My Favorite Musicals

Monday was President's Day, but it was also a much lesser known holiday...my birthday. I am now 28, a nice sounding number and one that makes me still feel incredibly young. I guess that's a good thing. My husband keeps trying to convince me that I shouldn't be so eager to pass 30.

To celebrate we went to see Wicked on Tuesday. Those who know me well know what a theater buff I used to be (and still can be). I've seen dozens of shows and been in quite a few myself. If you want a good laugh go ask my mom to see some photos of my 16 year old self dressed in a leopard print jacket and four inch stiletto heels playing Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors. Yep. Try wrapping that around your brain!

Surprisingly I'd never seen Wicked. It is, after all, the most popular (no pun intended) Broadway show of this century. And as I sat waiting for the curtain to go up last night it occurred to me that I have never, ever been so unprepared for a performance. I only knew two or three songs and a vague outline of the premise. I didn't know what was going to happen next. It was exciting and very disturbing. Scott said it was good for me. It was really a great show and I thoroughly enjoyed it,  but I wouldn't rank it in my top ten favorite musicals. Which got me thinking, What are my top ten favorite musicals? This is what I came up with.

10. Carousel This is the darkest Roger's and Hammerstein show, and my favorite of their work. Sometimes one song can sell an entire show. The soliloquy from Carousel does it for me. In the midst of it a character is transformed thus transforming the entire show. That's the beauty of musicals.

9. Beauty and the Beast This is a sentimental favorite.  It was the first show I ever saw in NYC. But when Scott took me to see it for our five year anniversary I was still in love. Beauty in the Beast is my favorite Disney fairy tale flick, but the musical surpasses it. The Beast's lament "If I Can't Love Her" just makes it perfect.

 
8. Phantom of the Opera This also makes the list partially for sentimental reasons. Phantom was my favorite show as a girl. I've told the story here of my dad surprising me with tickets in his shoe. Phantom is such a twisted, tortured tale, which says a lot about my eight year old self. Scott took me to see it a little over four years ago, and I have to admit, some of the magic was gone, but I will always hold this show dear in my heart because of what it meant to my childhood.

7. Into the Woods Steven Sondheim's mash up and smash up of classic fairy tales. Fairy Tales sometimes contain the most potent truth. Sondheim exposes them, turns them on their head and gives us something profoundly beautiful.

6. West Side Story I don't believe in love at first sight, but I still adore this twentieth century retelling of Romeo and Juliet. Brilliant score, brilliant book, brilliant concept.

5. Ragtime When the curtain came up for intermission at the Ford Theater in NYC my sister and I were huddled together in our red velveteen seats, sobbing. All the dry eyed adults were staring at these two teenagers like we were lunatics. The thing is, we already knew what was going to happen. We had the whole score committed to memory, and we still wept. This interwoven turn of the century tale of race, prejudice, love, justice and dreams is one powerful experience.

4. Little Shop of Horrors Being in a musical can completely taint one's opinion of it. Naturally I am biased to this show having performed in it. But it is SO good! It is outlandishly bizarre, but underneath all the strangeness is some very dark and insightful truth. The songs are catchy, the script hysterical, but there is nothing funny about what this show is portraying. Just don't watch the movie. It distorts the ending and totally undermines the moral of the show. "But whatever they offer you, don't feed the plants!"

3. My Fair Lady Great songs. Great Characters. Great Story. "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face" would easily make my top ten list of favorite Broadway songs.

2. Fiddler on the Roof  Do I even need to explain this one?

1. Les Miserables For me nothing has or ever will top this. Ever.

Now I am fairly certain that my sister is going to comment on this.  So why not join her?  What are your favorites and why?

My Favorite Love Stories

We all love a good love story, and in honor of Valentine's Day I'm going to share with you some of my very favorites.

It took adulthood for me to fully appreciate this musical that I watched so often as a girl. What I love so much about the Music Man is it's subtlety and the honest character transformation of a self-righteous, lonely librarian and a fast and loose swindler with a dream. Marian discovers her sympathetic spirit and is able to love a man even knowing he is a total fraud. She sees through the flashy disguise Professor Harold Hill uses to protect himself and becomes a softer, lovelier woman.  Professor Hill finally learns to stop running, stop shirking and honestly care.   And even though I have never cared for the song There Were Bells, I can't help but love this wonderful story.

