Musicals

I love Broadway musicals, by and large.

To make it on Broadway, musicals have to have solid performers, excellent lyricists and talented composers. Musicians like Paul Simon can make the crossover with “Urinetown,” but you’ll never see a musical on Broadway with a book by Britney Spears or Bruce Springsteen.

The quality has got to be there, which is one of the reasons I used to buy Broadway cast albums for musicals I had never seen. If I already knew the story, it made no difference, so among others my collection included cast albums for “Camelot,” “Man of La Mancha” and “Les Miserables.”

I’m doing my best to share this pleasure with my children, who are ready to follow in my footsteps. When they were only 5 and 2, Evangeline and Rachel could sing pieces of “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

Now, thanks to YouTube and Google Video, Evangeline has watched almost the entire 10th anniversary concert performance of “Les Mis,” as well as a few numbers from the Israeli production, in Hebrew.

Yesterday Evangeline kept wandering around the house singing “My New Philosophy” and “Little Known Facts” from the Broadway revival of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.”

And Rachel? For the past week she’s been singing her Bible stories to the tune of the title track from “Man of La Mancha.”

What would that be, “I am I, Jesus of Nazareth?”