I realised the other day that I haven’t watched too many musicals this year. Musicals used to be the pinnacle; the jewel in the Hollywood crown. Arthur Freed, Busby Berkeley, Gene Kelly, these names were spoken of with the same reverence reserved now for your Steven Spielbergs and Christopher Nolans. And when was this Golden Age of the musicals? The thirties, forties and fifties. Times of depression, war, massive upheaval. But inside a musical the world is better. People fall in love, they dance, they can’t help but sing their troubles away. When the real world is turning to shit, that’s when we need the escapism that musicals can provide. There have been sporadic bursts of life from this oft-maligned genre since then of course, but if you hold up a studio balance sheet next to a history book, guess what you see? And where are we these days? Wars, recessions, massive upheaval… So I figured I’d watch a musical today.

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