Spirals and Dirt

We meet the four as they remember their first day of kindergarten and the loving chaos of Ms. Retta’s classroom. Louis and Burtie start noticing how different they are. Peter and Lina discover they have almost nothing in common except football, which turns out to be enough. Every problem they’ll spend the rest of the show wrestling with is already there, in miniature. And it isn’t only the students who are stuck: Ms. Retta once meant to be a linguist and somehow ended up here (Ms. Retta’s Lament).

After a first-day party goes spectacularly wrong, custodians Ginnie and Janey step forward to explain the dignity of the job nobody thanks them for (It’s a Dirty World). In the present, Peter tells Lina how a malfunctioning roller coaster turned him into a spiral-writer (Over and Over Again), while Louis and Burtie compare the wildly different houses they grew up in (Clean Life / Grungy Life).

Seventh grade. Ms. Retta — newly promoted to Assistant Principal — pushes Peter to think bigger about his spirals. Lina faces a decision about a treatment for her declining eyesight. Louis worries he’s about to be “counseled out” to a school more in line with his learning style. Burtie digs in against every attempt to change her grungy ways. Peter’s teachers, anxious about Peter’s spiral writing in high school, introduce him to Mr. Majick and the Majick Straight-Edge Writing Stick (Write on the Line). Peter agrees to give it a try — and then goes further, disowning his spirals altogether. He falls in with Gregory and Georgina of the secretive Anti-Line Club (The Only Good Line Is a Line That’s Bent) and joins on one condition: no more linear friends.

Meanwhile, the English class is drafted to host an anniversary party for Principal Todáro. They refuse, then fold the moment a Shakespeare Festival trip is dangled — though not before a heated argument about where the Bard really came from (Bard of Avon / Will Shakespeare Was an Irishman / Willie Shakespeare Was a Scottishman). The room is a disaster, but Louis knows everything there is to know about clean. He takes charge, and for the first time in his life he feels important. Elsewhere, Ginnie and Janey fret about their future until Janey dozes off and lays out her plans for world domination (Someday We’ll Rule the World), and Mr. Todáro finally explains why he has aways used a cane (Florizel’s Tango).

A chance meeting with Ms. Retta shows Peter that friendship can’t be sorted by who writes straight and who doesn’t (The Beauty of Friendship). Lina, in the meantime, sets out her own terms (Typical Atypical Girl). The two make up and head off to football practice — spirals, naturally. Peter’s father, Gerhard, recounts the moment in a long-ago game that may or may not explain everything about his son (The Football Game). Louis gets the class gleaming. Burtie undoes it in a single stroke. The party goes the way parties go in this show, and the four are left with nothing to hold onto but themselves (True).

When the dust settles, Ginnie and Janey come back to sweep the stage — this time with the entire cast pitching in (It’s a Dirty World — Reprise).

Spiral Theme