Plays

I blame my Mom for this. And I don't think that it will come as a surprise to her, either. This weekend, as we were watching our nephew Eric perform in the community's production of Annie Get Your Gun, I was in heaven. You see, I blame my Mom for a love that I have.

I love plays.

Mostly Broadway Musicals, but really any live performance that involves acting, dancing, or singing. Because she loved (and still loves) plays too, she took us to a lot of performances when we were younger. I remember going to Candlelight Dinner Playhouse every December, right after Christmas when we would receive the tickets for the performance. We would dress up in nice clothes, drive about 45 minutes outside of Chicago, and see a musical being performed in a theatre-in-the-round-type staging. As the years went by, we became used to the routine, which included ordering our dessert to be served at intermission, and counting the back-lit signs from previous musicals that we had seen. Man of La Mancha? Check. Oklahoma? Check. La Cage Aux Folles? Check. Phantom of the Opera? Check. Fiddler on the Roof? Check. Evita? Check. And the list went on and on.

One year for Christmas, I got the record of Annie, and also a ticket to see the play downtown. I was so excited because it was going to be in the big theatre, much bigger than the dinner playhouse I was used to. When we walked out onto the balcony (or it may have been the second balcony), I was in awe. The orchestra was warming up, the maroon velvet curtain was covering the stage, and the ushers scurried around trying to seat all of the people before the show began. And once it did, I was mesmerized. I think I especially loved it because there were a lot of kids in the production. I thought that was cool, and I dreamed of dancing along with Daddy Warbucks while holding onto my dog, Sandy. For weeks after seeing that production, I would play the record over and over on my blue phonograph, and look at the back of the album jacket at the few pictures from the Broadway production.

Listening to musicals on records became the norm in our house. Our parents' copies of West Side Story, or Oklahoma, or The Sound of Music, or The King and I, or A Chorus Line were dusted off and played incessantly. A lot of times we would never have seen the show, but could imagine the dancing that would take place around the songs. In fact, I have never seen A Chorus Line, but could probably sing every line in every song of that play if I did.

Our high school had a really good drama department run by a very obsessive teacher. Because of his OCD, the productions were fabulous. Some of the productions I vividly remember were The Sound of Music, when our neighbor was in it, The King and I when my brothers were in it, or Bye Bye Birdie when Mickey worked on stage crew. It was a high school production of Oliver! that piqued my interest in Dickens.

But the love didn't end after I graduated from high school. I still love to see plays of any kind. Chris gave us a gift certificate to see a Broadway play in Chicago, and I can't wait. I'm thinking Mary Poppins would be fun, especially because I loved (and still do) that movie as a kid. Stein is still amazed when I sing along with it when it's on TV. In fact, when any musical comes on and I start singing, he just shakes his head, and says, "How do you know this?!"

I just do, and I love it.