Performance review: Perfect Daughter's Annie (with a big heap of bias on the side)

You have to understand something. The musical at my high school was, and remains, a big freaking deal. I've seen a lot of high school musicals, and played a lot of high school musicals, and been in a few, and almost none of them can even compare to ours in terms of scope, execution, budget: they put on a good show up there. There were, if I remember right, nearly 200 little girls trying out for the parts of Annie and the orphans, and there were some good ones in the bunch, not the least of which was my own Perfect Daughter. Obviously, I guess, she got the part!

I know I'm biased, I really do, but I thought she was fantastic. I was afraid I couldn't sit through it; I was absolutely worried sick for her. Would she forget her lines? Talk to fast, too slow? Too quiet? (That would have been intensely ironic!) Well, I can tell you. I hate auditions. I made a comment at some point that the only thing worse than taking an audition is waiting for your kid to go through one. I can now tell you that waiting for that first set of lines to go through is another notch worse than that. Fortunately, PD's role of Molly has the first lines of the whole show, so that got out of the way fast, and she has her first big number in Hard Knock Life, the second number of the show. I can't describe the feeling of relief that flooded over me as she did her imitation of Ms. Hannigan spot on.

And just to show that my bias isn't overwhelming, I wasn't the only one that thought this about her. The folks behind me had been to see the show the night before with the other cast, and had a lot of nice things to say about PD's chemistry with the cast, and her timing in delivering punchlines. And I have to point this out. When I went to give her flowers after the show, the little beast was surrounded by admirers seeking her autograph. The thing about this was that she's usually got pretty good handwriting, but was scrawling out "MOLLY" on all the programs she was offered in a much scratchier hand. I asked her about it, and she said, "Well, Molly never got to go to school!" That blew my mind.

It was a lot of effort (mostly by Mother of PD, again!) but I think the results were worth it.

Oh, and a bunch of other people were in it, too, and many of them were pretty good!