I was lent Namaste London to watch years ago as an example of a good Bollywood film. Quite apart from the hilarious scene where the male lead takes the female lead to see Charles and Camilla, pulling up outside Buckingham Place with them waving, I found the sporadic breaking into musical numbers totally off putting. It took me out of the narrative.
When I raised this with friends, I realised that all fiction usually requires some buying into the different internal logic of the fictional world. I could not deal with musical numbers but I was fine with the whole of The Lord of the Rings? That Doctor Who (in the original series) had all the alien invasions happening in Southern England?
I can accept this intellectually but. It is a big but. I hate bloody musicals.
Not just that I find watching dancing as boring as hell. I am not saying that it is not worthwhile. Not at all. I know people love to dance and to watch dancing. It just bores 50 shades of shit out of me.
As this is the case and musicals are mostly showtune style songs and dancing it is no shock that going to a musical is a pretty unique form of torture. I went as part of two trips as an extra to see musicals with students. Blood Brothers was disappointing as Willy Russell is a good writer. Compared to Guys and Dolls it was a joy.
Yet Guys and Dolls is set in a period I love. I should have been able to find something to like. Yet by the time the second half started I wanted to (to paraphrase) cut my own arm off and beat myself to death with it to get it over. The cast would not stop singing Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat. It had so many false finishes. The audience applauded at each one and I was willing them to stop.
There is one though.
Grease.
Anne took Alison and me to see it at the cinema when it came out (I wanted to go as it seemed like everyone in my class had been). It probably helped that the music was not show tune style and that Olivia Newton-John was so pretty. Alison and I raved about it so much that Mike wanted to see it (he had spent the equivalent of the ticket money on something else).
Alison and I volunteered to go again, though Anne drew the line at that. We had to sit in the stalls as you had to have an adult with you to sit in the balcony, and we enjoyed it again. I still do.
I think it is the first love story that I saw, but I was so disappointed that Olivia Newton-John was actually 30 when she made this and not 17. Of course I now know that this cast was probably one of the oldest school classes ever.
Never ask me to watch a musical.
The Look of Love
Five Miles Out 