The Seven Year Hit by Peter Filichia from Theatermania.com

You should, and I suspect you will. It’s a delicious one-act revue of songs starring its composer Daniel S. Acquisto and its lyricist Sammy Buck.

Who?

Well, that’s precisely the point. As the show’s under-the-title runs, “An anniversary concert of two never-was has-beens.” Seems that seven years ago, the two met and started working on Like You Like It, a new musical version of As You Like It. They set it in an ‘80s high school, so instead of characters getting banished, as they are in Shakespeare’s original, they get suspended. They don’t escape into the forest, but hide out at the mall. Funny stuff, set to a nifty rock score. I enjoyed the two readings I saw of it.

So did others, for Acquisto and Buck soon landed an agent, and producers, too.

Three years ago, Like You Like It was done at the New York Music Theatre Festival. Among its brother shows were [title of show], which has had a couple of New York stints, and landed a cast album; Meet John Doe, which got a production at Ford’s Theatre; and Altar Boyz, which now has productions here there, and soon-to-be everywhere, while the original in New York has become one of off-Broadway’s longest-running musicals.

“Meanwhile,” Buck said, “our agent was very busy doing nothing for Like You Like It." Some months later at a party, he and Acquisto saw their producer – who snubbed them. Not a good sign. Buck also told us that he was always quite good at math, and that a new equation has occurred to him while he was peddling his musical: “The absence of yes over time equals no.”

So they tell us the sad tale with side-splitting humor in The Seven-Year B*tch. Why the asterisk in these times when worse words are heard on network TV? Well, Buck did mention that Acquisto has “a Grandma Rule” – meaning that he won’t allow even a word in his show that might offend his sainted grandmother. Guess that’s the reason for self-censorship,

Whatever the case, The Seven Year B*tch is this year’s [title of show]. There, Hunter Bell and Jeff Bowen’s musical showed the struggle to write a musical. But as so many can tell you, writing a show is the comparatively easy part. Finding a way of getting it on is what kills you.

Acquisto, who played drums for The Seven-Year B*tch’s four piece band, mentioned that his girlfriend lost patience with the process and dropped him along the way. Hmmm, so perhaps sexual repression and abstinence was the reason that made him pound his drum set with such fury. Or, of course, it’s Like You Like It’s not getting on that’s responsible. Not that Sammy hasn’t suffered on his own terms, too, as can be proved by his song entitled “Aunt Evelyn’s Inspirational Advice.” The title is one of those obfuscations so that we can all have a good and unexpected laugh when we hear what should be the real title: “Give up Your Dreams.”

Acquisto and Buck aren’t the only ones who have suffered, as was proved in their ditty, “The Amy Rutberg Song.” Turns out that Amy is not a fictional character, which we learned from Amy Rutberg herself, who showed up and sang the song. It’s about the life of a young actress who does workshops, and then gets replaced by the likes of Kerry Butler and Kelli O’Hara – Rutberg’s life story. And while Rutberg was singing, all of a sudden castmate Becca Ayers walked over, briskly grabbed the microphone from Rutberg’s hand, and started singing the song. In other words, Rutberg was again replaced.

Now, really, do these guys have imagination or what? All right, guys who write musicals were never expected to catch baseballs or footballs on diamonds or gridirons, but they should be able to catch a break in theaters.

And just when we thought matters couldn’t get any wittier, we heard “Our Annual Lament.” It started with the keyboardist Brian Cimmet’s playing two very familiar notes, and before the famous five-note vamp had finished, already we were laughing because we recognized them as the opening notes of “Seasons of Love.” Sure enough, both Acquisto and Buck sang to a melody that was so-near-yet-somewhat-far from the now-famous second-act opener of Rent, and began with the word “five” as well. It wasn’t about 525,600 minutes, however, but the five times they’ve applied for the coveted Jonathan Larson Award and have been denied. Hilarious, especially with their injured faces singing out the doleful lyrics.

But here’s the thing: How well I still remember that night maybe in the late ‘80s when I attended the ASCAP Workshop. An unknown Jonathan Larson presented selections from his work-in-progress Superbia to the august panel of experts. Good Lord, when he finished, what a commotion ensued. Soon Peter Stone and Tony Tanner and Nancy Ford were all coming out with wildly differing opinions, but that wasn’t the end of it. Suddenly all musical theater hell broke loose among those in the audience, some of whom called Larson’s work utter junk, while others staunchly insisted that here was a unique voice that was daring to break new ground. I’ll bet the commotion lasted close to a half-hour, and Larson looked pretty embarrassed by the whole mess.

As you well know, Larson became the bookwriter, lyricist, and composer of a Broadway musical that has only been outrun by five other shows. It’s now a household name, and we at The Seven-Year B*tch aren’t the only ones who’d recognize “Seasons of Love” from just the first two notes of the vamp. We also all know tick, tick … BOOM! which informed us in no uncertain terms of the difficult life Larson had while struggling to write.

Funny, the day before I saw The Seven Year B*tch, I was having dinner with my buddy Richard Seff, who was Fred Ebb’s first agent. He told me in detail the terrible time Ebb had for 10 years before his big break came -- all the setbacks, the unproduced musical Simon Says, the lost jobs like The Unsinkable Molly Brown, where he wrote a lyric on spec, “Belly up to the Bar, Boys,” which spurred eventual Molly Brown songwriter Meredith Willson to write a song by the same name. Ebb must have felt his time would never come, and probably wouldn’t have believed anyone who said, “Fred, someday you’ll have three Tonys, the two longest-running-ever Broadway musical revivals, not to mention that you’ll write the quintessential anthem for New York City, and have enough money to leave a fund for songwriters who will then be struggling like you are now.”

On the other hand, a few months ago, I invited a talented lyricist I hadn’t seen in a while to a party. I got back the first of a series of e-mails, where he refused, said he’d stopped writing, had turned his back on musicals, and had literally burned all his work. He sounded furious, yes, but sadder still. I know he’ll find less happiness a time goes on – because in three years, he’s going to say to himself, “You know, I should have kept going. By now, I could have had a new show written. Maybe this would have been the night that I had the reading that would have led to something.” And four years after that, all he’ll see is the lost time and opportunities – and will find himself having a bigger seven-year bitch than the authors of The Seven-Year B*tch have ever had.

Acquisto and Buck ended with a song that at first questioned why they plug on, before each noting that “I want to hear the songs we haven’t written yet.” I doubt there was anyone in the room who didn’t, given the sustained cheers they got at the end of the show from the overflowed packed house. I have a feeling that there’s going to be a seven year switch in their fortunes. It could start with this very show. There’s no reason why it can’t get on, as [title of show] did. If it does, it will please just as many people.

Really, to all you authors out there, keep going. As Acquisto and Buck said at the end of their evening-concluding song, their dreams MAY never come true, sure. But they and we know for sure they WON’T happen if they DON’T write. Please, composers and lyricists, journey on. The next time your phone rings or you sign on to e-mail, you may get the message that starts the big change in your life. Now stop reading this and get to work.