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As the kids watched TV this morning, all the electricity went off and then, an instant later, there was a huge explosion in the sky above us. It was scary for them and it was a little scary for me. Was Jesus coming down to finally punish all the sinners like He'd promised? Or had war broken out or a plane exploded?
I realised pretty quickly that it was a thunderstorm and there had doubtless been a lightning strike on the village. But it's pretty rare for that to turn off all the lights. Was God angry with me? But not that angry. He just deprived us of 2 seconds of someone playing Minecraft on Youtube. Which if anything was a blessing. Perhaps I have pleased Him.
We had a day trip to London planned as we were going to see the Wizard of Oz on stage. I wasn't hugely looking forward to this and the kids wanted to stay inside where there was TV and no chance of being hit by lightning. But I am glad we went.
My trepidation was slightly coloured by the many times I had watched the film back in the 70s and 80s when it was on the telly every Easter or Christmas (or maybe both) and I wasn't sure I needed to see it on stage.
But I have to say it was a lot of fun and I got swept along. There was an edge of pantomime to it and the odd joke for the grown-ups ("I'm a friend of Dorothy"), but overall it's a great, mental story of a girl getting blown over a rainbow and meeting a scarecrow, a robot and a lion and murdering a couple of witches. A tale as old as time. Seeing the flying monkeys made me not only think of Mr Burns in the Simpsons as his version of the idea plummet to the ground, but a deep core memory of seeing those flying monkeys for the first time and being scared and fascinated by them in equal measure. You can say what you like about this camp and ludicrous story, but it really has some brilliant concepts.
There were a few new songs in there, but mainly the ones from the film and it struck me what a mind fuck it would be for the guys who wrote those that they'd still be being performed on stage 85 years after they'd written them. Especially as the film didn't become a hit until it was repeated endlessly on TV. Maybe people in 1939 had other things to worry about.
I started wondering about whether the rights to the songs are still with the composer (Harold Arlen) and lyricist(Yip Harberg)'s families or if they'd been bought up by a big corporation. Looking at their wikipedia pages both men were responsible for some pretty massive hits, but Somewhere Over The Rainbow is going to keep their families (or a big company) going for many decades to come.
Will anyone be doing any or my stuff in 85 years time? In 2109 I hope there's a stage musical of stone clearing (I've written plenty of songs for it) or self-playing snooker. I think there's probably only a one in four chance of either of them happening. It's hard to know what will endure (I struggle to come up with stuff that people like at the time, let alone a century later, but then no one liked the Wizard of Oz in 1939 so that gives me unrealistic hope).
Luckily Harold and Yip both lived til the 80s so will have known that their work on Oz was properly appreciated. L Frank Baum who came up with this fucking nonsense died in 1919, but the books had done OK for him before then.
Anyway, that was a bit distracting, but I still managed to keep up with the familiar but surprising story. I have to say I think the Wicked Witch of the West was a bit dumb to have a fire extinguisher full of water in her castle. Given her hydrophobia she would probably have been wiser to have a foam based fire prevention system. But it's easy to make those kinds of calls in hindsight. Also in foresight though if you know water will kill you.
What happened to the flying monkeys was a question that the kids asked later and it wasn't explained. I guess they flew off somewhere to find some bananas.
