Musicals

We went to Guys and Dolls last night at the New Victoria Theatre. We were over on one side of the stalls and it was terribly draughty to begin with. A girl in front of me put the hood up on her jacket/sweater and two or three people put their coats back on. I’d left mine in the car, so had to suffer. I also had problems with double vision, but that subsided too, in the second half, as my brain began to adjust.

M wasn’t enthusiastic at first. I think he was put off by the dull sets. There were some good ones, but some of the action takes place in a downmarket district of New York in the 30s with gamblers roaming the streets and putting on illicit bets on the side. M was disappointed because there was nothing as exciting as the helicopter in Miss Saigon, but there was a good dance routine in Havana. The second part was better than the first, I think, with the well-known number Sit down you’re rocking the boat almost a show stopper – certainly a scene stealer. (It was performed by a Welsh singer, with a really good voice.) But they didn’t do an encore, which the audience would have liked.

I suppose I wouldn’t describe Guys and Dolls as my favourite musical. Some very good tunes, but it suffers from its simplistic storyline. Gambler reformed and married to Salvation Army lady in three days. I don’t think so. The first musical I loved was South Pacific. When my friend Ruth and I saw it (the film) in the mid-fifties, we were in tears at the ill-fated romance and the death of the hero. But though people look back sometimes and describe such things as ‘patronising’, the film, at that time, was a brave attempt to look at mixed relationships. West Side Story in the sixties remains in my mind a wonderful musical with fantastic music and an important theme. Two other musicals which I have appreciated more, as time has gone on, are Cabaret and Fiddler on the Roof. I was horrified by the former, when I first saw it. I have become somewhat less prim, as I have grown older. And the latter also hides some serious themes behind its light-hearted exterior.

Jennifer telephoned me this morning to tell me that I’d been awarded a Very Highly Commended in the H E Bates short story competition. I would have been happier, had I not known in the first place that I was in the finalists, because then I wouldn’t have had my hopes raised that I might have achieved a better place. Ah well. C’est la vie. Still writing-wise, it’s quite nice to have been commended, to have a story in the process of being tidied up (Park Keeper) to have just sent off an article, and to have received (this morning) the CD of my radio story.

I’m going to get on with tonight’s chicken dinner and concentrate on some ironing after that. I’ve left it for several days.