I only actually attended two of these screenings, when I saw Lolita in 2005 (Kubrick version) and The Philadelphia Story in 2006. The movies they show nowadays are more mid and populist -- it would be almost impossible that they would screen a movie I hadn't already seen. That's in keeping with today's movie trends and it's something I might like to write about at length sometime, but I haven't yet reached critical mass on that.
Today I'm writing about the fact that they send out emails that warn of a LOW TICKET ALERT, which I actually think is a pretty useful feature. Surely they are not the only organization that does this, but this is where I've noticed it. It helps get your butt in gear to pull the trigger on completing a ticket purchase that you might have already completed if you weren't waffling or procrastinating.
And this is something I needed for the performance of Frozen Jr. at my kids' school.
If you know me, you know that I don't particularly care for Frozen. Now I'm talking about the Disney movie here, not the movie where skiers are trapped on a ski lift with hungry wolves below. Though a musical version of that could be interesting.
My "dislike," which is too strong a word, for Frozen has to do with my undying love for what I consider to be its chief rival, Tangled. Unfortunately, in that case, probably only Tangled-heads like me consider it a rivalry. It's like if you have a really good sports team and a really bad sports team that have a geographical proximity that would cause you to consider them rivals. Only the really bad sports team thinks of it as a rivalry. The good team probably only thinks of the bad team on the day that they play them.
I'm getting sidetracked.
If you know me, you also know that I love musical theater. I don't talk about it often on here, so I guess you would have to really know me, maybe IRL. In any case, I did it throughout my childhood and on into college, appearing in no less than a dozen musicals all told.
When we used to live next door to a school at our old place in North Melbourne, I took my older son, who was then probably about six or seven, to see their staging of The Wizard of Oz. It was an all girls school, so that was sort of funny -- like the opposite of the old Shakespearean days, when all the parts were played by men. The production itself was a bit chintzy too. But I was very glad to go, to support the school and to nourish that live theater part of me that doesn't get nourished as often as I would like.
It's something I'd like my kids to do, but they have no interest. That's fine. But failing that, I want to see it at least available an option, as it was in the U.S. throughout the 1980s and presumably into today, and as I know it is at private schools here in Australia.
Public schools, like the ones my kids attend? Not so much.
Enter Frozen Jr.
I haven't been aware of many, if any, musicals at this school, which my older son has been attending for four years, and which my younger son just started attending this year. I was so thirsty to see a musical at this school that I would have gone, no matter what it was.
So I was set to go to Frozen Jr. Even if my family didn't want to go. And even if I would have preferred Tangled Jr.
But I didn't act quickly enough. The last email I got from the school on this subject read "Frozen Jr. - SOLD OUT."
Darn.
I don't know why I hesitated. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I was the only person in my family who wanted to go. I felt a little bit weird, in advance, about being a 50-something year old man going by himself to such a show. Even though it's a school musical and 95% of the audience is parents, including presumably a number of single dads.
Another source of hesitation? This school has kids from prep (the equivalent of kindergarten) all the way to year 12. I suspect the Frozen Jr. cast is comprised mostly of the youngest kids at the school, making it not very closely resemble the sort of high school musical experience I was hoping for.
I would have gone anyway.
But I really have only myself to blame. And really, I already sort of got my LOW TICKET ALERT.
The previous email I got about Frozen Jr. had the subject "Frozen Jr: Extra Tickets Release," and contained the following:
Due to overwhelming demand, more seats have been released for the Thursday Performance on August 13th.
There are still seats available for Wednesday night as well.
I think the thing here was that I felt like I was calling a bluff. Like this was a false LOW TICKET ALERT. You have to release new tickets, but you still have tickets for the first show? It sounds like maybe you haven't actually sold that many tickets to either of the shows, and this is just a desperate ploy to goose sales.
Nope. Six days later they were gone.
Ah well.
At least the existence of Frozen Jr. suggests the school is actually involved in this sort of activity. It's seemed to me like musical theater is, generally speaking, a far less popular activity in Australia, either due to lesser resources (most schools don't even have their own sports teams, as that is handled at a community level), or to the change to the current generation, in which musical theater is naturally less interesting to kids.
Next time, I won't wait for a LOW TICKET ALERT.
And maybe next time, it'll be Oklahoma! or Anything Goes or The Music Man.
(Yes, apparently I am only interested in stagings of shows I was actualy in.)
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