Theatre Thursday :: examples of the musical theatre Bechdel Test? (A-L)

This probably shouldn’t be called a variant of the Bechdel Test; there are plenty of musicals where women speak to each other but don’t sing duets/trios/group numbers together.  But that’s what this list is, and I don’t think there’s an official name for it, so I’m just going with it.  Also, this doesn’t count group numbers that have individual lines sung by women and men both or songs that are sung by one woman with an all-female backup.  This is just a list of lady songs.  (Girls and women who sing musical theatre are always looking for songs like this to do in concerts with friends, it is known.)  And unfortunately, while the Bechdel Test proper excludes conversations held solely about men, this list cannot do so; since such a large proportion of the musical theatre catalogue as a whole is comprised of songs about romance, not including songs about romance on this list would make it itsy bitsy.  And this is only the musicals I am familiar with from the list.  Starred* items are ones that people I know have sung publicly in the past.

Annie by Charles Strouse: “Hard Knock Life,” sung by the orphans (I think this is why so many theatrically inclined little girls like Annie, because they can all be in it with their friends).*
Bernarda Alba by Michael John LaChiusa: is 100% ladies.  It’s an all-lady cast.  And it’s weird, but it’s fabulous.
Bye Bye Birdie by Charles Strouse: “What Did I Ever See In Him?” sung by Rosie and Kim.*
Carousel by Rodgers and Hammerstein: “You’re a Queer One, Julie Jordan,” sung by Carrie and Julie.*
Chicago by Kander and Ebb: “Cell Block Tango,” sung by Velma and the merry murderesses (this counts because they all have solos), “My Own Best Friend,” sung by Roxie and Velma (not in the film).
A Chorus Line by Hamlisch and Kleban: “At the Ballet,” sung by Sheila, Bebe, and Maggie.
Fiddler on the Roof by Bock and Harnick: “Matchmaker,” sung by Hodel, Chava, and Tzeitel.*
Grease by Casey and Jacobs: “It’s Raining On Prom Night,” sung by Sandy and a radio singer.*
Hairspray by Shaiman and Wittman: “Mama, I’m a Big Girl Now,” sung by Tracy, Penny, Amber, and their mothers.*
Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim: “A Very Nice Prince,” sung by Cinderella and the Baker’s Wife.*
Legally Blonde by Benjamin and O’Keefe: “Ohmygod You Guys,” sung by Elle, Serena, Margot, Pilar and Company.*
The Light in the Piazza by Adam Guettel: “Statues and Stories,” sung by Margaret and Clara.
Little Women by Howland and Dickstein: “An Operatic Tragedy,” sung by all four sisters, “Our Finest Dreams,” sung by all four sisters, “I’d Be Delighted,” sung by Marmee, Meg, Beth, and Jo, and “Some Things Are Meant To Be,” sung by Beth and Jo.
Little Shop of Horrors by Menken and Ashman: the “Prologue,” sung by the Do-Wop Girls.*

–your fangirl heroine.

Music Monday :: 5 more more examples of instrumental music that isn’t a score

Or rather, 3 examples of instrumental music that is from the score to a musical (not a film score, which is all or mostly instrumental) and 2 more that are just “regular’ songs without words.

5. “Last Fall,” Markéta Irglová
This is another one of those I-will-mention-it-forever songs.  Because it is haunting and wonderful.

4. “Dance of the Gray Whales,” A Fine Frenzy
Pines came out last year but I didn’t get it until a couple weeks ago, hence the lack of review of it; I am nonetheless obsessed with it lately.  I have been playing it far too often, for a lot of reasons, and it made me smile like crazy when one of the tracks was pure-instrumental.

3. “Depraved Heart Murder at Sanitarium Square,” Repo! The Genetic Opera
I don’t really care.  I actually think this (which is kind of akin to an overture, I guess, which normally I wouldn’t count for this kind of list but this one can count because it is both randomly located in the middle of the album and over top of some ridiculous cartoons) is a beautiful piece of music.  It may have to do with the cello action involved.

