I have had lots of thoughts and experiences and ideas. The trick is to keep track of them and then to catch up.

I saw a knock-out production of The Music Man at Stratford, heavy on the dancing, because the director, Donna Fiore, is a dancer and choreographer. The joke was, among the cast, that no one had to go to GoodLife Fitness; they were getting their work-outs in the musical. Meredith Willson (1902-1984) is one of very few composers who wrote the lyrics as well as the music (Irving Berlin and ColePorter come to mind). He also wrote the book (with Franklin Lacey (1917–1988). Plus he wrote a book about the making of the musical: But He Doesn't Know the Territory (1959). I think I have it somewhere, and I remember it quite well.

Wiillson had trouble, more than the usual, getting backers because the little boy in it was spastic. and no one wanted to do a comedy with a spastic kid in it. But the music was so good that it was actually in rehearsal for the opening on Broadway when the composer had a revelation. He was talking with a friend about the ah-hah moments in a musical (or a play or a novel or whatever) when a breakthrough happens. The scene he was talking about was when the kids are getting excited pending the arrival of the Wells Fargo wagon with their band instruments. And, Willson pointed out, here's this kid with a lisp, not even related to....

My God! (I think he said, haven' t read it for ages)- the boy's not spastic, he has a lisp, and he is so eager he forgets his reticence to talk on account of his speech impediment and he sings:

"It muttht be thomething thpethial for me!" (I dp hope Auto-check doesn't correct this.)

That was the breakthrough they were waiting for, so exciting.

The show continues to excite me, one of my favourites.

More to come.