No really, I mean it. Why don’t we?
- Honest, no kidding – I think we could do it
- Well, what have they got that we haven’t? Exactly!
- Well gee whiz, it can’t be that hard
- Say, kids, I really think we could pull it off
- Let’s say we charge two bucks a head
- Sure, it’s crazy, but what’s wrong with that?
- Why, it wouldn’t be any trouble at all to call some of the boys
- Listen, I’m serious. Can’t you picture it?
- Well, why not?
- Well, now, wait a second, I think we oughta at least consider the idea!
- Why, all we’d have to do is –
- Hot dog, if we can pull this off, we’ll have turned this whole thing around
- It wouldn’t take much to get this old barn looking like a real studio
- Wait a minute, I might just have an idea!
- Say, you might just be onto something
- Jim, didn’t you say you had something at home that would do just as well?
- Think, gang! We’ve got just what it takes, as long as we’re not afraid of a little hard work!
- I still say you’re all crazy, but I don’t have another idea
- We just might have what it takes to get this off the ground
- Why couldn’t we?
- Well, when you put it like that – maybe we could!
I hear all of this in Gene Kelly’s voice.
My favorite “why don’t we put on a show” sequence is the one in Mansfield Park.
Fanny’s disdain for amateur dramatics is the reason I could never learn to like her.
I don’t feel like Fanny is in a powerful enough position to feel the emotion of disdain? Her issue is that they are performing amateur dramatics in the house of someone who would not approve behind his back. And they try to pressure her into participating, ignoring the fact that doing so could get her removed from her home, because she is there on nothing but tolerance. Plus, if she had participated it’s quite likely that she could have been scapegoated into taking the entirety of the blame, especially considering how much her aunt hates her.
No one in power is particularly attached to Fanny or understanding of her character, and as a result she is so so so vulnerable and people just ignore that for some reason? Like her whole situation in that scenario is anxiety inducing to the point of nightmarish, and while she does disapprove, it doesn’t come from a place of “I am so above this.”
YES! And even just ignoring the power dynamics for a moment–one of her cousins is a drunken nightmare, one of her cousins is skirting dangerously close to blowing up her life (with potentially far reaching consequences for the other ladies in the family) one of her cousins is being a pouty, jealous wreck and her secret crush/cousin is betraying his own moral compass (in Fanny’s eyes at least) so he can make goo goo eyes at the pretty neighbor lady. And every single one of these people are coming to her with their problems/emotions/needs and expecting her to just deal with them. Amateur dramatics are no fun when everyone around you is acting like a putz.
I think she spots that it may lead to Impropriety, especially with a script that’s fairly sexually charged (I’ve read it). And indeed it does, and ironically enough, the sexy stuff in the script is incestuous, which fits how incestuous everyone is in MP.
I know that some of this is changing times and how we approach things, but I still reckon Austen could have done a better job of conveying exactly why Fanny is so determinedly against the play. Fanny’s an interesting character, but it’s a struggle to like her. I’m trying to think of any other novel protagonists who are chronically ill like her, especially with a fatigue-based illness. (I reckon it’s an early depiction of CFS/ME, which I have myself. Of course, it wasn’t recognised at the time, and barely is now.) It’s a hard thing to write in a lively way, especially with a character so put-upon.
If we’re on the topic of chronic illness/disability in Austen, I’ve always suspected Mary Musgrove has depression. The BBC adaptation of MP from a few decades back had Lady Bertram behaving as if she were a laudanum addict, which makes total sense of her character. They didn’t show her actually taking the stuff, she just acted stoned all the time, and laudanum addiction was sadly common back then. That bit when she’s in the garden, manages to miss all the shenanigans going on, but gets into a mild panic because her dog got into a flowerbed and wouldn’t come when called. Or the way she’s too out of it to cope with doing embroidery and Fanny pretty much does it for her. I mean, that’s not how you are if you’re healthy.
Ahhhhhh I am a HUGE fan of Fanny Hill, I will defend her to the bloody end
The play in question was DEFINITELY risque as hell for the time/people involved (I mean, acting in plays at all was something only shocking low-class people did, like conservative notions of pole-dancing today), and I don’t think she tried to stop them from putting it on, she just really didn’t want to be involved at all, and they peer-pressured her horribly into it (pulling the awful “aren’t you grateful for everything we’ve done for you, you charity case, and this is just the smallest favor!”).
