Miss Musical

Apparently I am a huge musical aficionado. Actually, I'm not. But I have seen two in the past four days. And I saw a couple this summer, and I saw one this spring/summer about 7 times. Why, you ask? Well, for many reasons. For love. To support. For fun... For reasons to do with the musical that my mom and I are working on. For the reason of being on a quest to satisfy multiple unusual obsessions with the recordings of musicals I had not yet seen. That sort of thing.
On Saturday I went to Wicked which I feel like I am the last person I know to see-- even all the 11 year-olds I know saw it LAST year... and tonight I saw A Catered Affair, a brand spanking new musical by Harvey Feurstein. It is going to Broaway next Spring but if you can get to San Diego in the near future-- go see it!!!!!!! it was absolutely amazing. There was a talk back after, which was actually very illuminating and lovely because no one was too full of themselves, even though in my book these people have a right to be, and the dramaturg stayed out of the way and didn't get too esoteric or abstract... anyway, some people felt that it was more of a play with music but it truly was a musical, just a COMPLETELY UNIQUE one. and not in the way the Spring Awakening is unique-- because it uses rock and minimalism and has so much style... but because I literally felt inside of it, on a journey with the characters the entire time-- beginning to end. That never happens in musicals. Rarely does it even happen in plays for me. Truth be told, and I hope this doesn't scare anyone away, ... I also felt like my eyes were nearly filled with water/three stoplights short of full-on tears for most of the show. The subject matter is ordinary and yet momentuous. It is 1945 or so and a son is dead and a daughter is getting married, and money is tight and tempers are fierce. It had the simplicity of It's A Wonderful Life-- and of course, in that simplicity there is a universality. Wow. CHARGED.
Now as a theatermaker myself, the differences between WICKED and A CATERED AFFAIR were huge, Wicked was massive and epic and spectacular, a spectacle with substance to back it up... and A Catered Affair started quiet and simple and surreptitiously snuck inside you and rocked you to the bone; heart and mind's string playing vibrato...

musicals really are a wide open affair.
go figure