Rehearsals are now underway for my school's holiday musical extravaganza, Little Women, based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888). I am directing a stellar cast of talented young women and young men, and I am working with a very gifted director of music. This is my second foray into the world of directing musicals (my first experience was in 2008 directing The Sound of Music). I use the word "foray" because I feel like I am entering someone else's territory and taking spoils. When I was a high school student, I was never involved with the theatre productions at my school. Of course, they used to put on plays like Oedipus Rex and Flowers for Algernon... 'Nuff said.Little Women The Musical is a fairly new Broadway production, premiering in 2005. The musical, however, is solidly rooted in the classic story by Alcott. The script also appropriately balances drama and humour and the musical numbers are surprisingly delightful. I am surprised because "21st century" and "delightful" rarely go together. Yet, every time I get fed up with the tidal wave of ugly art and post-modern doggerel flooding the creative world, I am pleasantly startled by something beautiful and good. Unfortunately, I find these occasional "roses among thorns" almost exclusively in popular media... e.g., musicals and Hollywood films. Perhaps there is hope in the masses, people made in the image of God, who still prefer truth, beauty and goodness.
This musical is by no means deep or profound; no musical ever is deep or profound. But it is not shallow and meaningless either, which is often the case with the high art one might see at the Toronto Film Festival. So, what is it? It IS delightful.
5 comments:
"no musical is ever deep and profound"... really? I think Les Miserables is plenty deep, somewhat profound and entirely depressing...
but a nice little show nonetheless.
Congrats on the Director role! I didn't know Little Women was a musical and so now will begin to research where and when I can see it!
I need to add a caveat to my blog...
"Posts on this blog frequently contain sweeping generalizations, broad-stroke opinions and all-encompassing statements."
Although... Does Les Miserables even count? It was a deep, profound and miserable book first...!
So was `Phantom of the Opera', `Wicked', `Oliver' and I'm pretty sure I heard that `Grease' was a novel first...
"deep and profound" are the criteria...
I must admit that Oliver is a fairly deep and profound musical.
I even enjoyed the Lord of the Rings musical. I don't know if your dad saw it... (sacrilege, perhaps), but it was profoundly moving.
Hmmm. I must rethink my sweeping generalizations!
This was a fun line of comments to read. The two of you are fantastic! I love everything you write! (and that wasn't even meant to be an oversweeping generalization...)
Les Mis is perfectly profound and the music is, like in Mike's old plays, part of the profoundity. Not that the text wasn't equally stirring, but the music gave legs to the emotion of the story. Which is why musicals are brilliant.
Just please tell me that no one has ever made a musical of "Waiting for Godot", because, really, is it worth making a bad thing dreadful?
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