Two Secret Gardens and One Big Apple

Does anyone have a memory of seeing a show a long way from home? For the next set of programmes, we’re actually heading to another continent across the Atlantic. In early 2011, when I was ten, nearly eleven, my Mum and Dad and I went to spend six months in Canada and the U.S.A (we spent around three months in each country), to do some travelling and see family, as we have more family abroad than nearby. This meant that we were very lucky to be able to stay with some very welcoming relatives in New Jersey, Michigan, Ontario in Eastern Canada and British Columbia in Western Canada. If you’re interested in the details of when we visited each place, my Mum has a blog that she wrote while we were away… 

We didn’t go to the theatre a lot while we were away, but I did see a production of The Secret Garden musical at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto with relatives on my Dad’s side, Auntie Morag and Uncle Jim (yes, they started off in Scotland). We stayed with these particular relatives for a few weeks at the start of our trip in the spring and then again for a few more weeks when we got back to Ontario in July. They were very hospitable – lots of fun and games, bowling, Wheel of Fortune, zoo trips, cinema trips, boat trips. Jim has since passed away and is much missed by all the family. I had a lovely day out with them going into the centre of Toronto to see The Secret Garden, a show that premiered in Virginia in 1991, and was written by two American women, Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman. This production of The Secret Garden started out in Edinburgh (according to the internet) and I didn’t know this until the other day but there were some quite well-known names in the cast from British television and theatre, such as Siobhan Redmond and Norman Pace of Hale and Pace. There is actually even a connection between this musical and The Addams Family musical, which Mum, Dad and I saw in New York that April, as Andrew Lippa, who wrote the music and lyrics for The Addams Family, also worked on a musical adaptation of A Little Princess, and both A Little Princess and The Secret Garden were early 20th century novels by Frances Hodgson Burnett. 

We left Canada in March, stayed with a cousin of Mum’s in Ann Arbor (hi Naomi and family!) and then made our way east and south to stay for a few weeks with more cousins of Dad’s in New Jersey (hi Anne-Marie, Mario, Isobel and Nicholas!). New Jersey was very different but every bit as much fun and our relatives couldn’t have been more welcoming. I even celebrated a birthday there and I’ve got fond memories of having a pamper day and going to the beach and the cinema. We also got the ferry to New York City for a few days (to take a proverbial bite of the big apple, as it were). The Addams Family musical was relatively new, then, and I didn’t know much about it at all but I’ll be honest, it was the one my parents were willing to see (I might have picked Mamma Mia or Billy Elliot or even Wicked again, see last post). Neither of my parents are ABBA fans and my Mum didn’t fancy going all the way to NYC (also the title of an Annie song), to see Billy Elliot, a musical set in County Durham, where she grew up. So, The Addams Family it was – at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on West 46th Street (and that definitely is Broadway!). My parents had dragged me to lots of museums, parks, shops and other sights so I was pretty tired most evenings but it was still lovely to be at a Broadway show (even if I was half asleep…). 

Bebe Neuwirth as Morticia (from the programme)

Here Nathan Lane plays Gomez, though he had left the show when we saw it.

At the time I didn’t appreciate that the wonderful woman playing Morticia on the stage in 2011 was the fantastic Bebe Neuwirth (as Cheers/Frasier fans my parents were thrilled to see her in the flesh – this was another factor in choosing the show). Since the trip, I too have come to know her as Lilith and I don’t think they could have found a more perfect Morticia. She was brilliant – the dance at the end, a tango, was perfection! Gomez was played by Roger Rees the night we were there (as a West Wing fan Dad was quite pleased with that too…). Dad might have chosen a night at the baseball or basketball if he’d really had his say  (though he did manage to see the Bluejays play in Toronto on the very last night of our big trip). These are not baseball tickets however:

 Interestingly, like Annie (sorry, I’m sure that not every post will mention Annie), The Addams Family also started out as a comic strip. In fact, the comic strip first came out in the 1930s and was created by a cartoonist called Charles.. Addams! In the musical, Wednesday Addams is a lot more grown up than she is in most other adaptations and a major plot point in the musical is about her romance and plans to marry. However, there’s still a lot of focus on Morticia and Gomez Addams and the strong, committed, passionate relationship that they’ve always had. In fact, in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, (I’m also a huge fan of the show and a total nine niner for those who don’t know), Jake plans to reference the Morticia and Gomez relationship in his wedding vows to Amy but changes it at the last minute (you don’t have to have watched much of the show to know that Amy and Jake are absolute couple goals and totally soulmates with so much chemistry – less gloomy than the Addams couple but just as made for each other). Like many a great show (Friends anyone?) Brooklyn Nine-Nine is, obviously, a very New York centric show, like Annie and The Addams Family, and there’s actually a few musical links in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, as one of the characters, Charles, is a big fan of musicals and mentions being in Annie more than once. I love Charles.

