Obviously tequila was involved. It was a question of survival. One of the few times I’ve had the stomach for musical theatre was on a belly full of cheap Mexican intoxicants, whilst trap
ped in a brainless war of attrition with Saturday Night Fever: The Musical. This wasn’t so much blood on the dancefloor as an all out massacre on anything with cultural value, a plot and a decent wig.
To say that all men hate musicals is, of course, a sweeping statement. It’s patently untrue for a start. There are many lovers of musical with an Adam’s apple and who apparently possess good taste in other parts of their lives. Some (not all) gay men, my best mate Rich and some odd guy I met at a party who told me that We Will Rock You was better than seeing Queen live. But most vaguely sane males that I know would rather talk about a woman’s menstrual cycle than sit through Mama Mia! for the sixth time.
All of which led me to an interesting conundrum when my oldest friend got a job on Mary Poppins The Musical. He wasn’t singing thank God. Remembering our days in the school choir would have been enough to send me screaming to the nearest asylum if that had been the case, but he was safely incarcerated backstage working on lighting and making sure precocious little actor kids didn’t fall over their own pre-pubescent egos. I had already feigned my acceptance of him saying things like “Oh it’s so good, you’ll love it”, when the dreaded invite landed on my doormat. “Come and see my opening nig
ht in Bristol”. This was a test of friendship to match Oates and Captain Scott.
Plan A - get steamingly drunk and quietly slip into some hallucinatory state – was already out of the window due to the fact that I was going with a friend’s elderly mother, although it’s entirely possible that she also needed some gin to see her through the night. Thus I’d happened upon:
Plan B - I’d have to try and enjoy a musical. Sentimental, nonsensical, trivial, vacuous ‘escapism’? Give it to me now, Mary.
And as I sat there in the dark trying to focus on the dizzying array of special effects and fleet-footed brat dancers, not to mention the aesthetically-pleasing Nanny herself (Why did I never have a babysitter who looked like Laura Michelle Kelly?), I realised that my foot was starting to tap. To something that wasn’t a low-fi American indie band. This was a distinctly strange experience and one that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. Even worse was to follow. As the cast trounced out another version of “Chim chiminey chim chiminey chim chim cheroo” – who says musicals aren’t intellectual? – I found myself actually smiling and being filled with an enormous sense of joy and goodwill to small children and chimney sweeps.
Why this sudden swell of emotional connection? Had a musical actually affected me in a manner that didn’t involve chewing my seat in frustration and confusion? To this day I couldn’t tell you exactly what happened to me, other than to say that Mary Poppins is actually a very well produced piece of theatre and I’d been forced to open my mind to accept something that hadn’t been culturally approved by a bunch of jaded, cynical alcoholic hacks. I’d learned a lesson from a musical, which is only slightly less surprising than John Prescott being a cheating love rat. Fear not though reader. I still wouldn’t sit through We Will Rock You if you paid me a trenfillion dollars. - By Dan Pilkington
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