What Is It With Men And Musicals?

I was totally excited to see that a Hollywood movie version of Sweeney Todd (The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street) is being released for the Christmas holidays, I guess as a sort of antidote for the usual sentimental seasonal madness. It has been one of my favorite musicals ever since PBS showed the original London West End production back in the early 80's, starring Angela Lansbury (pre-Murder She Wrote) as the vicious Mrs. Lovett. It's extremely violent and nasty, but beautifully scored by Stephen Sondheim....a definite win/win all around in my opinion.

So I'm telling The Husband, who had never heard of it, all about it; I describe the basic plot (bloody vengeance) and reveal that it stars the always fascinating Johnny Depp, and he is making all the right interested noises ... until he finds out it's a musical. At that point, he signs off on it stating bluntly "I don't do musicals" and informs me that no persuasion on my part will ever change his mind.

What IS it with guys and musicals? Many years ago, my ex-husband, The Wanker, somehow managed to get tickets to see Les Miserables (at that time starring Michael Ball, which was a big deal) in London and actually sat next to me for a good fifteen minutes of the show before he leaned over and whispered to me, "Are they really going to sing through the whole thing?". When I confirmed that yes, it's a musical dummy, he said "I'll be back in a minute" and got up and left. I finally found him again during the interval, 45 minutes later, sitting in the bar quite drunk and extremely unwilling to go back into the theater for the second act. Ah, fun times, fun times....

But anyway, I am determined to see it (with or without The Husband in tow) and here is the trailer, which looks brilliant.