She was beaten down emotionally and psychologically for her whole childhood. She’s told explicitly that she isn’t worth the cost of fuel to heat her room in winter (her aunt stipulated that there was NEVER to be a fire lit on Fanny’s account). Of course she’s incredibly anxious, timid, and has no sense of self-worth.
The slip-up of Fanny Hill for Fanny Price gave me a good giggle!
Yep, very true. And falling in love with your cousin who’s been raised as your brother, and also your actual brother to some extent, is not a sign of a healthy upbringing either. Lady Bertram is checked out, Mrs Norris is terrifying, Lord Bertram is mostly seen laying down the law from what I remember: no wonder they’re all messed up, Fanny most of all.
LOL, whoops. I actually did read Fanny Hill in my freshman year of college, but Mansfield Park was much more recent.
OH THAT ROMANTIC END WAS SO WEIRD. I really don’t think the novel was primarily a romantic one, anyway — it’s a story of surviving child abuse and finding a happy ending (with a safe, non-abusive relationship) despite everything. But I quoted in my book review the very brief attention paid to the romance arc:
Scarcely had he done regretting Mary Crawford, and observing to Fanny how impossible it was that he should ever meet with such another woman, before it began to strike him whether a very different kind of woman might not do just as well, or a great deal better: whether Fanny herself were not growing as dear, as important to him in all her smiles and all her ways, as Mary Crawford had ever been; and whether it might not be a possible, an hopeful undertaking to persuade her that her warm and sisterly regard for him would be foundation enough for wedded love.
Did you catch that? Their familial relationship was counted enough for WEDDED LOVE. Good God, the English were so incestuous back then.
Don’t forget the bit where Fanny is blatantly in love with her brother William, and acts far more like a lover with him when he occasionally visits than does with the man she will marry. Whom she has a brother-sister relationship with.
Then there’s the way the Crawfords are rather well suited to each other…
Hmmm, I pride myself on my incest radar, but I didn’t actually pick up on Fanny/William! I think it made just too much sense that he was her one tie to home, and they were genuinely fond of each other, and she was totally starved of affection at Mansfield Park. And terrified of everyone. William was the one person she was comfortable around, and she barely ever saw him.
I did amuse myself with speculation on what the Crawfords get up to when they’re alone, though! One of my favorite tropes is the beautiful, charming, and immoral set of siblings who are hinted to be sleeping together as they otherwise solely exist to playfully destroy everyone else’s lives.
“Say, Why _Don’t_ We Put On A Show?”
Because we’d much rather derail straight into Mansfield Park! Wouldn’t we, kids?
Old-timey moxie is the best moxie. That is all.
(Is the TCM film festival rubbing off on you??)
I would be 100% on board with putting on a show with my beloved Toasties. Coloredlights, I nominate you as stage manager! I’ll start setting up the costume shop…
I shall join you in costume setting up!
There are no dramaturgs in old-times backstage musicals. 🙁
Well, our production can fix that!
Really? Golly!
Toasties can fix nearly ANYTHING, right?
*turns up late, is on board anyway*
*brings box of assorted odds and ends to be used in the creation of props and costume accessories*
See, it’s that kind of plucky, can-do attitude that lets me know we can’t fail!
My pre-library life, and welcome to it!
I don’t miss it. I don’t miss it. I don’t miss it. I don’t miss it. I don’t miss it. I’m too old and stiff to go back. I don’t miss it. I don’t miss it. I don’t miss it AT ALL.
I’ve just left it. I don’t miss it. But I’d put my tights back on for the Toasties!
I’m impressed that you managed to leave! I tried so hard that I got undergrad and graduate degrees in totally unrelated areas and yet HERE I STILL AM, working in theatre. (Or I guess arts more broadly, not always theatre.)
Part of it was transport woes and part of it was getting old- the company that was my “home” is based out of my college and it was like in “Topsy-Turvy” where “as she gets older and older, the ladies’ chorus gets younger and younger”- not only was I taking up space that could have gone to someone who was young and learning, but I was getting too old to hang around in the green room with nineteen- and twenty-year-olds as a friend, but not old or experienced enough to be any good as a mentor. And around here every theater (the ones that weren’t casualties of the recession) already *has* their people they like to work with and even if I had the oomph to try to break in again somewhere else I don’t think I’d have the oomph to do all the rehearsing and performing and getting back and forth on top of my regular job.
