I Know Things Now

My Gal Hal can't get enough of musicals, so I regularly introduce her to songs from my favorite shows, one of which is Into the Woods.

Many years ago, Aunt Sara played and stole the show as Little Red Riding Hood in our high school's production of Into the Woods. I fell in love with the story right then and there, but have only seen the show twice since then because it hasn't made the broadway/off-broadway rounds in decades and is rarely performed by high school casts.

Into the Woods is rarely performed by high school casts because it's tremendously challenging. There are nine principal characters, which means a high school with only two or three musical "stars" could never pull it off. The music itself is very difficult, which means it takes longer to learn and in some cases, is simply too much for inexperienced high school students to handle. Our high school put on Into the Woods the year Sara was a senior, but started planning for the show the year she was a freshman. The theater and music departments had always wanted to do Into the Woods, but it wasn't until Sara's class arrived that they thought they had enough talent to cover all of the main roles. They spent three years preparing those talented but inexperienced freshman to take on Into the Woods when they finally became seniors.

I mention all this because despite the difficulty of the Into the Woods music, Hallie learned one of Little Red Riding Hood's songs and one chorus song in less than day, and just by listening to me sing them for her. If she wants it, the musical world is hers for the taking.

Yes, a few of the words Hallie sings are wrong - "repaired" instead of "prepared" and "face" instead of "faith", for example. She won't let me correct the words she uses while singing. And in the second video she forgets the words and circles back around to a verse she's already sung (which happens to be about the grandmother dying - yikes). But the notes are incredibly close for a four-year-old who learned the music by ear that morning.