Broadway for Big Kids, Beyond Spoonfuls of Sugar
ROBIN POGREBIN
NYTimes.com
May 14, 2008
TAKING your kids to a Broadway musical might seem like a no-brainer. What could be more of a treat than the excitement of lights going down, the curtain going up and actors performing live onstage? But beyond the Lion Kings, Mary Poppinses and Little Mermaids, the terrain gets more complicated.
Many shows seem to beckon families with children but on closer inspection come with caveats, be it crude language, racy behavior or complex plot turns. If you’re going to make the investment — which can run more than $400 for a family of four — what is worth the tab? What is appropriate?
“Avenue Q,” for example, has catchy songs and cute “Sesame Street”-ish characters. But then you realize that those puppets — rather noisily — fornicate onstage (albeit under a blanket). There is a song about pornography and another that crescendoes to a crass reference to genitalia. But whether your kids are ready to see a show with raucous songs like “I’m Not Wearing Underwear Today” and “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” is ultimately your call.
As the show’s Web site (avenueq.com) advises: “It may not be appropriate for young children because ‘Avenue Q’ addresses issues like sex, drinking and surfing the Web for porn. It’s hard to say what exact age is right to see ‘Avenue Q’ — parents should use their discretion based on the maturity level of their children. But we promise you this — if you do bring your teenagers to ‘Avenue Q,’ they’ll think you’re really cool.”
Perhaps the hippest musical of the moment is “Spring Awakening,” with an onstage band playing Duncan Sheik’s unusual score and a cast full of young performers. But the staged sexual intercourse that occurs on a center-stage platform probably rules that one out — particularly given that clothes actually come off, and these people ain’t puppets.
Given such challenges, I set out to see a few shows with my 11-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter over the last several months — shows that were not explicitly written for them or marketed to them but that might nevertheless give them positive theatrical experiences akin to those that so thrilled me when I was growing up.
From an early age I was a die-hard musical-theater fan: appearing in every possible school play, attending shows on, off and off Off Broadway; painting sets as a teenage apprentice at the Goodspeed theater in Connecticut; performing after high school graduation as a member of a touring summer stock company. (Yes, I got the lead in “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.”)
While other kids were listening to Meatloaf’s “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth,” I was memorizing every word of Sondheim’s “Little Night Music.”
Musicals played a part in my husband’s family and mine. My parents had an extensive LP collection of show tunes, including exclamation-point classics like “Hello, Dolly!,” “Fiorello!” and “Oklahoma!” They regularly took my twin sister, Abigail, and me to productions at Equity Library Theater, a much-missed stage on West 103rd Street and Riverside Drive, of all places. They let us audition for the original cast of “Annie.” We sang the pop hit “Downtown” together — accompanied by our own choreography — and the director said he’d take one of us but not both, so we declined.
In 1981 Abigail made it into the original cast of Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along” at just 16. (Unfortunately it closed after 16 performances.)
My husband’s father, Harvey J. Klaris, was one of the producers of the Maury Yeston musical “Nine,” which won the Tony Award in 1982, and “Tap Dance Kid” (1983).
My husband and I have tried to share our fondness for old movie musicals like “Gigi,” “Singin’ in the Rain” and, of course, “The Sound of Music,” but it hasn’t been an easy sell. These films were my childhood idea of a great Saturday night — well, “The Love Boat” was a close second — but our children found them slow and underwhelming. “My Fair Lady,” clocking in at nearly three hours, was particularly onerous. Kids like mine are more accustomed to the fast-moving images of computer games and the blaring pop sounds of “High School Musical ” and “Hannah Montana.”
So my husband and I set out to revisit with our children some of the more contemporary Broadway musicals we enjoyed in early incarnations, as well as some we’d never seen. The two generations, as you might expect, experienced some of the shows differently. We went to “The Phantom of the Opera,” of which we had hazy memories of a crashing chandelier, swelling violins and a heartbreaking tale of thwarted love. My son and daughter were largely mystified by what they perceived as an overwrought opera with overstuffed costumes.
While the show’s message is worthwhile — essentially, don’t judge a man by his mask, even if he murders a few people — the Phantom seemed less sympathetic to me this time around. I hadn’t remembered how many people he kills. Still, I was again moved by that moment when the Phantom physically forces the opera singer Christine to avert her gaze, and by his generous final gesture of surrender.
