Clareified

I’ve seen the Drowsy Chaperone three times.
I’ve written about it before, but basically, it’s a guy listening to a record of a musical and then the musical comes to life.
A celebration of the imagination.
Like the Nutcracker, but not boring.
There’s this scene in the Drowsy Chaperone where the narrator is imagining the finale of the musical and the lights suddenly go out in his apartment. Moments later, his super is knocking on the door.
“I need to reset your circuit box, it’ll just take a minute.”
The narrator lets him in, and the super cluelessly walks past the airplane in the background and the three wedding ceremonies and the gangsters dressed as pastry chefs, straight to the back of the apartment. All the while the narrator is anxious to get back to the show. His show.
But by the time the record comes back on - with a screech - after the power is reset, the narrator accepts that he has missed the moment.
Life has ruined it.
I’ve been drawn to the Drowsy Chaperone ever since I saw it last October. The idea that they managed to create a show about something in one guy’s head. Superb! (And yes, I loved Herman’s Head for the first two seasons too…)
He gets his happy ending, of course, because as he says earlier “everything always works out in musicals, but in real life almost nothing ever works out.”
And sure enough, the lights come up and there they are actors finishing up work for the night, asking for donations to some charity or another.
And it’s over. Pesky life.
But really, I suppose, it’s my own fantastical life that I miss.
The days of world saving adventures on the Power Princess: A two speed, powder pink bicycle with plastic rainbow tassels (for firing lasers), a weave basket (for carrying victims), a bell (for opening the door the secret lair) and training wheels (for balancing our hero who really couldn’t ride a bike.)
As much TV as I watched as a kid, I still spent hours on end writing stories and daydreaming.
Eh, and truth be told, even after I was a kid.
All during umm…law school, I would imagine my Perry Mason moments well into the night.
Not so much anymore.
Now my thoughts are all about whether that weird shifting bone thing in my left foot is going to travel through my blood stream and hit my heart. Or what I’ll do after the firm thing ends. Or whether that crippling pain is cancer or an ulcer.
And well, I guess, I wonder why exactly we ever agree to trade dreams for worries.

This entry was posted by Dawn Summers on Friday, April 20th, 2007 at 12:06 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.