2. “American Dancing,” The Light in the Piazza
Definitely the cutest song on this list, and there are other mostly-instrumental moments in this show, but this one doesn’t have talking over it or anything and yeah, this list just needed something cute.

1. “Jackie’s Last Dance,” The Wild Party (Lippa)
I recently listened to this album on a whim after at least a year of not listening to it and it sort of kicked me in the face, metaphorically speaking.  It is a lovely work, and this track is creepy and wonderful.

–your fangirl heroine.

Theatre / Things in Print Thursday :: 5 musicals based on works of literature

I thought of a few of these on my head and went looking for a Wikipedia list to round it out.  And then I remembered there are actually a lot of these.  Musical theatre, even more than film and television, tends to be like a giant fanfiction, a collection of riffs on a particular preexisting theme.  Nowadays the thing is to turn movies, originally musical or not, into stage musicals; I don’t inherently dislike this practice, good things can come of it, but some sort of silly things can come of it too.  And silly isn’t bad.  Silly is fine sometimes.  Sometimes it’s not to my tastes personally, but it could be to someone else’s.  Still, though, there’s a reason I freak out over truly original musicals: there really aren’t that many.

So tonight, I begin to discuss musicals based on the written word.  In high school, when I fell in love with a musical and it was based in something written, I immediately set about acquiring the written, so I’m going to limit this list tonight to ones I have standing knowledge of.  And most likely have personal experiences with.

5, 4.  The Wild Party by Joseph Moncure March (musicals by Michael John LaChiusa and by Andrew Lippa)
I’ve discussed my Wild Party thing at length before, but not in these terms necessarily.  I first got the Lippa album sophomore year because it had Idina Menzel and Taye Diggs on it, and I had been in a Rent phase for a year or more already.  I’d decided I absolutely needed to acquire every obscure theatre album I could, and I’d heard “The Juggernaut” on Sirius satellite radio and swooned deeply.  As I’ve before said, I fell in love with it; I then proceeded to check the poem out from the library.  For my birthday that year, a dear friend of mine found the poem on the internet and purchased me my own copy, and because sophomore year was the year I routinely memorized things for fun (I wasn’t in any productions until the spring and didn’t yet have extraneous responsibilities to my school paper or a membership on the mock trial team, I needed a hobby) I spent a disproportionate amount of my spare time memorizing parts of the poem.  It’s a long poem, the length of a small book, and the parts I did commit to memory were easily done; though all that remains is the couplet “the only one not on hand was Kate / she was Queenie’s red-headed running mate,” I did at one point have multiple limerick-type sections as well as the entire page and a half devoted to Kate’s entrance memorized.  As I’ve said, the LaChiusa recording (which I got a few months later) is closer to the poem, dealing more with characters, though both have a reasonable amount of extrapolation.  I can’t say how much this affects the plot, having not actually seen the show, but this also may have been my first successful attempt at appreciating source material and adaptation equally on different levels.

3. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber)
The movie, as I’ve said, came out when I was a freshman in high school; I got my hands on the book a few months later.  The above-mentioned friend and I read it around the same time and proceeded to be insufferable know-it-alls about it amongst our friends (we were those kinds of people, though harmlessly).  Differences in plot were discussed frequently and with anyone (amongst our friends) who would listen; we regularly made reference to obscure details that weren’t in the musical, and though I’m not exactly proud of this, in more than one frustrating social situation did we turn to each other and then proclaim for the benefit of the others in earshot, “did you know that in the book of Phantom Christine tries to harm herself by repeatedly banging her head against a wall?” and then approximating said action ourselves.  We and our social group as a whole were obsessed with Phantom, though the musical was always second (the book was darker, we liked darker), and I also committed to memory the phrase “il est ici, le fantôme de l’opéra!”  (I spoke no proper French at the time, but I internet-translated that and liked to exclaim it at regular intervals.)

