It's graduation, so I get to be sentimental.
My year began with Sweet Charity, a silly and surprisingly profound musical. The story, which follows the romantic aspirations of a perpetually down-on-her-luck dance hall hostess (Charity), is always just a moment away from a happy ending. Indeed, the play's very opening scene reads more like a conventional ending: Charity sings about how much she loves her boyfriend, whom she believes is planning on proposing to her. Rather than propose to her, however, he steals her purse and pushes her into a pond. Then the play goes on. This scene is emblematic of the whole show. Every so often Charity falls for a new guy, somebody who seems finally to be different than all the rest, only to have her hopes defeated in some kind of humiliation. Then the play goes on. In this way, the play reminds us that life, unlike theatre, keeps going and that our problems are guaranteed to persist with it. It suggests that happy endings are not just elusive, but misnomers––there is no end but the very end (and happiness is the least we have to worry about there). My own conclusion reading the piece is that Charity is to be admired rather than pitied for her disappointments because she bounces back from every one of them with renewed hope, resourcefulness, and love for life. We should all be so lucky.
I played Herman, the dance hall's proprietor––a man as crass as his profession would suggest, but not without some of Charity's sentimentalism. He's featured in one of the last numbers of the show "I Love to Cry at Weddings." The song ultimately suggests that we get caught up in weddings the same way we get caught up in silly romantic musicals––because it's so lovely to imagine the couple riding off into the happy, untroubled sunset of their lives. But as we learn in the next scene, this is seldom the case. And when that happens it's up to us, like Charity, to keep going and to choose to concentrate on what beauty we can still find in the world.
One of the unique joys in this production was watching so many of my classmates come into their own. Jessie Jennison was absolutely spectacular in the titular role: she brought dignity and joy to the character and made the role her own despite her iconic predecessors. Eric Peters, who played Oscar, was a revelation as well. His Oscar, one of Charity's suitors, was so delightfully inept and uncomfortable with everything from romance to his own skin that he'd fit right into a reboot of The Office. Adhana Reid and Rosie Jo Neddy were spectacular too as Charity's friends and co-workers Nickie and Helene. I thought they were thrilling in "There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This" (truthfully, I'm not sure there is anything better than that, though if there were it just might be their gorgeous rendition of "Baby Dream Your Dream"). The rest of the cast was great to be sure, but I don't think I have the time (or you, the patience) for me to continue at length.
All in all what a lovely way to spend the fall.