As a guy, I am a bit unusual. At least for a straight guy. You see, I like musicals. I always have, ever since Mary Poppins sang “A Spoon Full of Sugar” and Dick Van Dyke danced with animated penguins on the big screen at the Roxy Theater in Renton.
I love the concept of musicals in general. In an otherwise traditional movie, a musical number begins, everyone in the place seems to know the lyrics and even the dance steps, and then, when all is sang and done, everyone just goes back to their business like nothing ever happened.
There’s just so much fun about a movie that suddenly, and often without any reason, bursts into a musical number. Case in point, one of my favorite musical numbers, the bar scene in Pete’s Dragon.
I know. Not exactly a mainstream choice. But I’ve been in a lot of bars over the years. Never, ever has this happened in any bar I’ve been to, not even a gay bar in Key West where you would expect that if something like this ever could happen, it would happen there.
But no, there’s no singing. No song about a dragon, or even drinking. And no dancing. Definitely no dancing on the top of a beer keg. I don’t think most of the people I know could get up on a barrel in the first place, let alone dance on one.
Unfortunately, musicals only exist on the silver screen. They aren’t real life. Still, the possibilities of life set to music intrigues me.
There you are, in a random moment in your life. You’re at a crossroads in your career, you’ve just fallen in love, you got a big promotion at work, your first child just came into this world — and then it happens.
The music begins to play. Without even thinking, you start to sing. Then, out of nowhere, friends, family and perhaps even complete strangers start to sing with you. You start to dance. Everyone else goes into the same dance routine in perfect sync to the song you are just making up in your head.
Sure, I know that flash mobs try to recreate this. But these are planned and rehearsed. In a movie, it’s supposed to be spontaneous. People who a moment earlier were casually walking down a city street start singing about the evils of pool at the behest of a music professor who just arrived in town. Or the waitstaff in a fancy restaurant all stop what they are doing because Mrs. Dolly Levi is heading down the grand stairwell.
An ordinary moment in life becomes extraordinary, all because it’s set to music. For example, I have always liked How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. I spent five years in the mailroom; Ponti spent just a couple hours there. If life had been a musical back then, I could have made it out of the mailroom in a week, tops. They would have wheeled me right down the hall and into the PR department as the music came to a victorious crescendo.
I have known people who thought life really was a musical. My ex did for sure. She was obsessed with musicals in a most unhealthy way. I wouldn’t have minded, if she had ever sung numbers that were happy. But she really loved the really depressing ones about people who were starving, others living in piss and women who were on death row for murdering their husbands.
You think I’m exaggerating about her thinking life was a musical? Her favorite song to sing was On My Own from Les Miserables. And now she is.
Yes, at least in this instance, life imitated art. I am very glad that the song about murdering husbands didn’t play out, though I have no doubt it would have eventually been part of the implausible performance we called a marriage.
One of the great things about a musical is that they all have common threads. Love conquers all, good triumphs evil, impossible odds are overcome in impossible ways, and it’s always a happy ending. Even in a play about miserable, downtrodden people in France, there is a happy ending, well, sort of.
And maybe that’s the best part of leading a musical life, a happy ending. We don’t all get them in the real world. Wouldn’t life be far better if even at the end of the crummiest day in your life, a wistful melody begins in the background. You start to sing about your plight, and midway through, the song turns triumphant as you realize that you can’t be beaten down, no matter what the odds. Tomorrow is another day, a better day!
I imagine there are downsides to the life musical. Hauling around an orchestra can get pretty pricey. Then there’s all those union rules. Squeezing 60 musicians into the romantic restaurant you’ve picked to pop the question can be problematic.
Then there’s the whole issue of talent. As you know, in a real production, the best singers and dancers get the plum roles. The leftovers are put in the chorus, which is as close as you can possibly come to a Siberian gulag in theater.
In real life, our friends aren’t necessarily top tier talent. They may think they are, but they really have two left feet or the Shrieking Eels in the Princess Bride have better voices than they do. They want center state, not backstage.
So the production suffers because of it because you really don’t have the heart to tell your lifelong friend that he doesn’t have the chops to be a lead.
For me, the music is the easy part – it’s the dialogue that I have trouble with. I can rehearse for hours on end, only to end up flubbing a line or simply forgetting an entrance cue, one that someone else is depending on. Before you know it, the whole scene comes crashing down all around you and though your comrades won’t say it to your face, they’re mocking you in the dressing room.
Still, I can wish, can’t I? At some point in my life I will have to break down, bursting into song at a particularly dramatic moment in my life. Without warning I will do some jazz hands, a two step, an orchestra will start up and lyrics will pour forth out of nowhere.
Don’t worry though. I won’t be doing this in a bar anytime soon. Sure, it worked for Helen Reddy and Mickey Rooney in Pete’s Dragon. But I would really like to keep my teeth. There always seems to be a critic with a fist full of opinions.
Out on the Treasure Coast, singing in the rain,
– Robb