It’s great to see a musical like “Annie” on Broadway, or on a national tour, or put on by a top-notch professional regional company, or at a summer stock theater, or even on DVD. But for gripping tension, high drama, gut-busting comedy, sheer exuberance and experiencing the full range of human emotion, there’s nothing like seeing “Annie” produced by your local public school.
That’s even more true if we’re talking about your typical early 21st century urban American K-8 school with a student body drawn from 62 countries (or so). Then you can witness an “Annie” in which:
- there’s an excellent chance at least one of the actresses playing an orphan is one—or at least has spent a good part of her life navigating the state’s foster care system;
- the actress playing Annie speaks with a soft Dominican lilt, the actress playing Lily wears a hijab, and the actor playing Drake wears a dastar;
- a tenth of the audience (mostly those under the age of 6) is most fascinated with the actor playing Sandy—crawling around on all fours in a brownish dog costume—and really pays attention only when Sandy is on stage…or their older brother or sister is singing…or the audience is clapping;
- you can feel the audience simultaneously wincing and encouraging the singers of a duet as they struggle to get in tune with each other and the music on a sustained high note (and the feeling of relief and exultation as they succeed just before the number ends and they’re enveloped in rapturous applause);
- the 7th and 8th graders have built most of the set and designed most of the costumes—and it all looks immeasurably better than that sounds;
- at intermission, half the orphans reassemble outside the school at the bottom of the front steps and begin an impromptu performance/rehearsal of their big Act 2 number—competing for space and attention with an equally impromptu game of tag;
- scenes momentarily halt when one actor misses a cue for a second or two (and you can feel everyone around you hold their breath as they beam telepathic messages to the stage…and then exhale when the actor begins to deliver the next line);
- there’s no encore or raising of the curtain so the actors can take a 2nd bow at the end of the show—partly because there’s no curtain, but mostly because the actors are so excited/relieved/pleased with themselves that they’ve left the stage in a huge, bouncing, disjointed group hug…before heading for the snack table;
- after the show, all around the auditorium dozens of small, shifting clusters of people are having variations on exactly the same conversation (students saying, “I did it!”, parents saying “you did it!”, teachers saying “you did it!”).
And so they did. It’s one school play, in one neighborhood, in one city in the country. And they did it. It’s just one tiny glimpse of the talent and hard work of our youngest generation. But they did it. And if that doesn’t make you feel just a tiny bit better about the nation’s future, I don’t know what will.
Crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/