Oh, yes, yes they are. I just finished Emma Brockes' What Would Barbra Do? How Musicals Changed My Life. I confess, I almost left it on the shelf because the last Streisand musical I saw was Yentl and the less said about that particular experience, the better. But I flipped through it and was entranced. Never mind the fact that Emma Brockes is an Oxford-educated writer whose home is littered with prestigious literary prizes. The girl knows musicals, knows them intimately and with fervour (I swear I just tried to type "fervence". Typepad, if you're listening, a word processing program to point out the nonexistence of such words would be GREAT.) She knows the backstories and playbills of musicals I never even knew existed, and she is not afraid to ridicule the ones that so richly deserve it. My only disappointment was the fact that there was not a single mention of David Hasselhoff starring in the title role of Jekyll & Hyde. (Incidentally, if any of you happen to know Robert Cuccioli personally, would you please convey to him my heartfelt and sincere regret at the untimely coughing fit that interrupted the climax of "This Is The Moment" when he was performing at the Majestic Theatre in San Antonio? He was sublime, and I was asphyxiating in the upper balcony. I must have crawled over forty patrons to get out of that theatre as quickly as I could, and I KNOW he was hating me every second. I don't blame him at all, and I am truly sorry. If it's any consolation, his voice resonated beautifully all the way into the ladies' room.)
As I said, Brockes is unabashed in her adoration of the musical, but she is wonderfully tough as well. She is not smitten with Cats or Phantom, and she recognizes the appallling, sticky sweet sentimentality of The Sound of Music. AND YET, like me, she is powerless to resist those first opening notes. (Personally, it doesn't even take the beginning bars to lure me in. The first few frames of the silent, snowy Alps are enough. Just one glimpse of those nun-dotted peaks and I am doooooomed.) And Brockes is the only other person I know of who actually sympathizes with the Baroness. (Boarding school seems perfectly civilized, and her wardrobe was pretty Hitchcock, don't you think?)
The funny thing is, I don't remember ever actually WATCHING The Sound of Music (or, The Sound of Mucus, as Christopher Plummer is reputed to have called it.) I distinctly remember staring around at a room full of my classmates in first grade, mystified that they all apparently knew the words to a stupid song about deer, and the next thing I knew, I was so intimately conversant with this musical that I even had down the yodeling parts of "The Lonely Goatherd". How did this happen? Is there some sort of musical osmosis? I can't explain it. I don't even LIKE this movie. And yet, while I can no longer remember the words to ANY of the songs on Van Halen's "Women and Children First" (which, by the way, came with an extremely gorgeous poster of David Lee Roth before he started to look like jerky), I can easily sing along to every verse of "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?" There is something monumentally unfair about that.
The more I think about it, the more I agree with my husband's position that "the only good musical is one in which someone dies". (Hence the tickets to Jekyll & Hyde.) We're feverishly anticipating the release of Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd, which brings back some interesting memories for me because the last time I saw the show I was about eight months' pregnant. Spattering gore is an interesting choice for gestational entertainment, but it doesn't seem to have affected our daughter at all. She actually OWNS The Sound of Music and enforces occasional sing-a-longs. She's gotten old enough to arm wrestle me for Maria's songs, but she refuses to sing "Climb Ev'ry Mountain", so I have begun to belt that one like Ethel Merman just because I can. Believe me when I say it vastly enhances the experience.
