Meet Me in St. Louis Weekend

Last weekend was all about Meet Me in St. Louis. It doesn’t get much better than that, really.

On Friday night, I had the pleasure of seeing it on stage for my company Christmas party at the Drury Lane Theatre in Oak Brook. It wasn’t as good as the movie, of course, but it wasn’t a total slander on Judy Garland’s legacy, like I was afraid it might be. The girl who played Esther was decent, not amazing, but she sang well. I was slightly disappointed with the girl who played Tootie, but really for a child she was quite good. I’m just used to Margaret O’Brien being completely brilliant and hilarious in the movie. No one can really compare to her.

They kept the script basically the same as the movie. They only removed a couple of fabulous lines such as:

Rose: My dear, when you get to be my age, you'll find there are more important things in life than boys!

Katie: Well, another Halloween, we’re all a year older.

Those are classics! But whatever.

They also added some dreadful songs. I could have done without them. But it’s possible that the songs from the movie are dreadful as well, and I’m just used to them so I don’t notice. But I don’t really think so. The whole second act was basically new songs except for Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas. I understand that there really aren’t many songs in the second half, but for heaven’s sake, write some decent ones.

But the story is so good that you really can’t go wrong. Overall, I would give it a B. I enjoyed it.

Then, two short days later, I got to see the movie in my favorite movie theater! It was glorious. Even though I’ve seen it hundreds of times, it feels new when you see it on the big screen. It confirmed my suspicions that this may be the perfect movie. It’s funny, it’s touching, it has songs, and a disturbed 5 year old who kills off her dolls. Perfection.