Sunday night while we were in Minneapolis we went to see a new musical about Laura Ingalls Wilder, called aptly enough “Little House on the Prairie”. This musical is based on the books, not the TV show, which I never watched. However, Melissa Gilbert, who played Laura on TV, played Caroline the mom, in the musical.
The musical was at the Guthrie Theatre, overlooking the river in downtown Minneapolis. This is a strangely beautiful, other-worldly building on Minneapolis’ mostly quaint, old-fashioned-looking riverfront. The Mississippi River is a small compact stream up here, so both sides of the river are within waving distance of each other. Its possible to run or walk in a tidy loop of about 3 miles using bridges and the paths on either side of the river, which is mostly lined with restaurants and recently created condos, rehabbed from old warehouses.
Then there is the Guthrie. The Guthrie is shiny. It is black and it is strangely shaped. Inside it has dozens of views of the river and the Minneapolis skyline, both straightforward and distorted by the angled glass and rectangular shapes. The building itself is a work of art. You can find out more about the Guthrie at this link: http://www.guthrietheater.org/
The musical was…fine. It has aspirations to make it to Broadway but Sarah and I agreed that it probably won’t get there. Its fun, it was sold out, but there are no truly hum-able songs and the plot is sweet, but not riveting. Also the ending is a bit hurried. Okay! We’ve got 5 minutes left – let’s get hitched!
But I watched this musical on another totally separate level. I OWN Laura Ingalls. I love her character in the books she wrote, and I’ve read those books so many times I can quote whole passages at the drop of a sun-bonnet. The musical took me back, back, back, to memories of why Laura meant so much to me as a child, and on into my adult years.
Laura was brave, and brave in the best way. She was often frightened, but would go ahead and do what she wanted to do in spite of her fear. I intensely admired that as a child, because I was a fearful child. Laura’s nuclear family was very loving. Her parents didn’t yell, and they all pulled together as a unit. But they weren’t perfect, either. Laura was sometimes disobedient. Mary was a little prig. Caroline and Charles sometimes fought. They were poor, and being poor wasn’t glorified. I appreciated that about the book; she didn’t try to pretend that worrying about money and the future was fun.
There are so many stories that I really loved in those books. One of my favorites has to be when Laura and Carrie were sent home from school because Carrie was unconsciously rocking her seat. The teacher decided to punish Carrie by making her rock the seat until she was tired, but Carrie was too weak and started to get sick. Laura leaped up and said that she would rock the seat instead and the teacher agreed. But Laura was strong and so angry about Carrie being treated unfairly that Laura rocked the seat so hard that it broke loose from the floor and made so much noise that the teacher couldn’t teach, so she sent them home. I loved that Laura lost her temper and acted on it, and I loved the way their parents showed them how what she did was wrong and that two wrongs didn’t make a right. It was stories like this that made me take the Little House on the Prairie books as life lessons in how to behave and as ideals to aspire to, just like Laura aspired to be a better person than she was.
It was funny hearing about Lee and Sarah’s reactions to the musical. I read many of the earlier books out loud at bedtime to Sarah and Daniel, and Sarah said when she remembered the early stories they all were verbal, and the last few books were different to her because she read them herself. Lee said he sat through the musical going “where have I heard this before” because he had forgotten about us reading these stories out loud. He was certain that HE certainly hadn’t read them himself when he was a kid! J
We’ve been having fantasies lately about where we would retire when the time comes (IF the time comes, considering the recent market meltdown). I’ve been an advocate of Minneapolis for a long time, with Lee pulling for Austin. This time Sarah decided to take him on a tour of the neighborhoods and the lakes, and the ethnic restaurants. He started to see why I think Minneapolis is such a neat city, not to mention the possibility that my future grandchildren might be located there! Of course, this is all a long way off, but its fun to dream…
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