With a capital T

In 1962 I fell in love. Well sort of. With Shirley Jones. Or maybe it was Marian Paroo. The distinction has faded over the years. Since then Meredith Willson's "The Music Man" has been one of my favorite shows. I can't count the number of times I've watched the original movie, and I've seen several different stage productions of the musical, one starring my own two daughters (when you're the dad, the kids are always the stars), and most recently last Friday night at Porterville's Barn Theater. http://www.barntheater.porterville.com/

I know. Most guys wouldn't walk across the street to watch a musical, but I drove 50 miles up the road after a hard week's work to see a small community production. It was a valiant effort, but was probably the worst of all those I've seen (with the possible exception of the TV movie version with Ferris Bueller playing the lead). The opening scene (which I think both of my daughters can still do word for word after 20 years) was horribly out of rhythm. Were they really on a train? The bass singer in the barbershop quartet was the only one who could carry a tune, and the tenor actually sang in falsetto. It made me want to cry. Harold Hill did a passable job of impersonating Robert Preston, but was about 10 years too old. Marian the Librarian was also about 10 years too old. She could sing pretty well, but only about 75% of the time. The accompaniment was mostly on a single piano, played quite well. However the musical director thought it wise to intersperse poorly sequenced pieces that sounded like the old Casio synthesizer my daughters used to play on. The pianist often had trouble synchronizing everything. It was sad.

Not everything was bad, however. There were several really cute 5-year-old River City-zians who reminded me of my own 5-year-old on the stage bouncing and singing "Wells Fargo Wagon." Eulalie Shinn's "dance" rehearsal was as funny as I've ever seen. Mama Paroo played and sang her role to perfection. And the finale was done the way I tried to get Mr. Ed to do it 20 years ago. About 30 members of the high school band crept in through the back to play "76 Trombones" for a rousing finish. I think Kalani High's band would have loved to do the same thing at Kansai Gaidai. The Porterville marching band played about as well as the Nanakuli band, but it was still a nice addition to the show.

A show that's been a favorite for over 40 years carries a lot of memories with it. And THAT is why it was worth the long drive on a tired evening. College days. A summer in Milwaukee and theatre-in-the-round. But most of all, when Amaryllis asked, "NOW may I play my cross-hand piece?", every eye in the house was dry except mine.

They just don't make memories like that any more.