Thoroughly Modern Millie is, in many ways, a holdover from the final Golden Years of musical theater: originally written in a vaudeville style for a movie-musical starring Julie Andrews and Mary Tyler Moore, its numbers are jazzy and upbeat, its plot is light, and in the end, the heroin triumphs over the villainess. Still, while Millie does fit many of the classic musical tropes, I found the direction of this show to be quite daunting ... Richard Morris and Dick Scalan retained much of the original plot, but they added elements to the stage version that make it difficult for even the most prestigious of theatres to produce. It is not often that you encounter a show that requires two of the supporting characters to speak in fluent Mandarin Chinese while being fully understood by the audience. Nor is it typical to deal with nine (that's right, nine!) scene changes in the first act alone. And the tapping ... my God, the tapping! 

Still, while the writers have presented a challenge for anyone that wishes to undertake this show, I cannot help but say - Without new challenges, we could never have new classics! Further, without fantastic help, a Director could never create that "new classic" - and so, to everyone who put their time, efforts, energy, and love into this show, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. There would be no FYP without each and every one of you.

With that said, I would like to address one of the key issues of this show that has been difficult to work through, but that I hope will be presented in such a way that you can enjoy its "political incorrectness" without any offense. Mrs. Meers, the comic villainess of this show, embodies one of the cruelest and most hateful stereotypes of an Asian-American woman that one could imagine - her accent is over-the-top, her dress is outrageous, and her general invocation of "Asian" is, on the whole, entirely ridiculous. 

Still, this was not merely a directorial choice ...

Meers is very deliberately played this way, as given in her opening stage direction:

"The actress portraying MRS MEERS should be encouraged to embrace the political offensiveness of her rendering of Asian, confident in the knowledge that, when contrasted with the actual Asian characters... her depiction of a hateful stereotype will be busted as inauthentic and absurd."

It seems to me that this highly precise description of Meers's absurdity is spot-on: she plays into the Anglo-Conformist, bigoted stereotype of "Asian" while missing all of the humanity and the compassion of the true Asian-American characters in this show. Ching Ho and Bun Foo, as you will see, have a greater capacity for love than perhaps anyone else in this musical.

They subject themselves to a life of hard work and treachery in order to help their dear, ailing mother, and Ching Ho certainly understands "love at first sight" much more deeply than Trevor or Dorothy could ever hope to! So, I encourage you to take the offensiveness of Mrs. Meers with a grain of salt: while it is certainly glaring, it is done in such a way to comment on the nature of stereotyping, which I hope will be elucidated by the end of this performance.

As we near show-time, there is little left that I have to say to you ... except for this: Enjoy tonight. Without an audience, we would have no reason to perform - and without a reason to perform, I believe that the world would be a much lonelier place. So, this performance is dedicated to each and every one of you for allowing the Arts to thrive in the University community. If you have ever wanted someone to love, someplace to belong, and something to dream of, Thoroughly Modern Millie is the show for you. I thank you for coming, and enjoy the performance!

--DJ Lick