Gleeful

There are a number of rules and codes that I try to live my life by and to be fair; I’ve broken most of them. But the one rule that I rend to follow as often as possible is “if it’s good enough for Joss Whedon, its good enough for me”. I’ve watched most everything that Joss has been involved in and I have to admit that it took the involvement of Joss Whedon and Neil Patrick Harris to get me to finally watch an episode of Glee, despite the encouragement of my friends since the start of the show. Joss Whedon is the man responsible for two of the best forty five minute musicals in history. My friends know my tastes; this is why they’re my friends, so when they told me that I’d love Glee I should have known that they were right. My friends know that I’m a fan of musicals and indeed it’s only because of my friends that I was lucky enough to have been exposed to musicals at all.

Like most things in my life, my exposure to musicals is due to the folk from the View Askew Message Board. In 2007, when tickets were bought for Kevin Smith’s 37th birthday party in New Jersey, plans were immediately made, and one of those plans was to stay in New York with some friends for a few days before going to New Jersey to connect with the main contingent of Boardies.

I’ve always been a huge supporter of the principle of compromise. Well, I’m a supporter of the part of compromise where I get to do the stuff that I want to do. The part of the compromise where I have to do what someone else wants to do; I’m not the hugest fan of that part. In New York with my friends before Prom, I certainly got to do a lot of stuff that I wanted to do, the funnest part of which was a brilliant night in a pub called “O’Lunney’s” on West 45th Street just off Times Square. But the time came as all times must when I had to do something that I didn’t want to do, and what I did not want to do was to endure Legally Blonde: The Musical. I’d love to be able to say that I was graceful in compromise, but I wasn’t. I really didn’t want to go to see the musical and even though I’d already paid for the ticket, when the time came to go to the venue I was trying my best to think of ways to get out of having to endure the show and even the possibility of faking a heart attack wasn’t out of the question.

I mean, if I was being forced to sit through a musical, wouldn’t you think that at least I’d be forced to sit through a good musical. Legally Blonde was a musical based on… Legally Blonde and lets call a spade a spade here, it’s not exactly Shakespeare. But all narrative problems aside, Legally Blonde: The Musical is what every musical should be, it’s incredibly enjoyable. Within ten minutes of the show having started, I was in love with the show and by the time the main cast started doing a fair approximation of Riverdance, there was a good chance that my heart would explode with joy. When the show ended I was fully converted, and for the next week I took every opportunity possible during the festivities leading up to Prom to tell people about this life changing experience. Also, I couldn’t stop myself from singing part of the opening track of the show. “Never Say Goodbye” is the song that will forever remind me of Prom night but “Omigod You Guys”, the song that opened the Legally Blonde show is the official song of that whole holiday for me.

Folk who know me can attest to the fact that when I find something that I like, I’m not shy about talking about it to anyone who’ll listen and I spent a long time telling every person that I met about how much I enjoyed the show, how surprised I was by that fact and how I was looking forward to seeing more musicals in the future. And I think that by the time March of 2008 rolled around and I was in Orlando with the same group of friends, my musical-hysteria had just about died down. So you can imagine my surprise when I walked into the kitchen of the condo I was staying in with my friends and I saw a custom made “Legally Simon” magnet stuck to the door of the fridge.

To make matters worse (or possibly better), I found out that a whole batch of these magnets had been produced and were being handed out to the rest of the group later that same night. Despite my initial embarrassment at seeing this particular image of myself, it’s become a reminder of a great time with good friends and I’m fairly proud of the fact that every single time I’ve gone overseas since then and have been invited in to a friend’s house, a Legally Simon magnet has been there to greet me. That makes me smile almost as much as the original musical did.

Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to see a few more musicals with my friends. I’ve been able to see The Wedding Singer, Flashdance, Legally Blonde (again), Avenue Q and most recently, Wicked. Wicked stands out a little bit from the rest of the group in that it almost is Shakespearean in its themes and narrative, based on the fantastic book by Gregory Maguire. It’s been recently announced that a movie based on the musical version of Wicked is currently in development and we can only hope that the powers that be have enough common sense to cast Idina Menzel in the role of Elphaba.

Musicals on-screen don’t have the same impact that a stage musical has, and no matter the quality of the acting or the singing or the production values of what you see on screen, you just can’t beat the feeling of being part of an audience and getting caught up in the emotion of the moment. Having said that, every so often the on-screen musical does come close.

Before providing me with a reason to watch Glee, Joss Whedon already had two very successful forty five minute musicals under his belt. One was the “Once More With Feeling” episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and the other was Doctor Horrible. The episode of Buffy in particular is notable for taking a group of actors, most of which had little or no musical experience (or talent) and being able to produce what it arguably one of the best episodes of the series’ seven year run. We knew that the songs would be catchy and we knew that it would be funny in places, what we didn’t suspect at all was that that one episode of would bring to bare the inner secrets of almost every character and turn the songs into confessions. Also… it has a training montage.

If OMWF was a risk for Whedon, then his next attempt at a musical, Doctor Horrible was possibly an even bigger risk, but it was also a bigger success. The initial internet release proved to be wildly popular. It was followed by releases on CD, MP3 download, DVD as well as prequel stories in comic form. It’s also been confirmed that a sequel of some description is in the pipeline. Nobody was quite sure what to expect when Doctor Horrible first went live on the internet, but it only took one viewing to fall in love with Neil Patrick Harris’ not so villainous villain and Nathan Fillion’s not so heroic hero. Personally the biggest revelations from the first Act of Doctor Horrible were that the man who played Malcolm Reynolds could play sleazy so well and that he is a pretty great singer. “A Man’s Gotta Do”, the song that Nathan Fillion and Neil Patrick Harris share towards the end of Act One actually led to me almost being arrested one night on a busy Dublin road. Let’s just say that Nathan Fillion is a much better crooner than I could ever hope to be, and when a police man asks you what you’re doing, telling him that you’re trying to do an A-Flat isn’t the best answer to give.

But despite my slight Whedon-related brush with the law, it did take the combined presence of Joss Whedon and Neil Patrick Harris to finally convince me to watch an episode of Glee. And through the entire episode, I couldn’t help but smile. More than any other on-screen musical that I’ve come across, Glee embodies Broadway and almost makes you feel like you’re watching a stage production, wrapped in the awe and the emotion of a crowd of people. It’s cheesy at times, and in fairness, for every four or five amazing songs there’s the occasional clunker. But that, in my opinion, just adds to the authentic and spontaneous feeling that the show has, making it like Broadway-in-a-box. Glee does exactly what a musical is supposed to. It makes you feel gleeful.

– Simon Fitzgerald

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