Nobody Puts Mary In the Corner

A blogger is only as smart as her readers. Credit Jennifer Schultz when she asked in a comment box the other day, ". . . has the Little House on the Prairie musical with Patrick Swayze and Melissa Gilbert been discussed yet? I can't remember if I read it on a kidlit blog or on one of my Broadway message boards."

Not on my watch it hasn't. And sure as shooting, that's exactly what's going on. I mentioned back in February how amused I was that they were creating a musical called Prairie! (emphasis entirely my own) but I never dreamed they'd ever get any major names attached. Yet so sayeth Yahoo News: "Patrick Swayze and Melissa Gilbert will star as Pa and Ma in an April workshop presentation of "Prairie," a musical version of Laura Ingalls Wilder's 'Little House on the Prairie.'"

Now I am old enough to remember Swayze's ill-fated leap into singing. It was when the notion of celebrities coming out with songs was a far more haphazard enterprise than it is today. Don't believe me? I got two words for you: Don Johnson. But I digress... Swayze put out a little song called She's Like the Wind (20 points if you read the words aloud just as you would Readers Theater), so we know that he can hold a tune. I just prefer to imagine crazy dance sequences with Swayze sporting a big old black Pa-beard. THAT I would pay money to see.

Prairie!

Okay. I actually wrote the title of this post before I read the article I'm about to link to. When I read on the Powell's Blog that there was going to be a musical version of Little House On the Prairie I was delighted. I thought naming my post Prairie! would be a delightful humdinger of a reference to those great one-namer musical adaptations out there. Fiorello! Titanic! Annie!

Yeah. You see where this is heading. They've actually named it Prairie. Tis to wonder if irony is dead after all.

Thanks to the Powell's Blog and Maud Newton for the link.