The Happiest Proposal on Earth – and Off-broadway

The Disney parks are well known for a lot of live shows they put on for visitors, with a majority featuring their favorite Disney characters. Many people who frequent the Magic Kingdom have raved about Dream Along With Mickey and people who trod in the depths of Disney’s Animal Kingdom have reveled in the Festival of the Lion King. Those live shows are marked with great music, spectacular choreography, stunning costumes, and audience appeal. I grew up with Walt Dinsey World, and always loved their shows, although most of them, like Magic Kingdom’s DisneyMania (before Disney released the CD’s of pop-star covers of Disney hits) and Every Day’s A Holiday, were things of the past.

Recently, Disneyland (the original) hopped on the bandwagon pertaining to a rising sub-genre in musical theater: the spontaneous musical. Most Internet video fanatics and musical theater nuts (me included) have been awed since last year by New York-based Improv Everywhere’s Food Court Musical, which revolves around a cashier’s need for a paper napkin. Also, theatrical afictionados in the UK (including those who live for the West End, London’s cousin for New York’s Broadway) give mostly high remarks to lastminute.com’s advert, Unexpected Performance, which tells the story of a janitor’s need for a bag of potato chips from the nearby vending machine in one of Stansted Airport’s terminals. The Academy of New Musical Theatre, a theatrical organization who lives for musicals, has its own originals, The Customer is Always Right (which is about an employee’s misunderstanding of the fabric of the curtains that the customer wanted, which is silk) and I Quit! Other guerrilla musicals include What’s There to Do in Richmond (which delineates the citizens of the Virginia city who do not know what to do in there), We Crashed the Party (which follows the surfer being confronted by party-goers in an arts charity gala), and Church Service Musical (which details the numerous distractions that separate God from the worshippers). Disneyland, thanks to its Summer Nightastic promotion this year, took the spontaneous musical to a new high – by staging a fairytale marriage proposal!

After reading the comments such as, “that’s so (insert slur here),” “this is fake,” and “that’s unromantic,” I disregarded the harsh commentary and applauded Disneyland for staging this piece of guerrilla musical theater that can even make George Stiles, Anthony Drewe, the Sherman Brothers, Alan Menken, and Randy Newman all blush with delight! The show might neither harbor the flashy costumes that the dancers wear nor the likes of Mickey Mouse and his kin, but after all, this is some spontaneous musical. For those who dislike it, you at least appreciated it, although it does not have the charisma of Food Court Musical. In my opinion, this is utterly brilliant, and I wish something like this would be performed in, say, Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

National Alliance for Musical Theatre, Mercury Musical Developments, Stagedoor Manor, Walmart, and other companies or organizations, theatrical or not, it’s your turn to make life a musical.