I look back on the June when I was bike commuting, working full time, and doing five shows Th-Su and wonder who that woman *was* and how she had that much energy. And it was only three years ago!
Why, it’s just crazy enough to work!
Time to bring “hot dog” back into the ol’ lexicon.
Done. Currently working on “Good night, Miss Agnes!”
Hot DIGGITY dog!
I say!
Now you’re cooking with gas!
I heard someone unironically say “holy toledo!” in a bar on Saturday.
I say Holy Toledo all the time! In my head I always hear Marilyn Monroe saying it in How To Marry A Millionaire when I say it, so the response is always Betty Grable replying, “Isn’t he cute?”
The Toast could definitely do live shows, a la Call Your Girlfriend and other podcasts. Also it would be incredible and sell out everywhere.
Particularly at only two bucks a head. That’s value.
Ok but we get to see the tap-dance filled results of this, right?
WHICH of us is the likeable-but-not-particularly-talented Ruby Keeler, ready to fill in at the last minute and save the day?? You’re going out a youngster, but you’ve got to come back a star!!
It depends–which of us is married to Al Jolson (and that’s sure taking one for the team)?
Uhhhhhhhhhh… NOT IT! (runs away)
That’s the beauty of it — it doesn’t do anything!
Classic movies: giving me unrealistic expectations of how business works since forever.
Right? I honestly found this inspiring this morning in a delusional way– maybe it IS that easy!
Tangentially related: I saw bits and pieces of the movie Astronaut Farmer over the weekend, and kept being driven out of the room by the overwhelming force of Plucky White American Guy’s Individualistic Spirit Won’t Be Deterred By All The Negative Nancies, with a cloying sauce of Wife’s Timid Disapproval Is Converted To Wholehearted Support and a garnish of Children Are Slowly Taught To Deal With Dad’s Terrifying Risk-taking Behavior.
Man, wives are always so down on their husbands’ need to risk the entire future of the family on that one last-ditch effort, aren’t they? No appreciation for hard work.
We’ve done crazier things before!
or
Stranger things have happened!
Heck, old timer. You’ve done crazier things before breakfast!
Can we find an old barn that’s available on a mass transit route? Will the barn be up to code for this kinda work and this many people?
Listen kids, I’m all for moxie, but gee, someone’s gotta think about the practicalities of it all!
I actually have a barn…
and what about HVAC? You’ve filled this place up with fans at $2/head, do you know what that does to the room temp?
I presume you’ve got dedicated circuits for the 220v equipment? And a back-up generator for when the sudden (yet apropos) snowfall knocks out the main electricity lines from town?
Good, now, about this old septic tank….
My actual IRL job is to be that person.
me too
“My uncle’s got a barn!”
(not really, tho)
Do we need to talk to the unions about this?
All it needs is some spit shine, a touch of elbow grease, then wowee gee!
That’s the kind of moxie I want to see in our politicians. Come on, we can pass this bill!
This was me as a kid, except the friends/other kids I was speaking to were always grunting and shuffling away and trying not to make eye contact. Or agreeing enthusiastically before disappearing off the face of the earth.
I would like to respectfully suggest that “look here,” and “crackerjack” be added somewhere to this list.
Capital idea, sport!
Ripping.
My buddies and I have been jokingly writing Mansplaining: the Musical for the last month or so after a particularly egregious bout of it I had to endure at a bar. So far we have a few songs, but the big showstopper so far is called “Well, ACTUALLY…”
I’m picturing a tap-dancing, fedora-wearing chorus line…
two tickets for opening night please
Oh my boodness.
(I meant goodness but boodness is probably the bro version.) I love it. Also since someone above mentioned Mansfield Park, I would like there to be a Mansplaining Park.
Do you know about Manfeels Park?
I went to uni with her! She’s great.
Well I didn’t before! Thank you!
