Nostalgia

Mr. X. left this morning for a business trip :(

Right now, I am getting my show tune fix. I've got the S.irius broadway station on (Mr. X is not a fan), and they just played the opening number from 1776, which we did in high school, and now they're playing "It's a Grand Night for Singing," which was our opening number for show choir in high school. We were a low-budget show choir, I later discovered. I made it into my college's show choir my freshman year (which was fun to tell my high school choir director, who was never all that impressed with me), and I found out just how all-out some high school show choirs went--they had elaborate costumes, sets, big-shot choreographers, and pyrotechnics. Seriously! When we needed "levels" in high school show choir, we didn't have risers--in the "Grand Night for Singing" number, I stood on a plastic milk crate.

One of the main reasons we even had a show choir and we did shows like 1776 was that my class and the classes ahead of and behind us had lots of boys in the choir and the musicals. There had been no show choir partially because of the lack of boys, so the director started it up again my junior year--and I didn't make it, but my younger brother did. We both made it the next year, and the director assigned dance partners by height and voice part. Which means my brother and I were assigned to be dance partners. Now, my brother and I like each other and all, but this turn of events did not make us all that happy. We managed to work out a trade.

But it was truly a bummer for all of us girls that we had three years of boy-intensive musicals. It doesn't get much more boy-intensive than 1776. In case you have the misforture never to have seen this one, it's about the debate over independence and the writing of the Declaration of Independence in the Continental Congress. John A.dams is the main character (which makes me even more a fan of the show, now that I've read the Mc.Cullough biography and am watching the miniseries), with Ben F.ranklin and Thomas J.efferson as major supporting characters. Most of the action takes place in congress . . . which means, of course, no women. The only two female characters in the show (as written) are Abigail A.dams (who appears in dream-sequence type scenes in which she and John are writing letters to each other) and Martha J.efferson (who's written as a sort of ditzy blonde who is brought to Philadelphia basically because J.efferson is so sexually frustrated he can't write the declaration--not so sure about the historical accuracy of that one). Anyway, love the show, but it's very frustrating to be a high school girl and see that one come up as the annual musical. The director worked a chorus into some of the numbers and made a few minor characters (the custodians--can't remember if there's more than one in the original, but we had two--and the courier) female, but it was really a boy show. Add in J.oseph and the A.mazing Technicolor D.reamcoat and D.amn Y.ankees, and we had three years of boy shows.

I am really excited about the opera this year, but I need to get myself into a musical soon!