies away with the young ingenue's fiancee. She's one of George Bernard Shaw's "ideal women," but from which play?

Answer: Misalliance

"Misalliance" takes place on the afternoon of May 31, 1909 - Shaw was quite specific - when flying was a daring activity for the wealthy. The heroine is the circus acrobat and budding aviatrix Lina Szczepanowska (just call her Lina), who attracts the attentions of most of the male characters.

As the title suggests, the multiple marriage proposals during the play may or may not make for successful relationships. This being Shaw, the characters include a working-class anarchling who offers overt criticism of upper-class house parties, conventional marriage, the social order, and everything else in Edwardian England. Yet, Lina and friends couldn't fly in and out of the plot without a great deal of money.

Source: Author ignotus999

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor looney_tunes before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

I Open At The Close Trivia Quiz

"Betrayal" and the play / musical "Merrily We Roll Along" actually do start at the close - but most shows don't. I give you the ending (except for one); you choose the play, musical or opera.

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