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What if you could prescribe shows individually, like drugs?
Boy, it would make the recommending part of criticismnot the only part, but a big oneso easy.
What have you already taken to treat it?And, of course,What are your allergies?
Two musicals on right now will be the cures for what ails … some of you.
Theyre both full of movement and contagious lightness; theyre both explicitly about offering help in tough times.
So each one looks out into the audience and tells us to adopt a new attitude.
In Lee, its enlightened acceptance; in Scanlan-and-Willson, its action.
Her between-songs patter is about tart grandmothers, a first white hair, her fathers battle with cancer.
The revival, directed and choreographed by Raja Feather Kelly, keeps the songs but loses the bravery.
Lighting designer Tuce Yasak throws approximately one million looks at us, often in the same song.
If this person has discovered a white hair, I will eat my hat.
So will you find it comforting?
I wonder if that will depend on your own age, your own experience.
But I rememberWere Gonna Dieas something that looked forward rather than back.
It gave aging a point and death a kind of pearly, welcoming shimmer.
It was about growing up.
It didnt make me miss being 5 at all.
She even runs for Congress and crows about votes for women.
Despite its up-to-the-minute political content, its essentially a love story.
Gotta use that time somehow!
Must be my allergies acting up.
But Molly hasnt got time for my squeamishness, so she barrels on into the second act.
Were not down yet!
I also sang Im Gonna Die, though, several times.
And I think thats why these musicals are such good things to lean on in times of trouble.
We know that neurologically, music lodges in the memory in a particularly sticky way.
