Musical Theatre & Transformation: 60 Years in 7 Musicals

by Jim Crawford

Brigadoon, 1973: When I was in third grade in Lexington, Massachusetts, my parents took the
family to see our first musical at the high school because they had a friend whose son was in
the show. In the first scene, two American hikers walked across the lip of the stage, in front of
a painted backdrop of the Highlands of Scotland. Offstage singers interrupted their
conversation with the title song of the show, sung in shimmery chords, as the legendary village
of Brigadoon appeared before our eyes. It turned out the Scottish countryside was painted on
a scrim, something I’d never seen or heard of before. When lights came up behind the scrim,
we could see the village through it. I was entranced, and I wanted in. A life in theatre has
always been Brigadoon to me, a place that lives by different rules, where people go against the
grain of mainstream culture, where people are kinder, and occasionally break out into song. I
wanted to spend the rest of my life in that off-kilter magical place, and in some ways, I have.
Brigadoon gave me that.

Oliver, 1978: In junior high I was a tall, gentle kid, one who borrowed an original Broadway cast
album from the town library every week. Some of the boys my age, boys with mean fathers
and chips on their shoulders, would casually shove me into the lockers as we passed one
another in the halls. I kept my head down and stayed as invisible as possible.
When our music teacher decided to produce the musical Oliver, I was surprised to be cast as Bill
Sikes, the murderous criminal. I had trouble seeing myself as this character. At the dress
rehearsal, I was given a special session with our flamboyant art teacher, who was in charge of
makeup for the show. He was probably the first obviously queer person I ever knew. He had a
sparkle in his eye as he worked on my makeup, taking pleasure in my transformation. He
messed up the rigid part in my hair, gave me a jagged scar under my eye, and attached rough
black stubble to my face with spirit gum. I didn’t see myself in a mirror until he was finished: I
looked fearsome, it was shocking. I remember rejoining the rest of the cast, noticing that some
of the kids in the chorus actually seemed a bit afraid of me.
Bill Sikes is no role model. But getting to be Bill for a little while changed the way I walked
through the world, through the hallways of that school. Bill walked in a way that discouraged
people from messing with him. I began to get better at that, too. Keeping your head down is a
survival skill we all need now and then, but it’s no way to live. Bill Sikes—and that fairy
godfather of an art teacher—gave me that.

Sweeney Todd, 1980: My parents took the family to New York City for a long weekend. The
first show I ever saw on Broadway was the original production of Stephen Sondheim’s
masterpiece. As Dr. Seuss might say, “my heart grew three sizes that day.” My brain, too. It’s
still probably the best show I’ve ever seen. I began to understand that theatre could be
terrifying and psychologically nuanced and hilarious at the same time. It could be larger than
life and close to the bone all at once. My imagination soared. I played roles in all the high
school plays and musicals, majored in theatre in college, started directing all kinds of plays, and
earned my MFA in Acting. I found my purpose and my people. Sweeney Todd planted seeds
that are still bearing fruit.

Falsettos, 1993: In the early 90s I was subletting a studio apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, two
blocks from the Broadway theatre district. It was exciting to finally live there, but it was a scary
time to be a gay man in New York City. Men were dying of AIDS everywhere I turned. I was
inspired by the plays of Larry Kramer and Tony Kushner and Paula Vogel, writers who turned
their pain and fear and anger into invigorating art.
In those days I snuck into the second act of a good number of Broadway shows I couldn’t
afford. I second-acted William Finn’s Falsettos over and over again—maybe 10 or 12 times.
After receiving an HIV diagnosis, the stars sing the ballad “Unlikely Lovers.” At the climax of the
song, one man sings to another “Let’s be scared together.” It made me cry every time. I always
left the theatre feeling better, walking out into a city that seemed more compassionate. I
began to volunteer on the hotline at Gay Men’s Health Crisis, at first to educate myself and
later because it was so emotionally rewarding. When I focused on helping others, I became
calmer and stronger. This experience laid the groundwork for my teaching career. Falsettos
gave me consolation and pride, and it helped turn me into an educator.

The King & I, 2015: Several months after my mother died, I was in New York City on a weekend
recruiting trip for SMU, where I’d become a theatre professor. I went to the Lincoln Center
revival of The King & I on a last-minute impulse. My mother had seen the original in the early
1950s, and it was her favorite show.
Sometimes, when you go to a play or a movie with a friend, you see it through your own eyes
and through your friend’s eyes at the same time. If gore makes your friend queasy, you see the
bloodier parts of a horror movie through his eyes because you worry it might upset him. This
kind of thing happened a lot when I took our son to the movies when he was young. I’d watch
the movie for myself, while at the same time interpreting it through my understanding of his
understanding of the world.

And that’s what happened at The King & I, which I went to by myself. From the opening scene,
the show was under my skin. It was a beautiful production, but it was more than that. I
became aware that I was watching the show through my own eyes and through my mother’s as
well. She was present, much more than she’d been in the months since she passed away. The
themes of the show were things she talked about often: speak up, even when you feel stupid
and afraid, speak up on behalf of children, speak up on behalf of love. It felt as if she were
sitting next to me, nodding, smiling, wiping away tears, patting my arm, helping the
goosebumps rise. The King & I gave me back my mother for a couple of hours. “Something
Wonderful,” indeed.

Cabaret, 2018: I directed Cabaret in the fall of 2018 at the University of the South in Sewanee,
Tennessee where I now live and teach. It was an environmental production with tables and
chairs set up all over the black box theatre, as if audience members were at a Berlin cabaret
themselves. It was a delightfully subversive production, one that turned on you with a
vengeance when the story changed its focus to the rise of the Nazis.
The day after our opening, the news headlines were all about a shooting that had occurred at a
synagogue in Pittsburgh. Several Jewish people had been killed while attending religious
services. That evening I watched the student members of the cast arrive at the theatre. We
discussed the news only briefly, but I could see they were carrying themselves differently. They
had absorbed that this was not just a show about the past. The responsibility and pride the
students felt about the telling of this story was clear. Cabaret gave us a sense of mission,
something needed more than ever in difficult times.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, 2026: In the 18 years I lived in Dallas, from 1998 to 2016, I directed
and acted in dozens of plays, but never a musical. I was excited about the possibility of
returning to act in a show at Theatre Three during my sabbatical, but I was not expecting Jeffrey
Schmidt & Christie Vela to propose Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. It’s a show I’ve always liked, but it
made me nervous. I could hear myself thinking, “The character Lawrence has SIX songs, I
haven’t done anything like that since high school. I never did any musicals in Dallas, this makes
me feel really vulnerable, maybe it will be a disaster.”
One good thing about teaching acting is that you learn how to help students separate
legitimate concerns from good old-fashioned insecurity. Then it becomes easier to do that for
yourself. “That just sounds like fear, you old fart,” I said to myself, “the good kind of fear. It
sounds like this is something you need to lean into.”

Do the thing that scares you. Liberation and a whole lot of fun are on the other side. Dirty
Rotten Scoundrels is giving me that.