My Answers to the We Love Musicals Tag

Time for me to fill out the We Love Musicals Tag!

1. What are your favorite musicals?

1. Guys and Dolls (1955)
2. An American in Paris (1951)
3. White Christmas (1954)
4. The Greatest Showman (2017)
5. The Phantom of the Opera (2004)

For the rest of my top ten, read this post :-)

2. What do you like about musicals? 

I like how a good musical allows characters to express their thoughts and emotions through song and dance instead of only words.  A good musical uses music the way Shakespeare used soliloquies.

Bonus points if they're really fun and leave me smiling, and if they have wonderful songs I want to learn all the words to!

3. What's the first musical you can remember seeing? 

The Sound of Music (1965) -- I have a vague memory of half-watching it when I was maybe four or five years old.  We didn't own a TV set until I was 4, so it can't have been earlier than that.

4. Have you ever seen a live musical onstage? 

Yes!  I saw Hayley Mills in a touring production of The King and I in 1997.  I also saw a production of The Mikado as a teen.  And I saw a couple of Gilbert and Sullivan musicals back when I was in college -- I think Princess Ida and The Gondoliers? 

5. Have you ever performed in a musical? 

Yes!  During college, I was in the chorus of three Gilbert and Sullivan musicals: The Sorcerer, The H. M. S. Pinafore, and The Yeomen of the Guard.  I had several friends who were in them too, which made rehearsals and sitting around in the Green Room lots of fun.  Not to mention, learning how to do stage makeup has come in really handy now that my daughter does ballet and needs stage makeup for her performances.

Me with two friends backstage in our Yeomen of the Guard costumes.

6. Do you periodically dance about and burst into song in real life? 

I do.  Sometimes in public and fairly often at home.

7. What's the newest movie musical you've seen? 

Wicked (2024), which I took my daughters to see in the theater in December.  I liked it all right.

8. What's the oldest movie musical you've seen? 

The oldest one I know for sure I've seen all of is The Wizard of Oz (1939).  I've seen parts of some Shirley Temple movies too, but I'm not sure which ones I've seen all of -- that would have been when I was a kid, and I just don't remember now.  So I'll say The Wizard of Oz because it's so nicely symmetrical that the newest musical I've seen is a sort of retelling of the oldest one I've seen!  Neither of which are movies I actually love, but that's okay.

9. What's the last musical you watched? 

I watched The Music Man (1962) last week with my kids.  It was their first time watching it, and we laughed and laughed!  Good times.  Being from Iowa myself, I've always had a particular soft spot for it.

10. What musical do you hope to watch for the first time soon?

Hmm.  Probably either Pirates of Penzance (1983) or Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again (2018).  They're both on my TBW shelves, so it will just be a matter of which I'm in the mood for first.

If you want a clean version of this tag, you can find it in the blog party kick-off post.