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Thursday, August 03, 2006

 

I Was a Teenage Ito


So I'm zipping around Google News this morning and I come across a story that says Hugh Jackman is going to be playing Billy Bigelow in a new production of Carousel.

And I thought, "Oh my God! He'd be a perfect Billy Bigelow! He's going to be awesome in that part. I can't wait to see it."

And then I stopped for a moment and I thought, "Man. I find it vaguely disconcerting that I'm that enthusiastic about a musical."

But there's a perfectly valid, non-gay reason that I have a knowledge of--and a fondness for--musicals. I grew up doing community theater. At nine years old, I got my start in the chorus of Fiddler on the Roof. Twenty-seven years later and I still occasionally find myself singing bits of "If I Were a Rich Man". The stuff sticks with you, friends, let me tell ya.

I did musicals throughout my teenage years, largely because all community theaters do a shitload of musicals. I danced the "Shipoopi" with a face swollen up like Eric Stoltz in Mask from poison ivy. I played a Nazi soldier in two different productions of Sound of Music because my dad was directing and needed extra bodies. I played Young Patrick in my high school's Mame and played Ito two years later for a community theater. I've played Doody and Dream Jud and the Munchkin Coroner.

Then I got to college and I found out that not only did you not have to do musicals if you didn't really want to, but, if your singing voice isn't all that great, you're actually encouraged not to. So I stopped.

Still, though I doubt I'll ever be onstage singing again, I continue to have an appreciation for the genre. I'm not, mind you, out there standing in line for preview tickets for Lestat or anything. *shudder* But I can enjoy a good, non-jukebox, special-effects-light, funny musical.

And for the record, I think Hugh Jackman will make an excellent Billy Bigelow.

Comments:
I don't like Hugh Jackman doing musicals. It takes away from the hotness that is Wolverine and makes him look like a sissy lala boy.
 
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