When I told my friend Allene I was going to write a blog about musical
theater, she said, “That’s pretty esoteric.” “Over the years,” I replied,
“I have edited a number of really interesting books on esoteric topics.”
There’s all the metaphysical books that prove the universe is holographic
and everything is connected. There’s the retired teacher in Arizona who
discovered (invented) a numerology that reveals the master plan of western
civilization. The ultimate number just happens to be his birthday. There’s
the Brazilian scholar who became acquainted with the angels and recorded
a multitude of details about angelic lives. Lucifer, for example, likes
to drink sake, and Metatron likes soccer and Chinese noodles. And then
there’s the ex-Marine that somehow discovered that the devil is a girl.
She’s nineteen years old. He wrote a novel about her evil deeds, as performed
in the California desert. Well, gee, I can write esoterica, too. One of
my favorite things in all the world is musical theater. Let’s go to an
alternate universe where musicals are real life and the people in them
are as real as you and me and see what happens.
South Pacific tells two World War II love stories. The principal
heroine is Ensign Nellie Forbush, who was born in Little Rock, Arkansas.
She is presumably in her early twenties when she is serving as a Navy nurse
on that island near Bali Ha’i. The French planter she marries, Emile de
Beque, is probably twenty years older than she is. So what does Nellie
do after Emile dies, say, in the 1960’s? Maybe she comes back to the U.S.,
and, landing in New York, meets the anti-war kids of
Hair. How does a World War II nurse react to the members of the tribe?
Well, what she learned in the south Pacific is tolerance. So, having lived
on an island, maybe she makes her home now on Manhattan. Her children grow
up there … and in 1996 they happen to be in the East Village, the setting
of
Rent. Nellie must be about seventy years old by this time, her children
in their forties, her grandchildren the same age as Mark, Roger, Tom Collins,
Angel, Maureen, Joanne, and Mimi. (I bet Nellie wouldn’t even think of
going into the Cat Scratch Club.) Do Nellie’s grandchildren enjoy
la vie boheme?
Fiddler on the Roof,
A Little Night Music,
The Merry Widow,
My Fair Lady,
Hello, Dolly,
Oklahoma! and
The Music Man are all set around the turn of the 20th century. (Well,
yes, the time-space continuum is pretty elastic in this theatrical universe
I’m inventing, where Schroedinger’s Cat is alive and well and a huge fan
of Andrew Lloyd Webber.) (
Cats.) As we know, Tevye the milkman and his family are victims of
a Russian pogrom and are forced to leave Anatevka. They’re heading for
New York. Let us suppose they become wandering Jews and somehow arrive
in Sweden, where they meet the famous actress, Desiree Arnfeldt. (In my
alternate world, everyone can understand everyone else: music is a universal
language, and that includes the lyrics.) Tevye and Golde have already sung
“Do You Love Me?” to each other. Now Desiree teaches Golde a few things
that make her marriage to Tevye much more interesting. And Tevye has a
philosophical conversation about mortality with Desiree’s mother. Onward.
It’s possible that Tevye and his family visit Paris next, where they wander
into the Pontevedrian Embassy and meet the Merry Widow. But I’m pretty
sure that if they go to Maxim’s, they don’t much approve of Prince Danilo’s
antics (this is before he marries the Widow), so they don’t stay very long.
On to England. They arrive in London and just happen to be in Covent Garden
on the very night at Professor Henry Higgins discovers Eliza Dolittle selling
flowers on the street. Tevye, the eternal scholar, soon decides that he,
too, want to take English lessons from Professor Higgins. So Tevye and
his daughter, Tzeitel, learn Perfect English, and Tzeitel and Eliza also
teach each other a few other useful things that clever girls should know.
(Meanwhile, Higgins’s mother, always charitable, hires Motel the tailor
[Tevye’s son-in-law] to sew for the women who attend the Ascot Derby and
other social events, thus giving Motel a nice temporary income, which he,
of course, saves.) Thanks to Higgins’s reply to a letter from America,
Eliza’s father, Alfred Dolittle (the one who has to get to the church on
time), goes to America to become a famous motivational speaker. Tevye and
his family sail on the same ship.
And who do they meet in old New York? Dolly Gallagher Levi, Horace Vandergelder,
and Cornelius Hackl. Alfred Dolittle immediately goes to the Harmonia Gardens
restaurant and joins the dancing waiters and general festivities. (And
so will WALL-E get a glimpse of him as he watches his DVD of the movie?)
Tevye (“If I Were a Rich Man”) prefers to confer with Horace; they teach
each other a few things about finance.
But New York is extremely crowded, and Tevye doesn’t want to settle in
the tenements. They soon hear that land is available in Oklahoma, and so
that’s their next stop, and of course they meet Curly and Laurey and Aunt
Eller, with whom Tevye has additional philosophical dialogue about farmers
and cowboys/Cossacks. He tells her that the Cossacks are not friendly.
Like Curly, they settle in as farmers as Oklahoma becomes a state. Of course,
twenty-odd years later, the state turns into the Dust Bowl and Curly and
Laurey become Okies. They go to California and end up in Hollywood, where
they go to work for RKO. (Can we spot them in any of Fred and Ginger’s
movies?) Meanwhile, Motel is tired of living with his in-laws, so instead
of going to Oklahoma, he and Tzeitel and their baby head north into Middle
America, where they melt the Iowa stubbornness of the citizens of River
City. Using his savings from London, Motel sets up shop as a tailor. Though
Professor Harold Hill is no longer selling phony band uniforms, the singing
school board hires Motel to sew real ones, and soon Mayor’s Shinn’s wife
introduces him to her friends. More work. Tzeitel of course goes to work
with Marion in the town library. She probably orders books and plays by
Chekhov and plants a cherry orchard in Iowa. (And what if, back in Russia,
Tevye had known Yermolai Alexeevich Lopakhin, the middle-class merchant
who purchases the famous cherry orchard? What if Madame Ranevskaya, having
sold the orchard, goes to Sweden and meets lawyer Eggerman? What if she
goes to London and meets Lady Windermere … or Mrs. Erlynne? Or any of Shaw’s
heroines? Or what if someone actually meets Bunbury? Whoa—here I go again.
Oscar Wilde’s plays are a whole ’nother trouser leg of history … er … literature.)
So do you see how this can go on and on? A mind is a wonderful thing to
play with. I used to go to the theater with a kind and generous man named
Patrick. I used to send him emails like this blog. He probably still thinks
I’m nuts. But now we know that the New Age is right: everything is in fact
connected. And musical theater proves it!
