The Joys of High School Musical Theatre

This last Thursday Charlotta and Nicole took me to my first High School production. The sad thing is that I am a freshman at college. So, I am about five years late. At Redmond High every spring the drama department performs a musical. Last year they performed the Wizard of Oz. I didn't find out until Thursday morning that this years performance was Grease. Any of my friends can tell you that I am a huge fan of Broadway. I especially love Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim's work. Grease is not one I am particularly fond of , though like several people my age, I grew up with it.

As excited as I am when I get to hang out with my best friends, I walked in to the auditorium not nearly as much enthusiasm. I did find out that during the early stages for this production the administrators went through the entire script and banned most of it (language, sexuality,etc.) so, I was pleasantly surprised on how creative the cast and crew got. Though the songs were out of context in regards to order (also changed different actor's parts in the songs) in the original production, the execution of most of them was excellent. The girl who played Sandy had a lovely voice, though occasionally it was hard to hear. The other character that really stuck out was Rizzo. The director chose the perfect actress for that roll, and she did not disappoint. While I am on this particular topic; I was fairly amused with one major difference. In the movie Sandy is this sweet and naive girl, would never go out of her way to hurt someone. In the play I watched, when Riz is making fun of Sandy with the song Sandra Dee, Sandy stalks right up to her and slaps her across the face. That is precisely what most high school girls would do when someone tries to stain their reputation.

There were a couple of downsides to the evening that had nothing to do with performance. My friends being awesome as usual found us decent seats that would give us a good view without flaring up my claustrophobia (fear of closed in spaces) and my agoraphobia (fear of crowds). The problem was, we sat in front of a patron(s) who obviously loves the musical so much that just listening was intolerable. Nicole , Charlotta and I could not see who it was so we could not ask the individual to not do that, but we did have to work at not telling the whole group to shut up through out the performance.

After the performance we waited for Charlotta's sister who was stage crew to finish her duties. After dropping them off Nicole and I got some dinner and drove back to her house listening to Josh Groban as loud as our ears could handle. Boy, I love music!!!

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