Wicked the musical
“I’m not a sport kid Mum, I’m a musical theatre kid.” It wasn’t something I expected to hear from my then four year old son. In a local pirate ship playground I would hear my son yelling out “I’m Peter Allen” – as in the late great Aussie entertainer Peter Allen. If the name isn’t ringing any bells have a squiz at this Youtube clip. Flamboyant, talented and fabulous Peter Allen had a Tony award winning musical written about his life The Boy from Oz where he has most famously been portrayed by a very un-Wolverine like Hugh Jackman. The reason he was playing at being Peter Allen in the pirate playground was because Peter Allen stars as the Pirate King in one of his favorite DVDs a 1980s production of the Pirates of Penzance (A British opera that debuted in 1879). So amongst the childhood Black Beards and Captain Fishbreaths my little pirate Peter Allen would frolic believing he was playing at being a really fierce and fabulous pirate. His fifth birthday party was a Pirates of Penzance party – none of the other kids had a clue, and thought it was just a pirate party. They don’t know how many tears the birthday boy shed because I wouldn’t let him perform the entire score of Pirates of Penzance for his guests opting instead for pass the parcel and a pinata.
Throwing aside anxieties of potential school yard bullying that my little Peter Allen may face I am determined to wholeheartedly foster his love of musical theatre. We can already see an awareness of gender “norms” relating to music developing in our son since he started school. What I hope though is that where-ever his life journey takes him, be it one of fabulous flamboyance or the conservative mainstream he will retain his love of music. One of the amazing things about living in Melbourne is the outstanding musical theatre here. My very lucky little Peter Allen was taken this weekend by his grandmother to the musical Wicked. Wicked is the “untold story of the witches of Oz” and deals with issues such as popularity and people’s perceptions of others. It is widely acclaimed, has won numerous awards and has been performed all around the world. It is billed as being suitable for kids aged 8 and over so we were pushing it a little sending him with his grandmother.
The plan – as it was a grandma-grandson date and I didn’t go that he would write a review of Wicked for this site. Given my son’s passion for musical theatre I had hoped he would share an insightful review of Wicked from his perspective. Perhaps I was hoping for a little much. Getting him to tell me what he though of Wicked other than it being “great” proved more difficult than I had hoped. The best testimony to the success of his musical experience is that he brought it home with him and, as our neighbors will attest to is playing the Wicked DVD at 6 am every morning.
His review is according to him, almost word for word what he shared in “Show and Tell” at school the next day.
“My favorite song from Wicked is “Defying Gravity”. Elphaba and Glinda the Good sing it. There was a dragon in Wicked. The dragon wasn’t scary. The music made me feel awesome. I bought souvenirs. I love musicals.”
Okay, it’s not a prolific review, it’s not an eloquent review. But it is an honest appraisal from a six year old. The music made him feel awesome. Wicked is playing for only two more weeks in Melbourne at the Regent Theatre and is opening in Sydney on September 20th. It will be showing in Brisbane in 2015.
We’re a musical theatre family – and it’s a good thing! My younger daughter saw Wicked the first time when she was 5/6 too and it remains one of her favourites.
Our love of musicals led both of my girls to performing in community theatre and it has been an incredible learning experience for them. Try to get him involved in a musical theatre program for kids and see where it leads!
That is a great suggestion Lisa. I have been looking at some school holiday musical theatre programs and am thinking of enrolling him in one when I am back at work.
I love that he’s into musicals – it’s too cute that he’s fronted up and said so! I very much hope he doesn’t get that bullied out of him. (As an aside, we are very much working against the girls things/boys things at the moment and I did up a dancing-men pinterest board with all the performers who finally convinced P that dancing was an equal-opportunities game – I’d hate for him to never dance just because he thought he wasn’t supposed to!)
I love the dancing men pinterest board. I enrolled my son in dancing class at his primary school – they do it one lunchtime a week. At the end of first term he quit because no other boys were doing it and he felt silly. The funny thing was that during the school holidays I got phone calls from a whole lot of other mums wondering if my son was staying in dance class because if he was they were going to send their sons too. So we re-enrolled him and now most of his best male friends in Prep do dancing with him.