2. The Light in the Piazza by Elizabeth Spencer (musical by Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel)
Of all of these discussed tonight, this is the adaptation that would seem to be the closest.  It’s a novella, so there was no need to condense plot or any such, really; it’s been years since I read it, so I don’t remember every detail.  But Wikipedia just pointed out something to me, something that of course I knew, but I hadn’t really thought of in these terms: “it is also perhaps the only bilingual Broadway musical.  Many of the lyrics are in Italian or broken English, as many of the characters are fluent only in Italian.”  I think that, regardless of source material, this is one of the reasons the show is so special: it’s genuine.  This show makes me feel quite a lot of feelings, as it were; I have never cried at it, but I’ve gotten fairly close to choked up, for sure.  I remember the book being similarly affecting, so that’s something.

1. Wicked by Gregory Maguire (musical by Stephen Schwartz)
As I before discussed.

–your fangirl heroine.

Sundry Sunday :: an “I went there for you” 6 list

“I went there for you” lists are lists of actors who I appreciate so much based on one or more performances that I will literally go out of my way to view one or more other performances of theirs.  This is sometimes rewarding; this is sometimes disastrous.  But hey.

6. Nathan Fillion

Nathan Fillion.  Geeky god-king of the Whedonverse.  Someone I have never not enjoyed.  I appreciated Nathan for Firefly and for Dr. Horrible, and because of my appreciation for him, followed him to Super and Castle, the latter of which is seen above and which I admit that I am woefully, heinously behind in (approximately season two, because I just keep getting distracted with other projects).  I realized that I had already seen him in Slither, which was directed by James Gunn just like Super was; I had watched that just because I enjoy campy-ass, morbid horror semi-comedies, but that works as well.  He is just delightful.

5, 4. Lea Michele and Matthew Morrison

As I have before mentioned, I was basically a Spring Awakening groupie.  I still love it with all my heart.  I naturally found Lea through that, and thought she sang pretty and such.  I saw the original cast of The Light in the Piazza, too, and I absolutely was in love with Matthew Morrison in it, singing so beautifully in Italian all over the place.  So naturally, when I heard all that while ago that they were going to be in a singing television program together, I went “YAY!!” and prepared to fangirl.  Glee, seen above, is one of those “I went there for you” moments that I am now… mildly regretting, though, for the reasons I’ve mentioned before; also, it sucks that I don’t really like… well, a lot of the characters, but I really don’t like Rachel that much, and I really don’t like Will that much, and while Lea gets to sing all the time, Matt doesn’t get to show off what he can actually do.  I miss when he sang in Italian and sustained notes and it was lovely.

3. Dichen Lachman

I love her more every time I see her face.  I fell for Dichen because of Dollhouse, obviously (just like I fell for… most of the cast that I hadn’t already fallen for already).  But I’ve followed her now to two different places: Torchwood: Miracle Day and now the US Being Human, seen above.  I’d never watched Torchwood before, I’d never watched Being Human before, but that’s just how it is.  I didn’t really love Torchwood (I hear that I would enjoy the original more, so I’m not ruling it out in the future), and I admit that I watch her Being Human episodes on my laptop and just do other things in other tabs until I hear/see her scenes come on, but I do love her.  Even when it’s something I do not otherwise care about whatsoever.

2. Patrick Fugit

Surprise!  This is a predictable list, yes.  After falling in love with him in Almost Famous, I proceeded to follow Patrick Fugit to Saved, to Bickford Schmeckler’s Cool Ideas (which is an example of psychic going there for someone, too, since my much-loved Fran Kranz is there t00), to The Amateurs, to Wristcutters: A Love Story, seen above, to We Bought a Zoo, to Cinema Verite… yeah.  Everywhere.  But the thing is, I’m usually not disappointed.  A lot of those aren’t my favorite movies like Almost Famous is, but I don’t dislike any of them.  And I always love him.

