The new Broadway production of How the Grinch Stole Christmas opened on November 8, my birthday. My friend Josh Rosenblum is the musical director for the show. As a birthday present he got my family in on opening night, including passes to the opening night party across the street at Madame Tussaud’s wax museum.
The show runs about 75 minutes, with no intermission. It was mostly not my cup of tea, but both of my kids were riveted and said they would like to see it again. In addition to providing music direction, Josh wrote some of the incidental music and did the vocal arrangements; there were several lovely moments of multipart singing, which is what I go for. There was also one very funny line that I’m told was an ad lib during rehearsals; I won’t give it away, but I’ll mention that it happens just before Cindy Lou Who’s big number.
The party at Madame Tussaud’s was huge. I had never been to a wax museum before, so I had what I gather is the usual reaction of mistaking wax figures for real people and vice versa. I would have liked to stay longer, but we discovered that Tessa, our oldest, is afraid of wax figures, so we had to hustle through quickly and miss a lot.
