Musicals

Over Thanksgiving break, I knew we were going to watch a number of family movies, and I decided we needed a theme. My choice was musicals, which was heartily approved by the others in the household. We started with “Into the Woods,” a terrific Sondheim mashup of various fairy-tales, with hilariously clever lyrics. We particularly enjoyed the badass Red Riding Hood, who is not only not traumatized by being eaten by the wolf, but subsequently makes his fur into a new cloak.

Next up was “Oliver!,” the 1968 movie version of Oliver Twist, which none of us had ever seen. I haven’t even read the book, though I think I saw a TV version as a kid. I was delighted to learn that it is the source of multiple songs that I have always known, such as “Food Glorious Food,” “Consider Yourself,” and “Oom-Pah-Pah.” There were multiple huge dance numbers with dozens or seemingly hundreds of people, and we observed that all the dance was ballet. The children had to have the child labor situation explained to them at some length because they had no idea of the conditions of the Industrial Revolution. We talked about how Dickens was a storyteller with a very strong social justice mission, who stuck up for the poor at a very tough time in history. (Though see other post.) I enjoyed the movie, but thought the character of Oliver was hardly a character at all, which didn’t seem fair for the first child protagonist in an English novel.

The next musical we watched was West Side Story, and wow, what a story. We were all enthralled. I remembered it was good, but it was just SO good. Aaron in particular was snapping his fingers for days. The dancing is fantastic – again, all ballet, and so very far removed from the mincing frippery that one can mistakenly associate with this dance form. I like showing Aaron dance that counters unfortunate gender stereotypes. We also had a good discussion about the fact that most of the actors were in “brownface” (they were white people depicting Puerto Rican people), with the exception of the inimitable Rita Moreno. She apparently recalls that the movie people even put brown makeup on her, because her skin color is lighter than they thought was typical for Puerto Ricans. 

Finally, on a night that Jordan and Dale were out, Aaron and I watched the movie of “Newsies.” Loved it! More discussion of child labor (in New York this time), along with a great talk about how a good writer can speak truth to power. Aaron identifies as a good writer (I agree) and he felt quite inspired about writers helping to solve problems in the world. The dance in this show was less ballet and more acrobatics, and a rip-roaring good time.