#febphotoaday #day2 #words #childrenwilllisten #intothewoods
These are the most important words I've ever sung. This is why:
This is Poppy and she is the light of my life.
She is the product of meeting the love of my life at the information session for a Buderim production of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods. We'll get to that. I think it's important for you to know that I already knew the role of the Witch long before I was cast. I grew up watching the original Broadway production on VHS tape...until it wore out. I learnt to sing in a household with Bernadette Peters, Barbra Streisand, Sarah Brightman, Betty Buckly and...Tiffany. I know. I was bored in grade seven. But there was something about belting out, behind closed doors in the bedroom, into a hairbrush in the eighties, "coulda' bin so bee-yoo-da-full, coulda' bin so right..." wasn't there? Wasn't there???
I also owe a great deal of arbitrary singing training to my dad. His own training came from Peter, Paul and Mary, ELO and The Beatles, as well as many highschool and community productions of the oldies but goodies, like HMS Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, South Pacific, Irene, Waltzes From Vienna and Orpheus of the Underworld. Yep. That's right. My dad is pretty versatile. After the final show of every short season in Buderim, when Mum knew that he and the rest of the company were on their way down the hill, she would wake us up, just in time for the party. Did she have a sixth sense? We didn't have mobile phones. Wait. Did you know that my Mum did one of the shows? Of course you didn't. That's why I'm telling you. It's important. She was in Show Boat. Well, we were all in Show Boat but that was her show. That was the show that made her realise that the shows were not for her. Not being in them anyway. And years later I found out that she didn't always particularly love seeing them either. I'm sure she meant she didn't love seeing them a million times. Or six or seven times or...again, after the obligatory opening night attendance (the shows were always Geoff's thing). It doesn't matter. What's important is that she had fun that once on stage and I think she's just never really considered herself a singer because she has always concentrated on being able to do other things. Mum's words.
Going by the few photos I've seen of those parties, it seems the adults were often in costume - Judy - I idolised her and tried to be as tall as her with hair as long as her for years - in full Grizabella get-up (and by get-up I mean leotard, tail, ears, black nose and whiskers! After not having ever done CATS at BATS!) to sing her rendition of Memory in front of the fireplace - and we were always all in pyjamas. I mean, did Mum not dress us up too? I can't believe mum didn't dress us up too! Still sleepy, I would hear the clatter of too-high heels on our pavers as the ladies arrived and after the first few hours of drinks and songs and a combination of fancy and not-so-fancy frozen and homemade food, the kids would sit at Dad's feet while he played guitar and sang. He gave us lifelong gifts, those gorgeous treats with which we've spoilt our own kids, like I'm in Love With a Big Blue Frog, The Rainbow Connection and, appropriately, by the time the sun was almost back from its nightly escapade, Morningtown Ride. There were beanbags and handbags and shoes and sheet music on the floor and in winter there was a roaring fire. And there were stories. Hilarious anecdotes of hair caught in curling wands (I claimed that story a few years later when it happened to me during the interval of Show Boat. I was stuck in the dressing room; a Mincing Miss MESS), of song lyrics sung wrong, of runs in stockings, of gossip that was almost certainly true and of the lipstick on collars that proved it to be so. Absolutely tangible at these parties, was a sense of community, a feeling that we were each a part of some bigger family. That community, that family, it doesn't exist so much anymore.
What the next generation has been able to recreate with a little more obvious success is the hosts' tendency towards excess. The name of our company reflects this: XS Entertainment. XS? Excess? See what we did there? Right. Anyway, there was always so much food. SO much food. Mum must have cooked for days! And there was always so much wine. SO MUCH WINE! And just where did they GET that much wine all at once, long before our good mate, Tony Sells, and getwinesdirect.com conquered the online market?!
My parents did good parties, y'all.
I like to imagine that Dad only got out the guitar after much begging and pleading, once somebody had exhausted their repertoire on the piano. Dad's repertoire on the piano was limited to Fur Elise and those once fun, now inane duets, which are necessary to spark a child's interest in learning a musical instrument and then, ironically, turn them off it forever. Maybe it's just me. They were little ditties like Chopsticks and that one with the silly lyrics about the hounds that go a-hunting. Or something. There are undoubtedly more but they are the tunes I remember. They are the tunes that haunt me. Just joking, Dad! In fact, the joke is on me because I'm a singer and performance coach who doesn't play the piano or read much music. Anyway, it was usally Kath Jeffers on those keys. Kath was always late to the stage, even in the lead role in the opening scene. That's true. But she always had perfectly coiffed hair, bright painted lips and she played a mean Oklahoma (O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A ...OklaHOME-MAH!) on our lil' ol' upright piano in the slate-floored front room on each closing night. That part may not be true. She may not have played Oklahoma at all but we sure sang the hell out of it anyway!
My family tried hard to keep that piano forever. Well, let's say a certain rather more sentimental than most member of the family tried to keep it forever while the rest of us thought, while it would be nice to keep it for sentimental reasons, none of us had ever learned to play it properly and we really don't have the space at our place... couldn't YOU take it? It ended up in our garage for a little while (Poppy played it) and when we moved, it went to some lovely family - a friend of a friend knew of someone - who promised to take care of it forever.
My sentimental sister was devastated.
So having learned the role of the witch in my parent's living room when I was twelve or thirteen, when my musical theatre friends were still singing Tomorrow or that ridiculous ice cream song from Anne of Green Gables - and we can thank the musical theatre gods we have JRB now - I turned up to the information session for a little, local production of the most sophisticated musical I'd ever come across. At the time, I was living with the spitting image of Pierce Brosnan in Buderim. I was happy! We were happy! (We're so happy you're so happy! Just as long as you stay happy, we'll stay happy!) We were growing our own veges, for god's sake! What happened? When I met Sam, we were making coffee downstairs in the greenroom (and by greenroom, I mean the teeny, tiny, dusty clubhouse under the memorial hall that we call a theatre, with its fridge and couches and kitchen table and, proudly framed and put up onto every available wall space, the cast photos from all the shows we'd done there since I was little) and he asked me, "Are you married?" I said, "What?" I laughed and I made my coffee and returned to my seat upstairs to see who my competition was. My competition for the role of the witch, not for the cheeky, buff young man I'd almost met downstairs. Later, when he pressed me for details, I told him, "You're incorrigible." Turns out I was right.
It turned out too, that we'd heard of each other and when we both got the roles we wanted, he also got the material he's been using ever since: he was Prince Charming and I was the Witch and (HE says) nothing's changed. If you know Sam I know you've heard it. It still works for him! It turned out that my dad was also in the show - he was an excellent Footman - and so the illicit affair that came about was made all the more dramatic by my father's presence at rehearsals. But that's another story. This story ends with the barefoot equivalent of a fairytale wedding and years later, long after the happily ever after part, the arrival of a perfect child, Poppy Eponine. My favourite, fragile flower with unbelievable strength and indescribable beauty, living a life of incredible language, colour, creativity, fun, freedom and wisdom beyond her five years. When I sing these words to her, I'm really singing them for me. The gentle reminder to self.
The most important words I've ever sung.
Careful the things you say, children will listen.
Careful the things you do, children will see and learn.
Children may not obey but children will listen.
Children will look to you for which way to turn, to learn what to be.
Careful before you say, "Listen to me."
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