Blog Post, Jr.

Monday, April 30, 2007

This weekend I was obligated... err... pleased as punch to attend Megan's Jr. High School production of "Fiddler on the Roof". I was fully prepared with an arsenic pill I kept clenched between my molars, ready to break open, just in case. A full-length, professional production of "Fiddler" is generally hard enough to stomach. Add the variables a Utah middle school has to offer a musical and it truly has some horrifying potential.

Well, wasn't I just as surprised as a Bishop with his pants down to find that this was a production of "Fiddler on the Roof, Jr." Junior! Hot shit! What will they think of next? Church, Jr? Colonoscopy, Jr? Visit from the in-laws, Jr? Whoever thought of this idea is a friggin' genius and deserves some kind of award. Perhaps a Nobel Prize, Jr.

At last my formal education in musical theater came in handy. It was actually to my benefit that I already knew every line of the show (Though it may never be useful that I have the original opening night cast of the Broadway production committed to memory like the vivid details of an automobile accident I just can't shake. God damn you Jim Christian and your Musical Theater Trivia Death Sheet, 1991.) because this script was not offering much as far as character development or conflict and resolution. It was like the kids were performing a staged reading of an outline of the show.

What I'm getting at is that the plot is sparse in this made-for-amateurs version of the show. In fact, some songs are even missing. Others have been sanitized and transposed into simple keys to match the pre-recorded, karaoke tracks the producers provide. All this to spare us a 4-hour evening of listening to a middle school marching band butcher an already-pretty-damn-intolerable score.

It works.

In 90 short minutes, Tevya talks to God, arranges a marriage, disowns his daughter, sees a ghost, is nagged by his wife and is forced from his village by Russians. All with about that much detail. Three minute scenes, scant sets, trimmed songs and pre-recorded music make for as pleasant an evening as you could expect to have at the theater.

Oh, plus, my daughter makes the cutest blue-eyed, blonde-haired, nameless, anonymous, Russian-Jewish peasant you about ever saw.

If you're ever forced into attending bad theater, this is a pretty good way to go.

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