1. Summer Glau

But my darling Summer… takes me to places I regret going sometimes.  Firefly was what made me love her, too, and I didn’t follow her to Dollhouse because I was already there, but I obviously regret nothing about that experience; it’s… well, a lot of the rest.  It’s following her to The Cape, seen above; I think I used that picture back in the day when I tried to put the most positive spin I could on my Cape-watching experience, because really, aside from the one girl who was on Deadwood who I decided was my Nolanized Harley Quinn, the above scene is kind of one of the only things I remember about that show.  I tried so hard to enjoy myself with it, but I couldn’t even finish it, and that’s saying something considering my compulsion to finish everything I begin.  It’s following her to Deadly Honeymoon, which I tumbled about that once and… well, yes.  I didn’t mind following her to Alphas, that I liked fairly well; I still haven’t actually watched that show aside from her episode, though I know I should (more with the time constraints).  But it’s not as unfailingly successful, following her places.  Which is a shame, because she tries to make the best of everything no matter where she ends up, and that’s admirable.

–your fangirl heroine.

Superlative Sunday :: 5 Tonyfails since I started paying attention

5. The existence of the 2010 season.
Seriously.  Watching the Tonys last year, I couldn’t even make myself root for anything.  I just didn’t care.  I mean, I’m sure American Idiot is fun, but like three of the four Best Musical nominees of 2010, it’s a jukebox musical.  I’m sure they’re all very good at being what they are.  But I just… couldn’t care.

4. Jersey Boys winning Best Musical over The Drowsy Chaperone (2006)
Drowsy isn’t a perfect show.  I’m aware of this.  But it’s very cute, and it’s 100% original.  Unlike Jersey Boys, which is… not.  It’s a jukebox musical.  And have I mentioned how much I abhor that trend?  Honestly and truly?  And it’s not even jukeboxing someone whose music I can stand.  Because, come on, what drives you nuttier than Frankie Valli’s voice?  I know in my case, nothing.

3. Spamalot winning Best Musical over The Light in the Piazza (2005)
Not because Spamalot isn’t cute, I guess?  I mean, it’s fun.  It’s frothy and whimsical and has lots of Monty Python in-jokes.  But Piazza is in my Top 4 of shows of all time.  It’s probably not something everyone’s gonna be into, but it’s beautiful.  It’s genuine.  It’s not trying to be anything more than a story of people and a moment in their lives.  And the score is insanely phenomenal.  Again, probably a little too operatic for some people’s tastes.  But seriously intensely amazing.

2. Billy Elliot winning Best Musical over Next to Normal (2009)
Now that I’ve seen Billy Elliot, I can say it’s… good.  I mean, it’s a pretty standard Broadway Show Full Of Songs And Dance.  It’s decently written, and when the performers are good, it’s solid.  But Next to Normal… well, very few things have hit me as square in the chest as Next to Normal have.  It’s a genuinely unique experience in musical theatre.  It’s raw, it’s (yes) electric, it’s poignant, it’s quirky.  And it, again, is original.  Completely.  (Can you tell that I have a bit of a soft spot for Sincerely Original Musicals?  I do.)

1. David Hyde Pierce (Curtains) winning Best Actor over Raul Esparza (Company)
Holy mother bitch.  I will never stop being bitter about this.  And I’m sure that David Hyde Pierce did a passable, adequate job of filling the Generic Broadway Man shoes in Curtains.  I’m sure his performance was very acceptable.  I’m sure that for a television actor it was even a bit surprising.  But come on.  Even before I saw the broadcast via PBS of Company, just based on their performances that night at the Tonys, Raul Esparza owned.  His “Being Alive” remains one of the most chilling theatrical moments I have ever witnessed.

–your fangirl heroine.

Theatre Thursday :: that cast of Company that was filmed recently was pretty rad.

You know the one.  Or maybe you don’t, because you’re very likely not as nutty as me, but it was the one with Neil Patrick Harris as Bobby and Christina Hendricks as April and Patti LuPone as Joanne and Stephen Colbert as Harry and Martha Plimpton as Sarah and Anika Noni Rose as Marta and Jon Cryer as David and Aaron Lazar as Paul and Jill Paice as Susan and Jennifer Laura Thompson as Jenny and Katie Finneran as Amy and Chryssie Whitehead as Kathy and Jim Walton as Larry?

