So last night I saw "On The Twentieth Century," a musical that takes place on a train in the 1920's or so. I was wondering how they were going to do that staging-wise and it went great. There's three train cars and they rotate them around to show the front and back, usually showing the dining car/Drawing Room A/Drawing Room B.

So Oscar Jaffe is a theater producer who's had four flops and a lot of people mad at him, but he's got a bright idea to get on the same train as his old girlfriend/discovery Lily Garland and talk her into doing some show for him. What show? No idea, but who cares, I'll make one up! He is eventually inspired by the religious nut slapping "Repent!" stickers around (in more ways than one) and decides to cast Lily as Mary Magdalene. You may reasonably assume that Lily is the one who probably chose to end the relationship and she may not be dee-lighted to see him again.

In the recent Broadway production, I have read that Lily was played by Kristin Chenoweth. That explains a lot, doesn't it? Because Lily is a fucking delight. She manages to take over someone else's entire audition just by being the piano player and by the end of the scene she's a sexy French chick in silver spangles and out of the nerdwear. Lily is super fun to watch. Anyway. Lily is vacillating about breaking up with her boyfriend Bruce (or not) and naturally gets to fighting with Oscar again.

I love that Lily's not an idiot. She's tempted by Oscar's offer but may not necessarily fall for shit. At the end he basically fakes his own death to get her to sign a contract and then after she does and he gets up and dances, she's all "Check the signature, I signed it Peter Rabbit." She's still signed with his rival to do something else anyway.

And then they end up in a romantic clinch, which I did not really get into. I was not into them as a couple because well, Oscar is a jerk, but...it's a musical.

It was a fun show.

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