Oh my boodness (again), I can’t believe all the comments on this one. I also just can not care to read them all. http://www.manfeels-park.com/comic/recursion/
Apparently I can not bear reading too many of these at once. All the men, they make me feel faint. I’m too witches to read any more today.
Say, kid, whaddya say about this crackerjack idea? An all female cast? Because otherwise it will be men doing all the singing (and making all the big buckaroos, y’see?)
I have only this to say: Cosmooooooooooooooooo
It me, always and forever. Boston Toasties, wanna put on a show??
As part of a group of crazy kids who founded a community theater.
It. ME.
(Srsly, kids, don’t drink in college. Or don’t drink with theater people in college.)
“My friend’s got a blog we can use to promote it!”
In high school we put on “Babes in Arms.” It involved a very elaborate dream ballet. The big moment at the end of act two involved the words “LET’S PUT ON THE SHOW IN THE BARN!”
To this day, we still will regularly yell LET’S PUT ON THE SHOW IN THE BARN.
I am picturing Danny Kaye delivering these lines with all the gusto he can manage, then avoiding direct eye contact with literally all of the crew for several hours afterward. In fact after Cecil screamed “CUT!” he probably just sat in his trailer and felt bad about his choices and I am ok with that.
This is me and my friend Honest Lewis discussing our joint project that we have not had time to work on that does involve theater.
Tangential Donald O’Connor story, courtesy of my grandparents: In the 1960s, my grandparents were big frequenters of a certain Poconos resort (“All you have to bring is your love of everything…”). They had several stories in their repertoire of past-their-prime celebrities performing at the resort. My grandfather’s favorite was the time Donald O’Connor performed while stinking drunk (and still performed well! Such a showman!) and tap danced so exuberantly that his shoe went flying into the audience. He was hustled offstage soon after.
“We’ve gotten outta tougher scrapes than this. Why, it worked in St Louis, remember?”
Oh god, I think so many Edinburgh Fringe shows start off like this. Except nothing as nice as a barn, think stifling cupboard instead. I once saw a two-person show that involved acting and singing, and at one point the female actor had to sit on the male actor’s lap and get stroked a bit. It was my singing teacher, who had last put on this show several decades earlier with her now-late husband. This time she was performing it with her son, an old friend of mine from choir. It was in a tiny venue, roasting hot, and I was on the front row. MY EYES.
There was another show we saw the other year – you get free passes to the rest of the venue with the one we were at – called We Were Kings. I looked at the flyer and said, “Is thisgoing to be angsting about turning thirty?” My partner looked at it and said, “No, I think it’s going to be angsting about turning twenty.” Yep. It was dreadful. We all sat through it, as one of the actors was at drama college with one of ours. Afterwards, another one of our actors said very earnestly to them, “So how did this happen?” and my partner cracked up.
My partner’s a good playwright and gets decent venues etc., although he has an old uni friend (for certain dire values of “friend”) who has somehow managed to get himself into every play despite being a nightmare to work with, and did his best to torpedo the last one. Thank fuck we’re not putting on a play this year, because my partner’s landlord has suddenly given him six weeks’ notice to move out as she’s getting divorced and needs to sell the flat, so we would have nowhere to put the actors.
AS AN ACTOR I KNOW EXACTLY THAT DUDE AND HE IS IN EVERY CAST AND MAKES ME WEEP INFERNOES OF HATE AND BITTERNESS.
But Don, after The Dueling Cavalier, no one would come to watch you jump off the Woolworth Building into a damp rag.
In the original “That’s Entertainment!,” during a clip of the “Hoe Down!” number from “Babes on Broadway,” Mickey Rooney says, “I don’t know where we got all that energy.” I always yell, “Dexedrine!” at the TV.
Heavens to murgatroyd, this pulls me back to the days when I roped my friend into adapting Rush Limbaugh’s “Rush Revere And The Brave Pilgrims” for the stage. Turns out it’s really hard to “just put on a show!”
Heavens to murgatroyd, this pulls me back to the days when I roped my friend into adapting Rush Limbaugh's "Rush Revere And The Brave Pilgrims" for the stage. Turns out it's really hard to "just put on a show!"
Admit it: The Toast is shutting down to write a show.
I can tell by your handle. "Come on, gals–all we need is a laundry hamper and a pair of horns! Meet you by Herne's Oak for a midnight curtain!"