Musical comedy's in the very best of hands!

Road trip to Connecticut! W00h00!

Well, I packed the whole family into the car and off we went. As everyone knows by now, LI'L ABNER is one of my fav musicals!

I love the score and I used to read old Andy Capp comic strips when I was a little girl, sitting on the terlit in the outhouse at our cottage. I had heard so many good things about Goodspeed, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to venture forth!

First, let me say that ordering the tickets over the phone from Goodspeed was by far the most pleasant and enjoyable telephone ticket buying experience I have EVER had. The lady was helpfully, funny and felt like a real person on the other end.

We had dinner before the show at a wonderful Italian restaurant across the street called La Vita Gustosa.

The waiter there had also been in a high-school production of LI'L ABNER and had been on the football team when duty called for him to be one of the post-yoakum berry tonic husbands. This was hilarious since our school also recruited from the football team for the exact same purpose! Small world.

LI'L ABNER is based on the characters created by Al Capp, with Music by Gene de Paul, Lyrics by Johnny Mercer, and Book by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank. It opened on Broadway in 1956, ran for nearly 700 performances, won two Tonys, but has never had a Broadway revival (fingers crossed!).

The Goodspeed Musicals production of L'IL ABNER is directed by Scott Schwartz and choreographed by Patti Colombo, with musical direction by Michael O'Flaherty.

What a fabulous job they did! I loved it! (But then you knew I would!).

It's a great theatre, not only on the picturesque outside, with its own private dock and airport, but on the inside too -- very intimate!

The first thing you see is a large reproduction of a black and white newspaper from 1956 with headlines not all that different from today. The show is further framed using the comic strip device -- the colorful characters literally step out of a frame of the strip. What a great set. The black and white comic theme is used throughout to depict Dogpatch as well as Washington D.C -- sometimes as a backdrop and sometimes as pieces used in the action.

From the Director's Vision:

It is a place where many strange people live and all sorts of people drop in. In a way it's like Springfield of "The Simpsons": A timeless world where anything can happen. In contrast, throughout the show we visit Washington, D.C., a place which surprisingly reads as contemporary, even in the original script. The issues raised in 1956 still ring true today: political corruption, big business and scientific advances.

It's a big, bright, funny show with heart.

Fab score, fab lyrics and the dancing was amazing. I love musicals like this that have big production dance numbers. Not only were the dance numbers in LI'L ABNER exciting to watch but they told important parts of the story. Stupifyin' Jones played by Sarrah Strimel was unbelievable. Actually the whole cast was great, as was the casting. General Bullmoose was played as Dick Cheney and the likeness was scary! I had to take a moment to explain to my kids why General Bullmoose was shooting everyone...

It was also interesting trying to figure out whose breasts were real and whose were "augmented"!

Watching the show brought back great memories of doing the show in high school. It was so much fun and rewarding to see it done with professionals this time (no offense to my fellow Haigers...)

I want to go back and see it again!

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