On Tour

While I was in grade school I saw a couple musicals on tour--"Gypsy" and "Sound of Music," I think. I listened to those albums hundreds of times and learned all the songs by heart. I believe Florence Henderson played Fraulein Maria in Chicago, but I don't recall any other performers. I had other original cast albums--"Oliver," "West Side Story". I sometimes slept over at the home of my friend Susie Fisher, and we'd play those albums and dance around like mad.

My grandmother took me to the World's Fair in New York City in 1964--my first trip to Manhattan--and while we were there we saw "Funny Girl" with Barbra Streisand. A knockout, of course, and soon added to my album collection. I was 12, and Streisand was (and still is) just 10 years older.

But there was more than just musicals for me. At some point my dad started subscribing to the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and he'd alternate taking Sally and me to see the plays. She got to see "The Salzburg Great Theatre of the World," which has become a family legend for its scope and impenetrability, and I got to see a fabulous production of "The Recruiting Officer," which had ingenious pop-up scenery that got its own applause. Because the Goodman has a wonderful website (www.goodmantheatre.org), I was able to look this up and verify that it really happened, in the 1968-69 season, when I was 16. The 1969-70 season looks familiar, too--I think I saw at least "The Man in the Glass Booth". And I think I saw "Oh What a Lovely War" in the 1967-68 season. But apparently memory fails me with "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead," which I thought I saw there as well during those years. It's not on the production history list. Must have been somewhere else. But that's the play, I think, that cracked theater open for me--it was fun and funny and really challenged the mind. My mind was just then getting ready for challenges--though a good student, I was kind of a dolt till I was about 16. It took that long for me to start thinking for myself.

Henley Street Theatre Company in Richmond is about to do an all-female production of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern". I'm looking forward to it.