Plays vs. Musicals

I am a musical girl. I know some people can't suspend the disbelief that people burst into song, but that's the BEST PART! My brother recently took a trip to New York and saw his first Broadway show, and I was so proud. He saw Beautiful with Vanessa Carlton. He really liked it because, "The songs were them writing or being performed - they didn't just burst into song for no reason." Okay.

Musicals can go light or serious, but a good chunk of plays are pretty heavy. I prefer the lightness. Though on my last trip to New York, I saw two comedy plays - Hillary and Clinton at the Golden Theatre, and the closing performance of Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus at the Booth. (Side note: when you hear "Booth" and "theatre" you automatically think "John Wilkes" who assassinated Lincoln. The Booth Theatre was named for his brother who was a famous actor.)

HC was labeled a comedy, yet it was still serious, and it left me feeling resigned. But I laughed a lot. The play asks you to think about the endless possibilities and the endless outcomes in the infinite number of universes that could be out there. The play was one version of a woman named Hillary who was running for president in 2008 and one way that it may have gone. Laurie Metcalfe is amazing. So is John Lithgow, but the first role I remember seeing him in was on Third Rock From the Sun, so no matter what role he's doing, I still see a bit of that alien.

I knew going into Gary that it was crude. And yes, it was dick and fart jokes galore. That's not my kind of comedy. It takes plays immediately after the end of Titus Andronicus - the civil war is over, death is everywhere, and two servants are left to clean up the mess. It did have an out there, wacky, surreal, Monty Python-esque feel to it, that I enjoyed. And I wanted to see Nathan Lane and a closing performance. Both Julie White, and Kristine Nielsen got Tony noms for their performances, and rightly so. They were brilliant. If you've ever seen Absolutely Fabulous, White's character of Carol reminded me a lot of Bubbles. But it was a metaphor for society, as art often is. The overarching theme was, you can try to keep your head down and get by and be content with the way things are, or you can decide to change the world and try to make it a better place for all.

Last weekend I went to a local production of Little Foxes at the Murfreesboro Little Theatre. I took a class on modern American drama in grad school (I have an English degree), and I know I had read it, but I remembered very little about the play. I just knew greed. And it was all about greedy family. It made me think of some people in power, even though it takes place in 1900. It was difficult to watch, but not as difficult as the play I saw the week before.

Maidens, put on by the Tennessee Playwrights Studio at Darkhorse Theatre, was literally about Nazis. Based on real people, the play focused on two Nazi women after they've been prosecuted and condemned to hang for their crimes. One, Jenny, happily wears her evil on the outside, and the other, Elizabeth, maintains her innocence throughout. We see flashbacks to the concentration camp - the company used three actors in all black body suits as multiple characters throughout. We don't see Elizabeth doing anything, but by the end, she is in the audience yelling that we are vermin and not people and have no rights. The two hang at the end, and I felt no sympathy at all. You can't sympathize with Nazis. However, the last image of the play was actual photos of the women hanging. That was hard to see. But at the same time, I've visited a concentration camp, a work camp, and a holding town. I've seen photos of those poor people, stood in the room where they were crushed together worse than sardines, walked passed the gas chambers where they lost their lives. That was harder to see.

So yes. My experience with plays tends to be heavy. And I try to stay away from heavy, emotional musicals. Give me the happy song and dance for no reason. Take to away to a place of happiness and song.