Okay.  I fully admit to hearing Neil Patrick Harris and Christina Hendricks and vowing to do whatever I had to to see the broadcast performance in theaters during its brief run last weekend, because his facial expressions make life and she is my favorite human being on the planet.  Then during the Tonys, there was that preview number, and I said “oh hey!  All sorts of other epic people!”  I especially geeked for Aaron Lazar, once of The Light in the Piazza, because I adore his heavenly voice to pieces.

Company isn’t my favorite musical, necessarily.  It’s very of its time, and that’s… not always a good thing.  It can also get a teensy bit heavy-handed in the wrong hands, a bit too angst-ridden and frustrating.  (Not that the angst isn’t great.  Raul Esparza’s should-have-been-Tony-winning Bobby in the 2007 revival was glorious.)  And I definitely have to be in a certain headspace for Sondheim.

But I was very not disappointed.  Neil Patrick Harris’ Bobby was less >:O and more :3 and that was refreshing.  Not better or worse, just different.  Chryssie Whitehead can dance, damn girl.  I mean, this is not surprising, as she is late of A Chorus Line (we missed her just barely when we saw the revival) but it was still well-highlighted.  Considering she was the girlfriend that got the Dance Break!  Anika Noni Rose, of Dreamgirls and The Princess and the Frog and other legit-er things, was good.  I didn’t get much a sense of character out of her (she was the ~wacky~ one?) but she belted well.

Of the married women, my favorite was Katie Finneran’s Amy.  She’s a two time Tony winner (for Noises Off and last year’s Promises Promises revival) but my favorite role of hers is as Nanny Maureen in You’ve Got Mail, just one of the reasons that I’m pretty sure after 2000 there were no lovable romantic comedies made.  “Getting Married Today” is probably one of the hardest theatre songs to really sing, and she did it really, really well.  (Counterpointed by Aaron Lazar’s glorious “todaaaay is for AAAAAAAAAMYYYYYYY”-ing.)

Patti LuPone was amusing.  I sort of loathe the character of Joanne, and as always spent the entirety of “The Ladies Who Lunch” alternately remembering back in that not-that-great movie Camp when a young Anna Kendrick sang that song and wondering how in the hell Bobby and Joanne became close friends.  But Patti did a good job.  (Though we were in a movie theater, some people still felt compelled to applaud for La LuPone, which was funny.)

Stephen Colbert can actually sort of pull it off.  Despite having a vaguely google-eyed look on his face the entire time.

But most importantly, my girl Christina.  Well, babygirl isn’t necessarily the strongest singer, though she was cute and clearly doing a “voice” (a cutesy voice really) and could hold her own, but she was dancing sharp and being adorable.  April is probably my favorite character of the women anyway, just because she has a lot of funny moments.  I love my girl Christina playing ditzy, I love her playing sexy, I love her playing serious-ish, I just love her.  And was gratified by having yet one more reason to love her added to my list.  (I’d been hoping this staging would be the one a la 2007 where the actors played instruments, if just because I love her accordion skills.  Even if accordions are the most useless instrument ever, outside of European House Hunters.)

In short: I’m satisfied.  It wasn’t the Best Ever, but it was very good.

–your fangirl heroine.

Theatre Thursday :: Top 11 cast albums that changed my life

I guess this is just a week to reflect on life-changing things!  I’m not including movie soundtracks, though several of those have completely dominated my life.  I’m sure I’ll do a movie soundtracks post at some point, anyway.  I had to use 11, because I just couldn’t narrow it to 10.

11. Thoroughly Modern Millie (2002, OBC)
Well, Millie was my first Broadway show.  We didn’t see all of the originals (yes to Angela Christian as Miss Dorothy, no to most of the rest) but we did have a fantastic cast (Susan Egan as Millie, Christian Borle as Jimmy, Dixie Carter as Mrs. Meers).  Millie was also probably the first show I ever fell in love with, and my repeated listening to the cast album and that some of us even choreographed a tap number to “Forget About the Boy” to perform at the fair in order for us to have hay bales for our production of Oklahoma! ought to prove that.  I hadn’t quite learned not to cast myself as the ingenue yet, but Millie was just so darn sassy I adored her.

