There was a moment of pure joy this morning at work when I noticed a package from Sweden in my in-tray. A few weeks ago on a whim I purchased t-shirt promoting the new album for Peter Jöback. Peter’s name is a little hard to find, being found only the sleeve of the t-shirt. Instead, the phrase “I Love Musicals” (the name of Peter’s latest album) dominates. When I bought the shirt, I joked with a friend “this could well be the world’s gayest t-shirt”. When a colleague snapped a photograph of my wearing the shirt today (which I shared on social media) she agreed. In fact, it gave everyone at work a bit of a laugh today. In the midst of some busy times, it was great to see people go from wry grins to broad smiles as they looked at the shirt and agreed.
Co-incidentally, I went to a preview tonight of the new Sydney musical, “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels“. The musical is based on the Steve Martin film about the two conmen who are themselves conned. I haven’t actually seen the film, so I went in without preconceptions. In fact, I was even prepared to be a little disappointed, as really good musicals are often few and far between. Many modern musicals, often based around movies or back catalogues, are often disappointing. They can seem like a hastily assembled pastiche.
Even though I haven’t seen the film, I didn’t get that impression from this. My colleague and friend I went with, who has seen the film, whispered in my ear “He’s completely ape-ing Steve Martin”. That was the only comparison she made between the movie and the film. From both our perspectives, though, this was a fun musical, with really clever lyrics, performed well, with humour and passion. The play was great fun to watch, and it seemed as if the actors were enjoying it as much as the audience. That’s high praise, since there are some really great performers in the show, including Tony Sheldon, Ann Wood, Matt Hetherington (who I thought was fabulous), John Wood and others. Overall it was a really wonderful night, and fabulous reminder of why “I Love Musicals”.
Leave a Reply