Ok… I know I don't admit to this often… but I am a geek. A complete and utter geek. Yup, Mac loving, Harry Potter reading, Shakespeare sonnet memorising geek. But not just any old breed of geek – I am the worst kind. I actually specialise my geek-ness to one particular area. One usually reserved for old gay men.
My dirty secret is… I am self-confessed music theatre geek.
I blame my parents. A childhood listening the Andrew sisters, singing the tunes of "Joseph" and painting the sets of "little shop of horrors." Ten years of musical tuition, three years of musical theatre training… all supported by my loving parents. Yeah… I am a geek and although I manage to keep a lid on it most of the time… this week… it had no choice but to come out.
To get the build up to the events of the past two days, we need to go back a few years… lets say to the early nineties where I was a tall, awkward girl. Helping her dad paint the sets of the high school musical he was directing. Dad had the CD player, playing the soundtrack to a show I had never heard. It sounded different. You couldn't dance to it; there were no chorus girls and the music made you feel… well… different.
"Daddy, why are these people singing about shooting presidents in the head?" I asked…
"Well – this show is called Assassins. It's a non-linear musical piece about the disillusionment of the American dream and the power of the global media on the masses, manifesting it's self in people who assassinate American Presidents. ."
"Oh... so its not like cats?"
"No honey… its written by a man called Stephen Sondheim. That Cats show is a piece of crap."
And so… one conversation was to shape my theatrical tastes for the rest of my life.
Over the years, as I grew to learn more and more of the works of this man Sondheim, I became a more and more obsessive fan. The intelligence of his work not only fascinated but also inspired me and I bashfully admit that for a while there…I was what I now laughingly call a "Sondheim freak." Fat girl in high school, obsessing over obscure music… no wonder I never had a boyfriend.
Short story long… I love, admire and have an embarrassingly encyclopaedic knowledge of the man and his work. There is no way to fully explain it… unless you too are a music theatre geek – you just wont get it…
This kind of obsession does not leave you – no matter how hard you try. Fast forward to my mid twenties… there I was well and truly over the glamour and the romance of the industry and rather disillusioned by the music theatre genre as a whole. I had taken a long hiatus from my obsession, sold my soul to a giant mouse and put all of that passion for music theatre and particularly the works of Sondheim on the dusty back shelf of my mind. But it was still there… simmering away - waiting for a moment to boil over once more. Perhaps all those years distilled it in some way… the appreciation became less bubbly and a little more reserved… easier to bottle. But it was still there.
So… a month ago when my best friend Mccat (this is her nick name and how she will be referred to from now on…) called me to tell me that Sondheim was going to be in Sydney, doing a live question and answer and would I like to go… I immediately screamed YES down the phone and started booking flights I knew I could not afford.
By a series of fortuitous events, I managed to score myself a ticket and after party pass to the opening night of "company" the show Sondheim was actually out here to support. It was here I was going to get to meet him... I was going with a very old friend Beautiful Amanda, we both knew people in the cast and it was set to be a cracking night. I was very excited about the entire thing, good show, good company and perhaps the chance to meet a living theatrical legend. I had my opening night game face on and I was ready.
For people who don't know the circus that is a theatrical opening night... I will try to sum it up as concisely as possible…
Um… hype… noise… show… hype… noise… party… networking… drink… noise… hype… party… show… hype… taxi… bed.
Now… once you get the hang of it, these things are fun. For me the rules are simple – take everything everyone says with a very large grain of salt, laugh loudly at jokes you think are lame, make sure you eat before you drink, tell everyone involved you thought it was fabulous and wait until you are well out of earshot before you say what you actually think.
Oh… and never… never ever… take yourself or anyone else in the room too seriously. It is an industry of make believe after all.
So there we were… paparazzi snapping away (again... not at us… see my previous blog for my long history of that) drinking and laughing with the young beautiful industry types of Sydney, having a grand old time. I have to admit… I was feeling rather fabulous. We had been to the show, made it to the party, scoffed the free food and took advantage of the free booze. The room was shoulder to shoulder with Australian glitterati… and all I could think is… where is he… where is the big S… and do I actually have the balls to do this?
We did a couple of circuits of the room, all dimly lit, filled with mirrors, couches and drunk Australian celebrities (Bob Hawke was my favourite spot of the night…) and finally… in the corner of my eye I saw a quaff of familiar silvery hair… there he was.
Ten meters away… and completely surrounded.
Wave after wave of people crashed around him – staring like they were looking into the face of god. The outer circle was hilarious. Hysterical music theatre FREAKS who circled him like he was some ice sculpture centrepiece, afraid to get too close in case they damage it, but crying (yes… literally crying) because it's beauty was all too impossible to grasp. Beneath them were the actors... the ones who were actually in this show… trying desperately to seem nonchalant about the fact they were chatting to an industry icon… making jokes and comments to him like they were old friends… all the while their faces screaming silently OH DEAR GOD PLEASE LOVE ME. Then, the closest ones to this Elvis of musical theatre were his friends… a couple of people who actually knew him and seemed to bring him some kind of solace in what seemed to be an exhausting and embarrassing parade of adoration. He looked exhausted, it was after midnight, he was working all day the next day and seemed to simply want to go home to do the crossword in bed.
I caught my reflection in the mirror. What the hell was I doing? Leave the man alone. He is famously shy and private and has flown from New York, apparently has the flu and has no need for yet another random girl to speak to him about nothing in particular, so she could brag to her friends… I met the big man. I started backing away. I was better than this… I did not need this validation. Be more than some crazy fan Amy, I thought. Leave this man in peace – lord knows he deserves it.
And then the speeches started… the artistic director of the theatre company up there bla bla bla-ing about the importance of musical theatre in the world (how singing and dancing save the energy crisis I do not know…) but as people milled and the crowd shifted… I started a conversation with the girl next to me. The two of us chuckling away about the freaks and the speeches… she was young, Australian and really nice. An island of normal in the sea of crazy that was becoming this evening. I asked what she was doing there and she said "I'm looking after Stephen… do you want to meet him? You seem normal…"
(That's the first time I had been called THAT in a while)
Did I want to meet him…. Did I want to meet him? I had been dreaming of this moment since I was twelve… but now… as it is offered to me on a platter… did I say no to appear normal? Did I walk away in the name of all things chic and cool?
HELL NO.
The speeches ended, he turned around to look at me and the nice girl said, "Stephen this is Amy… lives in London, lovely person, knows your producer…"
He looked at me… I looked at him...
I shook his hand and said "Hi… it's a pleasure to meet you…"
And he paused and said…
"I am really sorry I am exhausted and I have to go."
Yes folks… sometimes when you meet your hero they inspire you, they make you strive to be a person… or they excuse themselves to leave.
We are all – at the end of the day – fabulously human
