three is a good number... until four is better

For quite some time, I have loved musical theatre. For nearly as long, I have known what my favourite musicals were. Only relatively recently, however, did it occur to me to wonder why my favourites are my favourites and make any systematic listing of my Very Very Favourites. But, as I now have, here they are, in no particular order beyond that of their addition to my list: Wicked, Fiddler on the Roof, Les Miserables, and Godspell. Early in my freshman year of college, I was introduced to Wicked, and quickly fell in love with its music. I have since seen two absolutely exceptional performances of it by a touring company. I was fortunate enough to see my university do a production of Fiddler on the Roof the summer of my freshman year, and (though I had seen it before) then began to love it in earnest. Only during the summer of my sophomore year did I see Les Mis, but when I did (in London), I realized what a great show it was, and promptly went home to fall in love with its music. About that time, I decided I should know what my favourite musicals were. "Three," I said to myself. "Three is a good number for that sort of thing, if you can't have one Absolute Favourite." Well, I knew Wicked had to be part of the trinity, and I knew Fiddler would be, but I was at a bit of a loss as to the third one. I'd recently helped with a production of Beauty and the Beast, which I loved, but it didn't feel quite right. None of the other musicals I could think of that I knew and loved felt quite right either. Until I thought of Les Mis. And it took the coveted (okay, maybe not) position of the third in the Trinity.

After some thought on the matter, I realized what these three had in common that placed them in the trinity. They, like life, present their characters with difficult choices -- or, perhaps more accurately, choices not only difficult for the characters, but for the audience. The questions they ask are difficult ones without easy answers. As a wise man once said, "the truth is rarely pure and never simple." And so it is in these shows. Should Glinda have gone with Elphie? I'm tempted to say yes (insofar as I think it might have been the more moral decision), but I'm by no means certain, and I think the world might well have ended up in a much worse state if she had. Or what about Chava? Should she have stayed away from Fyedka to marry some man twice her age with half her intelligence? Should Fyedka have pursued her in the first place, or just watched while the aforementioned man won her hand simply by having been born to Jewish parents? Or what about Tevye -- should he have accepted them? I'll grant you that in a way I wish he had, but at the cost of jeopardizing his faith? As I said, no easy answers are to be had in these shows, and I think that is a large part of their greatness.

And then a group of students from Huntington University that was doing shows of Godspell up and down the east coast and some of the eastern bits of the midwest came to town. I'd loved Godspell since the beginning of my freshman year. (I can in fact date it to that precise day -- I first listened to it the day I was finishing packing and driving down to school.) I'd seen the movie of it too, and loved that. But though it was one of my Very Favourites, I wasn't sure it quite made the Trinity, and once I realized what it was that made the Trinity the Trinity, Godspell obviously didn't fit. A Pantheon was out of the question. But back to that Huntington production. I saw it, and realized that it was a very different sort of greatness, but a greatness nonetheless. I went away from it not with the warm fuzzies that so many nice romantic shows bestow on their audiences (Oklahoma, Guys and Dolls, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, et cetera), but with a desire, even a determination, to be a better person. The Trinity did this, but not to the degree Godspell did. The Trinity made me think and judge differently, and some of them made me want to act differently; Godspell affirmed the values I already hold, but made them more real to me -- and more action-oriented -- than they had been in a while. And that, I now think, is the qualification for these Great Shows -- that they have the power to change you. Obviously Godspell has joined Wicked, Fiddler on the Roof, and Les Miserables as a member of my Pantheon -- in fact, with high honors; for it is able to change me while affirming my values, while the others had to question them. John-Michael Tebelak and Stephen Schwartz set themselves a hard task when they wrote it; for succeeding at it, they deserve the highest honors I can give them.