Monday, October 11, 2010

head full of songs

Life is pummeling me with mostly happy happenings. My days are stampeding by so quickly, and so full challenge and delight, that I have barely found time to think about them, let alone to post my thoughts to my blog. But here I am. Later, I hope to post about tomatoes, homeless shelters, poetry readings and other things of great important. Today I will post about songs.

Since early September, I have been enjoying Fiona's participation in 13 the Musical. The show ran at the Vancouver Fringe Festival, was selected for the Pick of the Fringe award, then had a second run this weekend at the Norman Rothstein Theatre. So now I have seen it 5 times, and I love it more each time. 13 is a musical about a boy who moves from the big city to a small town just in time for his Bar Mitzvah. It's funny and smart and fairly raunchy - like a 13 year old. Last week I told Fiona that I had one of the songs running through my head. She laughed and told me that one of her friends in the show just tweeted that her father was walking around the house, singing the same song.

I also have songs in my head from The Fantasticks, which opened at the Vancouver Playhouse this weekend. Fiona and I saw a preview show the weekend before opening. It is a splendid show with complicated and delightful music, and a delicious mix of absurdist humour and real life wisdom. It's like a treasure chest of delights. I especially enjoyed Jeff Hyslop in his role as The Mute and Christopher Gaze as a dotty old actor, slaughtering Shakespeare. The music was stellar from start to finish, but the high point for me was Steve Maddock as El Gallo and Colin Sheen as Matt singing "I Can See It." That's what's stuck in my head just now.

I hope I may get to see the Fantasticks again before it's over. 13 is all done after a very satisfying run. I'm sure I will be humming tunes from both, for some time.

question: what song is buzzing in your ear today?

mompoet - head full of good things, including some fine songs

No comments: