She Loves Me (2018): Debrief

     Sometimes I finish plays and can just sit back and be pleased.  (Don't get me wrong, even then, there's always a thing or two I would do differently in hindsight.)  However, the She Loves Me revival has brought up a different feeling altogether. Overall it was a good experience. I thought the final product turned out really well.  The audience responded and things came together nicely. I got to work with some of my favorite actors. It was the first time I got to direct my little brother. I love the symmetry in capping our first 10 years with a re-staging of  our first show.  I liked having the chance to appraise 25 year old Nic's directing. (He missed some things.)   I'm glad we did it, but it also served to reaffirm my feeling that I just shouldn't do musicals.

     Back in the days when I was performing more I gravitated towards musicals and looked at plays as a nice change of pace every now and then. Now that I approach scripts as a director, I just don't find a lot that excites me in the libretto of a musical.  I prefer to be able to put my own stamp on things and I think the nature of the musical just makes that difficult.  In this show, for instance, there are many subplots that are mentioned but not explored. I kept trying to find ways to lean in to those moments, to build them up to the level I wanted them to be.  That's a mistake though. In play you maybe get three pages to work through an issue.  In a musical you get three lines, then the songs flesh things out a bit more.  That's the kind of thing I missed.  I wanted to go down these side streets and add a little weight.  I think we did manage that here and there, but the format just ties your hands.  That's not to say that you can't do great and even deep stuff with a musical.  I've certainly seen that and I think I even did it once.  But that's usually the exception to the rule.
     Think about The Sound of Music.  A man loses his wife and is left to care for seven children. A young nun comes in to care for the children while the Nazis move in on their home.  Meanwhile, Dad's best friend is a lovable Nazi sympathizer.  The nun and widower fall in love and and then drag children through the Alps on foot. To me that sounds like a dark story with a little hope sprinkled in.  How much time we give to the kid's dead mom or the fact that the Captain lost his wife?  What about the fact that a nun is contemplating breaking her vows because she's falling in love with an engaged man?  And we haven't even gotten to the Nazis! Anyway, the answer is that each of these things gets about 3 lines.  So does that mean The Sound of Music is bad?  Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-NO!  I love it.  It's one of my favorites.  But do I want to direct it? The hills are alive with the sound of me saying NO.
    All that to say,  I love She Loves Me.  There was a ton of talent in our cast.  Again, I'm glad we did it. It was great to get the chance to do it in Houghton and expand to the Wellsville stage. Basically, what I'm saying is that until someone writes this dark take on Sound of Music, I'm probably done with musicals for a while.   (The Sounds of Music in a Minor Key?  We'll workshop it.)

Tune in here for a special interview with the cast: https://soundcloud.com/allthebooks/episode-160-she-loves-me