This past weekend, Melis and her students put up the Forest Hills Broadway revue,
The Sounds of Broadway: 65 Years of Show Tunes from The Great White Way. It was a fantastic success and I’m sorry that some of you missed it. They sang a couple of songs from
Jersey Boys and when they sang “Sherry,” the guy singing the Frankie Valli role sang it right to Aunt Sherry. It was totally adorable.
I was so impressed with the talent and dedication of these students and with how the Drama program has grown since I was there. Melis has done amazing things with that program. This show was really special to me because I got to help out with both of my sisters and the collaboration was a lot of fun. The three of us chose all the music in one dizzying night of Broadway madness. We gathered in our parents’ kitchen and compared lists and shouted things like:
“Do we
really have to do one from
South Pacific?”
“‘Close Every Door’ is a downer and it reminds me of the Holocaust.”
“I don’t think you realize the significance of
Oklahoma in the history of musical theater.”
“Should we include one from
Avenue Q?” “Only if you want Melis to lose her job.”
“Allison, stop singing your conversations to the tune of ‘Tradition’ or I am going to throw this copy of
Fiddler at your head.”
We whittled our combined lists down to 82 songs, and then we whittled that list from 82 to 30, like some bloodthirsty townspeople playing a Broadway-themed game of Mafia. It was fabulous.
Along with Kelly, the awesome choreographer, we cast all the roles. (And I realized that Jen is the Simon Cowell of the Stombaugh sisters.) Melis directed, Jen taught the kids all the music, I wrote the song intros and offered occasional snarky comments, and Julia acted as the cutest Drama Mascot in the history of cuteness.
And then everybody worked, worked, worked. I always assumed Melis and Kelly worked themselves ragged on these shows, but it’s a different thing seeing it firsthand. Kelly would rattle off a list of ten things she needed to do the next day, but they were things like, “
Construct a plant head for the Little Shop of Horrors number.” Like, who even does that? Melis probably got three hours of sleep in the last three weeks, Jen spent most of her life at the school, and the kids just ate, slept, and breathed that show. They learned the music, they learned the dancing and acting and blocking. They constructed the set pieces. It was all they did for three weeks straight. And it showed.
Jen has already begun choosing songs for
The Sounds of Broadway II. Ladies, I’m voting to include “Tradition” this time, and I will sing my argument to you in the tune of that song.
