I never understood musicals.
People are going about their everyday business, being John Travolta or living hard knock lives and whatnot, and then they just start singing about it.
Just take a look at this brilliant, thought-provoking, plot-thickening bit of musical exposition:
The Rum Tum Tugger is a curious cat
The Rum Tum Tugger doesn’t care for a cuddle
The Rum Tum Tugger is a curious cat
Oh, I see. Well, we’ve got a pretty clear character sketch of this Rum Tum Tugger fellow now, don’t we?
It’s all a little reminiscent of that scene from the movie Elf where the character Buddy the Elf tries to demonstrate how easy it is to sing in front of people.
“I’m singing,” he sings in the middle of a busy store’s Christmas display. “I’m in a store and I’m singing. I’m in a store and I’m singing!”
I side with the security guard.
“Hey!” he says. “There’s no singing in the North Pole.”
Then there’s the wispy prince in Monty Python and the Holy Grail who has no interest in owning castles or marrying women who have huge tracts of land. The young lad doesn’t want any of that.
“I’d rather … I’d rather just sing!”
The prince’s gruff father stays on plot.
“Stop that, stop that,” he says. “You’re not going into a song while I’m here.”
I’m with the father on this one. Forget the song – I’d rather have the huge tracts of land.
Don’t get me wrong. I like music. I like movies. I like theatre (at least that’s what I tell British people). But if you told me that the action in your theatre production and/or motion picture was going to come to a grinding halt every five minutes so the actors could sing a song about where a cat prefers to sleep, sorry, I’m out.
Oh wait, Ryan Gosling is in this musical and is about to start singing? I’m back in! Just kidding. Hard no.
Why are you combining these two things? We don’t combine other things willy nilly, even if they are wildly popular on their own. No one holds a golf tournament and then has the golfers play a quick game of rugby sevens after every hole. Then again, if we really wanted to spice up this Tiger Woods comeback….
Tiger: “I struck the ball well today, I thought I hit a lot of solid shots. I probably would have scored even better without that blindside hit from Mickelson.”
Jim Nantz: “Would you call that a dirty hit, Tiger?”
Tiger: “No, a good clean tackle. Phil’s sneaky quick for a big guy. I think I punctured a lung.”
Nantz: “Thanks Tiger. (Tinkly piano music starts playing.) As we head to the final round, Tiger is on the hunt for another green jacket, but will he get it before his skin turns blue?”
And then, Tiger starts to sing!
Weird, right? Why are they bursting into song in the middle of a run-of-the-mill golf/rugby game?
Anyway, that’s the way I thought until just recently when I started attending musical theatre productions that featured my own children as some sort of Oompa Munchkin and/or my wife as director. There I saw that singing is the glue that holds these children together during shows. Songs give the kids energy, and act as cues for parents to hit record on their iPhones.
Seeing those shows was another example I’ve had as a parent of what amazing things children can do, children that you know are normally agents of chaos, when they are brought together with a common goal.
It’s like the baseball teams I coach. Sometimes, in quiet moments, I look into the dugout with the realization that the kids are all hopped up on Doritos and Gatorade and in an instant we could have an honest-to-God bat fight. But that never happens, and when the pitcher takes the mound these little eight-year-old Pokemon historians somehow sort of look and act like a real baseball team.
And the musical theatre kids are even more focused, for those fleeting moments in the spotlight. You know they want to use all of their props as light sabres, but they don’t, at least until four seconds after the final curtain falls. It’s a wonder to behold, and I feel blessed every time I see them up there singing their hearts out.
This doesn’t quite explain, however, why someone thought it was a good idea to make a movie in which Pierce Brosnan sings.
But I get it now, the musicals. The practise, the effort, the nerve it takes to stand in front of strangers and sing. The joy and tears of the big finale, the hugs at the end. Months of work, played out in 90 minutes. You got me, musicals. Give me an invite, I’ll be at your next show.
And what the heck, you can be in it too, Gosling.
Andy Prest is the sports editor for the North Shore News and writes a biweekly humour/lifestyle column. [email protected]
