My Dad, My Son, and the Parade of Musicals Between The Music Man and Hamilton

There was a time when it was embarrassing to say I loved musicals. In fact, it may have never before truly been cool to admit a love of musicals, until this moment right now. I have run in circles cooler than that. It was cool to travel around the world, not to vacation at Club Med (which I super happily did twice in my early 30s). It was cool to see U2, not Elton John and Billy Joel. (Actually, I saw Neil Diamond too, at age 27. Talk about uncool! But I sang along to every song.)

I love musicals, even when I don't even really like them (like Wicked. It just felt to me like it was trying too hard.) I love Guys and Dolls, and She Loves Me and Dream Girls.

I love old school musicals like Fiddler on the Roof, Camelot, West Side Story and My Fair Lady that I know from singing along to the original cast albums as a kid. (We sang along to a lot of Neil Diamond in my house too.) 

Last year, for my mom's birthday, Miles and I took her to see The Music Man at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts. At intermission, Mom made an admission I had never heard before. She said that my father had courted her with The Music Man soundtrack. What?! Leaning over to check on her when the lights came up - was she enjoying the high school production? - I found my mother unexpectedly happy and wistful. I had no idea there was history there.

While my parents were dating in the summer of 1959, my dad invited my mom up to a friend's apartment to listen to the original Broadway cast album from The Music Man. My father wooed my mother with Lida Rose!  Well, that's the song she specifically remembers him sharing, but when she mentioned it I immediately remembered that Lida Rose slips into the beautiful love song, Will I Ever Tell You, and ultimately ends in a lovely layered duet. There are some serious love songs on this album!  

From Till There Was You: 
There was love all around
But I never heard it singing
No, I never heard it at all
Till there was you!

I never knew this about my father - and yet it makes so much sense. Of course he loved this album! The Music Man is a story of optimism and hope and dreaming big. It's about love and family, community and Irish immigrants, pool halls and marching bands! I have no doubt my dad was head over heels in love in the summer of 1959, and as he was not easily demonstrative with words, The Music Man gave him the sentiments and the instrumentation he lacked.

Here from the original Broadway Cast Album are the Buffalo Bills and Barbara Cook singing Lida Rose and Will I Ever Tell You by Meridith Wilson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fbbB2gCStg&list=PLUSRfoOcUe4ZhcxS2yRNDmbpYR04K696T&index=15

Lida Rose 
Lida Rose, I'm home again, Rose
To get the sun back in the sky.
Lida Rose, I'm home again, Rose
About a thousand kisses shy.
Ding dong ding
I can hear the chapel bell chime.
Ding dong ding
At the least suggestion I'll pop the question.
Lida Rose, I'm home again, Rose
Without a sweetheart to my name.
Lida Rose, now everyone knows
That I am hoping you're the same
So here is my love song, not fancy or fine
Lida Rose, oh won't you be mine
Lida Rose, oh Lida Rose oh Lida Rose.

Will I Ever Tell You 
Dream of now, dream of then.
Dream of a love song that might have been.
Do I love you?
Oh, yes, I love you.
And I'll bravely tell you
But only when we dream again.
Sweet and low, sweet and low,
How sweet that mem'ry how long ago
Forever?
Oh, yes forever.
Will I ever tell you?
Ah-- no.

Having both Wikipedia and YouTube at my fingertips I learned that in 1958 The Music Man was a "whopping hit" winning five Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Actor. Its original cast album won the very first Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. Hamilton won the most recent Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album, and with 16 Tony nominations, is sure to win Best Musical and a slew of other Tonys on June 12th.

How wonderful it would be if my dad could see that his grandson is also swept away by the music in musical theater. Who knew that my love of musicals stretches forward and back in time through my father and my son.

Miles has a personal tradition of wearing costumes and wacky clothes the last week of school. As I dropped him off at school the day before he graduated, dressed as a doughnut, with a grey felt top hat, I thought of how remarkably brave he was. A 14 year old boy, wearing a doughnut costume and top hat to his big city public middle school. 

"Oh Miles! The doughnut!" I heard kids yell smiling as he climbed the front steps of the school. This kid must know who he is, I thought. This kid is trusting his instinct.

It turns out I have a love of marching bands and, thinking about my dad and The Music Man, I wonder if that's how it came about. When we wrote our "senior quotes" to be included under our formal portraits in our final high school yearbook, one of my "likes" was marching bands. I was Senior Class Vice President, a carefree, constantly smiling, non-instrument-playing teenager, saying in print that I liked marching bands. This was not cool, but it was true and it was me.  

