My 5 year old daughter likes nothing more than live entertainment. Concerts, plays, magic shows, Chinese acrobats--bring it on. A couple of months ago a friend of mine suggest we take our daughters, who are good friends, to a local 6th grade production of Charlotte's Web. It was local and the price was right. Heck, we knew a few of the children on stage.
The kids were enthralled. But we longed for a little more, em, polished performers.
Cut to last weekend. FAME was playing at the local high school and the my friend had enjoyed a performance of Beauty and the Beast there last year. We bought tickets.
As we sat down and started leafing through our program, these words jumped off the cover: Not for children under 13. Oh, yeah. It's FAME. What did I expect? The lights went down and the curtains parted. The opening number was a riot of red, yellow and blue--it looked like the school for the performing arts was putting on a fashion show for H&M. But there was singing. There was dancing. And those kids were good.
Cut to song two: "Can't Keep it Down." A song about erections. An entire stage full of adolescent boys grabbing their crotches. My friend and I exchange nervous glances and I consider grabbing the girls and ending their evening early. But as I peered at their faces, I saw that the innuendo was sailing right over their heads. Thank G-d!
We stayed for the whole, wonderful show, keeping the girls up way past their bedtimes. And as we stepped out into the cool, damp air, the girls asked us why Carmen died. "She took some bad medicine," we answered, glad that the questions didn't get any more pointed or specific.