We’d visited Canada before the 2011 trip as we’ve got so many relatives there (I know I haven’t mentioned everyone here – love you all!), but it was the first and only time that Mum and I had visited U.S.A. In all honesty, I’m not sure how much I remember from the 2011 trip, as I was still very much a child at the time and a lot has happened since then (more information on that coming later..) The things that have stuck with me are probably from mementos, souvenirs, photos and talking about it. I know I’ve changed a lot in the last nine years and especially now, with all the limits on travel, the thought of six months away does sound very exciting! At ten, on the whole I lived day-to-day and took each day as it came (‘where are we today?' – Vegas? Cool. Does it have a zoo*?') so on the whole it was a great experience and I didn’t worry about what others thought of me (which is certainly not the case now). The 6 month trip was perhaps a bit overwhelming (and tiring!) here and there and I’d be the first one to say that I was perhaps a bit annoying at times during the trip and wasn’t the most mature, which I hope is not so much the case now… but I’m starting to realise that I was very fortunate to have this kind of experience of travelling, seeing sights and visiting family. At the time, however, I was not used to being so far from home for so long and missed our dog, Zoe, and friends from school (not that I ever had that many friends, but the ones I had were good ones). Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz I was quite glad to get home...

*Not a zoo, as such, but Dad and I did visit Siegfried and Roy’s Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat – there are photos here

 

A few short days in the Emerald City (well, London)

 Does anyone like to make lists of their five or ten favourite musicals? Maybe that’s just me. Anyway, this next musical on our journey through musical programmes takes us to one of my very favourite musicals, Wicked (so apologies in advance for any excessive fangirling). My current top 5 that I’ve seen live (since you asked) are: 1. Waitress (I saw that in London last summer with my best pal), 2. Wicked, 3. Annie (see previous posts- I've seen this a few times but all amateur shows), 4. Six (saw it in February of this year in Edinburgh), and 5. Come from Away (I saw this in Toronto with family in summer of 2018).

 The programme pictured above is from when I went to see Wicked in London ten years ago when I was ten and a half (in October 2010). With music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, it really is an absolutely incredible show that I cannot praise enough. It was also really nice because we were staying with my Mum’s cousin, Steph, and her family and it made it extra special that we went to see the show with them. We’d hardly spent much time in London as a family up until this point and it was such a contrast from the small town in Scotland where we lived at the time, that apparently, I made a point of saying that London had ‘everything’ (bit unsure what exactly this ‘everything’ was referring to) and was ‘on the edge’ of my seat throughout most of Wicked. Around this time, my parents started to realise that this love for musicals was not a passing phase.

 Wicked was based on the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel Wicked (The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West), and the subsequent other novels that followed in the series. The books and musical seek to cast the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, or Elphaba as she’s called in Wicked, in a more sympathetic light by giving origin stories to her and some of the other main characters from The Wizard of Oz. Arguably, one of the most important relationships that is explored in the musical is between Elphaba and Glinda and how they become best friends despite the antagonism that exists between them at other points in the story. The musical focuses more on the romantic aspects than the books do and is very successful at incorporating foreshadowing, homages and references relating to The Wizard of Oz, and building the familiar fictitious world of Oz but interpreting it in a very different way and with new perspectives. It also has some HUGE tunes (Defying Gravity, Popular, Thank Goodness, One Short Day, Dancing Through Life).

  Musical theatre legends, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, are known for originating these roles, Elphaba and Glinda, respectively, on Broadway in 2003. They both also appeared on Glee and got a chance to show off their extremely impressive voices (I haven’t mentioned Glee for a couple of posts but this week it is back with a vengeance!). Unfortunately, they didn’t sing any of the Wicked songs that were covered on Glee, but all the versions on the show were still insanely good. Here’s one of the two versions of Defying Gravity that you can see in Glee (this one from series 5, the first was in series 1):

 Glinda’s characterisation and development in Wicked is very interesting, as Kristin Chenoweth herself discussed how she altered her singing voice to make it gradually slightly deeper to indicate that Glinda was changing and growing as a person. The fact that the character actually goes from calling herself Galinda in the first act to the more familiar Glinda in the second act might relate to this as well. For instance, whilst Glinda is definitely not a villain in Wicked, it is implied that she is less perfect and angelic than she seems, and more focus is put on Elphaba to show how good her heart really is and that she’s not necessarily as evil as she is generally portrayed to be. Interestingly enough, in more recent years, there have been fan theories speculating and questioning if Glinda really was as kind-hearted and perfect as she might seem in the 1939 film, as she only stepped in to tell Dorothy how to get home at the very end and wasn’t always there to save them from the witch.

 The particular London production of Wicked in October 2010 was at the Apollo, Victoria (which either is or isn’t West End, depending on who you are talking to – it felt pretty West End to me!). It actually featured ‘the’ Lee Mead (as mentioned in a previous blog post), as Fiyero, who becomes the scarecrow, Louise Dearman as Glinda and Rachel Tucker as Elphaba (Tucker and Dearman in programme photos above. Photos in programme by Tristam Kenton). Rachel Tucker was an incredible Elphaba who has played the role in both London and New York and who appeared in the 2008 BBC TV programme I’d do anything, which looked to cast the role of Nancy in a revival of Oliver in the West End. Jodie Prenger was the winner of the series and went on to appear in many shows around the country but many other very talented and successful performers who were still in their late teens at the time, got very close to winning, such as Samantha Barks, who has appeared in many musicals and the 2012 movie version of Les Miserables, and Jessie Buckley, who has appeared in several major movies and television programmes, such as Wild Rose (2018) and Judy (2019), giving her a ‘Rainbow connection’ to the wonderful world of Oz , after all, as Judy tells of the life of Judy Garland. Do you have a ‘Rainbow connection’ to Oz? I wish I did. In the meantime here I am again trying to be a lion (this time in Trafalgar Square in 2010). 

p.s As a Friends fan it was hard to get through this post without saying ‘London baby’. And look I nearly made it. Shout out to all the Friends fans…