I am looking at the threads of connection here, from my dad, to me, to Miles; threads of exuberant optimism that so typify the man my dad was, moments of goofiness, or not really giving (that much of) a damn. From a young Irish-American man wooing a pretty Italian-American girl with songs from a Broadway show they would never see, to his grandson almost 60 years later dressed as a doughnut as he walks into school. And me too, at 17 publicly acknowledging my love of marching bands, and choosing a cheesy, yet resonating Styx lyric in my senior yearbook quote! Oh I was so aware of how uncool that was at the time!

I don't think any of us always acts on our truest impulses and desires, but at best we are most of the time marching to the beat of our own drum. And ideally, it's a snare.

1.  

In The Room Where It Happens

I am feeling extremely grateful and fortunate that Miles and I got to see Hamilton on Broadway, and with this cast, led by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Exuberant, inspiring, exciting as hell.

I feel like we have been a part of something big, and unforgettable. A moment in time never to be repeated in the same way, captured in our minds and hearts and our shared experience of that night.

Miles whispered to me after three or four songs "My mouth is moving involuntarily!" It can't be helped!

The last time I was an uber fan was in the summer of 1994 when Melisa Lasell, Laurie Bramel and I, with a rotation of other Chico State friends, obsessed over Prince's newly released Purple Rain album. That winter, I was tasked to get 4 tickets to the concert and Judy Stalker and I spent the night outside Record Factory in Walnut Creek. Sometimes you just have to do it! That night was eventful and fun, and that concert remains the most memorable one of my life, and all the more precious in my memory now with Prince's early death. I feel extremely grateful and fortunate that I saw him during the Purple Rain tour, in all his strutting, sexy, purple glory. 

Hamilton: the show, the music, the choreography is so layered and active, of course, that immediately I wished I could see it again. And again! To see how they do it, to hear the songs live and hear the audience fill the great room with applause and cheers after every number. 

It would be enough. This will have to be enough.

 (Until it comes to San Francisco!)

TONIGHT!

After (intermittently) loitering like crazy people outside the Richard Rogers the last few days, tonight is the night!

In The Greatest City In The World, Wherein We Become Groupies (or Stalkers), Part 1

After the first night in front of the stage door where only two main actors came out, we loitered near the main theater doors last night.  After a series of limos/ black livery cars left, a single black car remained in front and I assumed it was for Lin. WIth only a few people in front (and over 100 near the stage door) nearly every actor exited from the main and immediately adjacent doors. Lin-Manuel Miranda literally ran out the theater doors and leapt into the car.  We got looks and waves from him as if to say "I'm sorry I have to do this.  I would have no life if I didn't do this!"

 

Daveed Diggs arriving for Friday night's performance.

Alex Lacamoire, the musical director, diving for the open door.

Leslie Odom Jr, who plays Aaron Burr. Odom is nominated for Best Actor in a Musical against Lin-Manuel Miranda, and may well win. 

Okieriete Onaidowan (Oak) who plays Mulligan the revolutionary in Act I and James Madison in Act II.

The incredibly handsome Christopher Jackson who plays George Washington.  He is signing Miles' one dollar bill here. It is very hard for me not to think of Washington as looking like this now.

Phillippa Soo who plays Hamilton's wife, Eliza. She has a chance to win the best actress in a musical Tony Award because her part has so much breadth (life, love, loss.)

Wait For It - In Which Miles Learns We'll See Hamilton In NYC

I was very excited to tell Miles I had bought the tickets for us to see Hamilton in New York. At 7:30 the next morning, I sat on his bed to wake him up. 

"Miles. Wake up now," I murmured exactly as I had when he was a wee laddie. As he began to stir, he suddenly sat up and told me, "I had two dreams last night that I saw Hamilton!" 

(Wow.)

"In both dreams I was with Dad, and we were sitting close to the stage. In the second one, Ari and Darius were in the show, in the ensemble. At one point they motioned to me to come on stage, so I put my top hat on the empty chair beside me. Like there would be an empty chair beside me!" he said laughing. "And I joined in with the ensemble."

"I bought tickets." I said.

He let this register for a minute and then said in a measured tone, "You bought tickets?"

"Yeah."

"We're going to New York?"

"Yeah."

Miles is not a jump up and down, scream and run through the house kind of kid. So he didn't jump up and down, scream and run through the house. His fixed brow and darting eyes told me his mind was at work...we were going to New York, we were going to see Hamilton, we were going to see (nearly) the entire original cast.

"When?" he asked.

"Right after graduation," I said. "You graduate on Tuesday, May 24th, and we'll fly that Thursday and see it on the 31st."

"Cool," he said.

Super Cool.