10. The Phantom of the Opera (1987, OBC)
I saw the film before I ever saw the stage show, but the stage show to me is afternoons freshman year, singing “Angel of Music” with the Christine to my Meg.  And those?  Good times.  It was about now that I realized that I was better suited to being the Cute Best Friend, and I still do this exceptionally well.  Not to mention Phantom influenced that ridiculous-as-hell novel we cranked out freshman year faaar too much.

9. Hairspray (2002, OBC)
And Hairspray was the first show I fell in love with before seeing it, just from listening to the album.  It’s just so sixties and fun and oh-em-gee, that cast.  Kerry Freaking Butler.  MATTHEW FREAKING MORRISON.  I have literally been on the Matthew Morrison train since I got this album freshman year of high school.  That doesn’t mean I love him more, it just means that I’m happy that other people finally have gotten a chance to see his amazing (even if Mr. Schue is kind of absurd at times, when he sings it all melts away).  Hairspray also celebrates differences, and that’s pretty rad.  Not completely revolutionary, but rad.

8. The Wild Party (1999, Off-B’way)
Though I have both the Lippa and the LaChiusa, it’s the Lippa that owns my soul.  The LaChiusa recording is closer to the original poem, but the Lippa is more plot-driven and less episodic, which is pretty neat.  Also, when Taye Diggs sings the word “dance” in “The Juggernaut,” I’m pretty sure I die of happy.  So yummy.  This was the show that introduced me to the fabulousness of Julia Murney and the extra-fabulousness that is Brian d’Arcy James, and I choose to believe that it is because I dragged my copy of it across the country for him to sign at Next to Normal stage door that he then thought of me when he needed to find someone to take a picture for another fan who’d come alone but wanted stage door pictures.  Because clearly, he realized that I was just that awesome.  I was Kate for Halloween my junior year of high school, and although literally nobody got what my pink flapper dress meant it turned out amazingly and I’m still proud of my mother for working off of one tiny 1″ x 3.5″ picture in the CD booklet and modifying a pattern accordingly.

7. [title of show] (2005, off-B’way)
I sort of just found [title of show] on a whim, but I’ve never been happier about an impulse decision.  It may not seem like much, four chairs and a keyboard, but they rock it so hard it’s insane.  The songs are cute, the adorable metafictionness of it just makes me too happy, and to top it all off, it’s really inspirational.  Probably to anyone, but especially to weirdos like me interested in a career in the creative arts.  And if it weren’t for my discovery of this show, I wouldn’t have then gone to New York to see it closing weekend (marking my first solo plane flight) and I wouldn’t have gone to the amazing Die, Vampire, Die! workshop held in Seattle and hosted by Hunter Bell and Susan Blackwell.  Were it not for [title of show], I would likely be unaware of Susan Blackwell herself, and that’s just a damn shame, because that woman is amazing.  We’d e-mailed and Facebooked a couple of times, because I am a dork, and had met at the Speech & Debate stage door, and when I was at the [title of show] stage door, she even asked me to introduce her to my friend and shook his hand.  I will never forget the awesome of that.  Or that, at the aforementioned workshop, Hunter Bell told me I was good at writing and to keep going.  When I’m feeling low, that’s something I can hold onto.  And all because of a $18 impulse buy.

6. Next to Normal (2009, OBC)
This show came along at exactly the right time in my life, I’m pretty sure.  And it still knocks me off my feet even just listening to it.  Considering that until the actual recording was released, I had been surviving on scratchy Vixy’d YouTube bootlegs of the off-Broadway production (that we saw), the album came along at the right time too.  It’s just such an emotional show, but it’s so beautiful.  I love it so extremely much and thank it for being that rare thing, a completely fresh story on the Broadway. 

