musical snobbery

I’m going to New York in September with a couple of friends… a spontaneous girly trip to do some shopping, some sightseeing – and the Sex And The City tour. We also decided we should go to Broadway to enjoy a musical, but I informed my friends that I have a bit of musical snobbery, and some of them I refuse to see. I blame my logical engineering brain. I mean, musicals aren’t real are they? They tell plausible stories (ie not science fiction), but come on, who breaks into song in the middle of a walk to work in real life? Or does a full scale dance while they’re cleaning the kitchen. It’s just silly. Plus they have no plots, and are highly predictable anyway. I remember when I first vocalised this theory as to why I don’t like musicals my friend Em spent three days conversing with me in song. Hilarious.
There are a few exceptions. Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, I absolutely love, due to many a car journey when I was younger when the soundtrack would be playing on repeat the whole way to our destination and back. My younger sister and I can recite it, with all the oos, aaahs, pauses and inflexions. I was taken to see it at Christmas and I was irrepressible. And Grease, what girl doesn’t like Grease? And I saw Chicago at the cinema and thought that was pretty good, though to be fair a little silly.
But Mamma Mia was firmly in the snobbery category. It just sounded like a musical for the sake of being a musical. But a friend invited me to dinner the other day as her husband was travelling for a few days, and they have the film on DVD, and her seven year old daughter loves it and sings and dances along to it, so I agreed, with a good natured smile, to watch it. And enjoyed it sooo much! It was such fun, and didn’t pretend to be anything else. It was what I’d call a ‘romp’! You could see how much fun the cast had whilst filming it in Greece, and that sillyness is really infectious. Julie Walters is fantastic and joyful, Piers Brosnan can’t sing, Colin Firth is, well, Colin Firth. I was totally converted and even, at one point, during Dancing Queen, had a bit of a dance with my friend’s daughter. But don’t tell anyone. I mean, who bursts into song when they post a letter for goodness sake? Ridiculous.