I'm a sucker for musical theatre. I love it. Perhaps I am obsessed with it. Aside from the kick I get when I sing show tunes to annoy my mother (sorry Mum), there's a deep reason for my passion. The creation of a story on stage with music combines two of my most favourite things in the world - music and storytelling. I love the power of sharing emotions through the beauty of a well-written song - I wish I could sing for that very reason.
Because of this passion, I would like to use this space to sometimes share a song from musical theatre with you - to break it down and see what these stories can tell us about life, about love, or hate, or a host of other emotions; and ultimately, how they speak about faith.
I want to start with a song called 'The Movie in my Mind', from the musical Miss Saigon.
At the top of the show we meet three of the main characters in a bar in Saigon, before its fall in the Vietnam War. The soldiers are coming to this bar for drinks and sex, and to be honest I found it hard to watch. It's disgusting how the women are treated and how cheaply the virginity of young Kim (pictured above) is flaunted.
In a quiet moment amongst it all, one of the bar-girls sits at a table and laments her world.
I know there's nothing in their hearts,
But every time I take one in my arms
It starts the movie in the mind...
She dreams of a place where she no longer has to dance provocatively, no longer has to use her body to save herself, where she can be a wife and have children. Seventeen-year-old Kim then joins in the song, before she is deflowered:
I will not cry I will not think
I'll do my dance, I'll make them drink
But even she sees a dream, before the nightmare began, of a man who will not kill...
He'll fight for me instead,
He'll keep the fear at bay
So no one comes at night
To blow the dream away.
Tears come to my eyes as I see these girls. While they are professionally safe and simply acting on that stage, the reality is that many girls - and boys - are facing situations that they wish to flee from, to escape to a new place where they are safe and loved.
Such stories shouldn't be real, but they are. How are we to respond?
In Miss Saigon, Kim does end up escaping from the prostitute life because of a soldier named Chris saw her, felt compassion and love, and helped her get out. Unfortunately their love story isn't idyllic and it doesn't last very long; but Kim is relieved because someone saw the situation for what it was, and acted.
Miss Saigon is full of desperate choices, wild passion and cruelty. But it also holds a message of sacrificial love. A love beyond the physical, beyond one's self - in fact, love leads to the ultimate sacrifice, for the sake of another. Sound familiar?
You can listen to a version of the song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQD31F5bOFc
I don't know what this song might inspire in you. Perhaps you just appreciate the beauty of the actresses' voices. Maybe you relate, albeit in a small way, to their cries. I'll leave you with this, however: when there is a cry, there's a chance to answer. And love seen in action - transcending war and suffering - is what this world needs more and more of.
Let it not be only true upon a stage like that of Miss Saigon.