5. Little Shop of Horrors (1980, off-Broadway)
When I saw Little Shop at the high school I would attend, at the tender age of twelve, I didn’t realize that it was setting me on an unalterable course.  Sure, I had always been a drama geek to an extent.  But Little Shop is what made me fall in love with musicals.  It was sassy and fun and a tiny bit dirty and kitschy and morbid and all other number of things that I still look for in musicals to this day, quite honestly.  It was the first cast album I bought, and the first one I memorized beginning-to-end.  Of course, the revival album is lovely, too, and the revival production of it I saw on tour in 2003, with ANTHONY FREAKING RAPP, was pretty life-changing as well.  I don’t know.  I’ll always have a soft spot for it in my heart, and no high school production will ever be able to compare (that doesn’t mean I won’t keep going to them, though).

4. Wicked (2004, OBC)
This also seems to be a list of  firsts, because Wicked was the first album that I got, then proceeded to campaign to go see the New York production (not even just the tour, oh no) until it happened.  It’s also the first show that I compulsively dove into the source material for.  And, yes, I think the book is better.  In absolutely so many ways.  But the stage show is just sentimental and sweet and I’m not even sure why I love it so much but I do.  I think it’s likely another that I have specific friend-related memories of, and that makes it dear to me.  I’ve also seen it three times now, so I can geek about it with the best of them.

3. The Light in the Piazza (2005, OBC)
I’m pretty sure this was the first cast album to inspire me to pick up phrases in another language.  I have no idea if I pronounce it correctly, but I can say one whole thing in Italian, “sei mia luce nella piazza,” which means “you are my light in the piazza.”  Not particularly useful if I ever go to Italy and need to, you know.  Get anything done.  But that’s okay, it makes for a good letter sign-off.  This also has two other firsts with it: it is the first show that I was able to fall in love with without trying to cast myself in, and it is the first show that I saw (mostly) the complete original cast of.  And I still regret not stage dooring it.  Piazza is still jaw-drop gorgeous, not just the music, but the story, the set, the clothes (when, ages ago, I saw a “Piazza Dress” on ModCloth, I immediately jumped to the conclusion they had been inspired, and felt smug and awesome for picking up on it).

2. Rent (1996, OBC)
Yet ANOTHER first.  Rent was the first show that made me do what I refer to as “induced emotional hyperventilating,” which is basically crying but without actual tears.  For some reason, I am usually incapable of crying at fiction.  It was also the source of my first (okay, really only) infamous lip-sync performance and the running joke that came from it (“Over the Moon,” and my thing for cartoon cows and cowbells).  People can say whatever they want about la vie Boheme, but that isn’t really the actual point of Rent, although it’s a big one.  Rent is about the people, the relationships, the life they live even in the face of death, and as such it’s touching and heartbreaking and insane.  Oh, another first: Rent was also the first time I saw someone’s butt on stage.

1. Spring Awakening (2006, OBC [mostly])
(I say mostly because there were some changes between the cast recording and the actual Broadway final copy of the score, but it’s labeled an OBC anyway.)  Oh, geez.  What is there to say about Spring?  Never before has a show lived so thoroughly in me.  Even though I’m not a fourteen-year-old German kid getting abused and having sex and committing suicide, and most of the people who see it probably aren’t, it touches people.  Deeply.  My parents, so long-removed from their youth, are touched by it.  And they’ve seen it almost as many times as I have (three to my four).  Spring was the first show I met the entire original cast of, the first show we sat in the front row for, the first show I had a “moment” with one of the actors during (Skylar Astin’s words, not mine), the first show I’ve ever organized an almost complete cast of dresser-uppers for Halloween for (and the first show we’ve won awards for doing this for and that the cast has complimented our photos regarding), and – though likely partially because I’d found out not a week before that the Broadway production was closing, and my fourth time seeing it – the first show I cried during.  And I bawled like a baby during “The Song of Purple Summer” that last time.  Spring is too cool.  The LIGHTS!  The costumes that are, in my weird opinion, something I would actually wear day-to-day, because I am ridiculous like that.  The score that at one point I could play almost all of on the piano.  There is not a single thing about this show that I would change, and I am so massively thankful that I took a chance on the album just ’cause I heard it was rock’n’roll and dirty.  It’s so so much more than that.

— your fangirl heroine.