The Painted Veil is not only one of my favorite love stories, it is also one of my favorite films. It is the story of the redemption of a worthless marriage, a story of forgiveness and hope when it seemed hope was lost. In an era where divorce was nearly impossible and socially reprehensible, this couple is bitterly bound and forced to face not only one another, but themselves, in the back woods of cholera infested China. Lavish scenery, a wise script and perfect acting. It really is one of the bravest love stories ever depicted.

Yes, I have been swept away as most Americans have, by the lavish miniseries Downton Abbey.  How could I not?  While so many period dramas have their appealing heroines I have to admit I have a partiality to Mary Crawley and I have been rooting for her and Matthew since the start.  Mary seems an unlikely heroine. She's privileged, conceited, petty, selfish and cold.  She isn't as easy to sidle up to as Jane Eyre or Elizabeth Bennet, but I think it is her flaws that make her so real, so believable.  And as we begin to see her change and show unexpected feeling, hurt, disappointment, fear and humanity.

Now promise you won't throw cucumber sandwiches at me, but season two has been a bit of a let down compared to season one.  Its still wonderful, just much more cliche, overdone and fast paced.  Still, the main reason I tune in each week is for Mary.  I love seeing what loving has done to her.

By being foolish and materialistic she lost Matthew, but she didn't stop loving, and instead of growing bitter, more selfish and hateful, she grew kinder, more careful and shockingly selfless.  Instead of trying to recapture Matthew we see her supportive of his new engagement,

I don't yet know how this story will end, but I do know that no matter what it has been worthwhile seeing how loving can transform someone.

So how about you?  What are your favorite love stories?

Hovering: The Sacred Act of Creating

I've been doing lots of writing lately, working on a few personal projects seen, so far, by only myself.  It is something I never find time to do...or make time to do.  This, I have to confess, is because I am a coward.  I am fearful that what I make will be pitiful, or worse...average.  I suppose that must also make me proud.

The things of my imagining remain internal, my personal, private workings carried around in silence.  But over time ideas become heavier, a suffocating presence that crowds your insides.  There comes a point where creation must emerge, despite the consequences, and in sitting down this month to unburden myself I have settled into a soul lifting truth.

I am finding delight instead of dread, not because what I am writing is so particularly wonderful, but because writing it is so nourishing.  I am blessed by the process of drawing forth a story.  I am blessed because He made me to do this.  And I would argue that in one way or another He made us all to do this.

Creation is the first action of God, the way we are introduced to Him: Creator.  Before we are explicitly told of His goodness, mercy, justice and holiness we watch Him draw forth the world from nothing.  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.  Soon after we are told:

So God created mankind in His image,
In the image of God He created them;
Male and female He created them.


God created us in His very likeness.  What is God like?  What does He do? Within the first chapter of Genesis little has been revealed, we see only glimpses of what it is to bear His image, but we do know He is a creator.  So it must be taken that the God who made all things made His image bearers to make things as well.  The pure act of creating is itself to honor God and His purpose for us.


Creative is defined as having the quality or power of creating.  I never accept the statement "I am not creative."  Creativity is not reserved for the poet, painter or designer.  It is in one way or another inherent in all of us.  I have never met and uncreative human being. The scale and scope of creativity vary.  The scientist seeking to make a new drug.  The housewife arranging furniture in her home. The children playing make believe in the backyard. The grandmother piecing together a design for a quilt.  Examples of creativity flash before us regularly. We make and mold as we have been made and molded, and to deny participating in creation is to deny God's goodness to us.

I have felt His goodness immersing myself in the creative process.  As I sit before my computer screen, formless and empty, my fingers hover over the keys. My spirit hovers too, as I am awakened to the beginning, to the pleasure my Maker takes in it, that He wants me to take in it.  I set aside the concerns of what becomes of it, it's potential worthiness...or worthlessness...to immerse myself in the sacred, soul filling act of creation.

And it is good.




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