I love the musicals SO MUCH! My first musical love was Oklahoma, high school style. After that, I was hooked for life. My children were taken to musicals before they ever started kindergarten, and every summer for years, we learned a new musical by heart so we could re-enact the entire thing on road trips. We’ve taken the kids to every musical within fairly reasonable driving distance for almost thirty years now. When I taught middle school, I took my 8th graders to a dinner theatre every spring, for 13 years. I agree with Arthur Schopenhauer: “Not to go to the theatre is like making one’s toilet without a mirror.” (My husband took me to “Hair” for our first date. Our second date was “Godspell.”) I still view the universe as a kind of immense Broadway musical. Oh, oh, I love to think about the music, and the dancing, and all of it together. A good musical is a kind of fantasy world that we can all experience if we let ourselves go.

Mamacita: The Universe IS an immense musical. One of my prized memories involves a boy from high school who had returned for his 10th year reunion. He looked me up, we stayed up late remininscing and he stayed over since he was public transporting. The next morning while walking me to work, it started drizzling. Spontaneously, we both just started, yup you guessed it, singing and dancing in the rain. It was wonderful. My own MGM moment. Several years ago when a mutual friend gave me his number, when I made contact, he shared how he has always remembered that morning.

Richard Burton, Katherine Grayson, Robert Goulet in CAMELOT.

OMG — where to start? I wore out the album to “South Pacific,” danced on Lumahai Beach in Kauai with my mother imitating Mitzi Gaynor, who I used to see perform her stage act in the 70’s whenever she came through Cleveland. I was in heaven to meet her last spring at a Paley Center event. Last summer, I saw Reba McIntire and Brian Stokes Mitchell do the concert version at the Hollywood Bowl. Magical. His version of “This Nearly Was Mine” is the most breathtakingly poignant you’ll ever hear. When I was a kid, my sister and our friends would stage “Mary Poppins” for the neighbors, doing numbers like “Sister Suffragette,” “Stay Awake” and the like. When we were alone, the two of us would turn a flashlight upside down and set it on the floor so the light would hit the ceiling. We’d dance around the flashlight with little sticks singing “Chim Chiminee” as if we were chimney sweeps! “Cinderella” both the Broadway cast and later the television version starring Lesley Ann Warren. I can still hear Kaye Ballard or Pat Carroll sing “Stepsister’s Lament.” (Or watch on YouTube). “Sound of Music” again as a kid and later in community theatre during high school. “Guys and Dolls,” “Gypsy,” “Oklahoma” etc, etc. Old MGM musicals, “White Christmas” with Bing and the gang, the list is endless. Now that I cover theater in Los Angeles, my cup runneth over with revivals, Reprise Broadway’s Best! or watching world premieres of new classics unfold like the upcoming “9-5: The Musical” on a weekly basis.

My musical memories are fairly new since my first show on Broadway was “The Graduate” in 2002, because that is when I was old enough to afford to go! Being a FL girl you don’t get to jet off to Broadway much until you make your own way! Since that first showing in 2002, I have made my way to NYC at least a couple of times a year to see everything I can get my hands on. It is so wonderful and exciting to read everyone’s accounts of shows I dream of having seen! It takes my breath away a little to think of having a great memory like ‘Fiddler with Topol’ gasp…

MY FAIR LADY! My parents had the album and played it all the time. Then when I was twelve years old, they brought me to New York for the first time and we saw it on Broadway. That was 45 years ago. I still remember my mother telling me that the way you know the intermission is over is when the house lights blink. On that same trip, we went to THE SOUND OF MUSIC and we waited by the stage door afterward and saw Mary Martin get into her limousine. Because it was so crowded, I had walked around to the side of the car facing the street, and when Mary Martin got into her car, she looked out of the window directly at me and smiled and waved. Heaven!

For me it is The King and I and West Side story

I love them all! Oklahoma strikes a note with me. I was in a high school production and had a wonderful experience doing it.

My parents, heck. I grew up in Connecticut in the 60s, when musicals on Broadway were affordable. I saw them all - The Music Man, Camelot with Richard Burton (swoon, swoon), Peter Pan (no music there but Mary Martin lived in our town and we used to walk past her walled house and hope to see Peter), Half a Sixpence (from England), My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music … you could buy records of the music in the theatre lobby, remember? and sing along at home because the records came in covers that had the lyrics. Too bad this group couldn’t get together for a sing-along. And why don’t they bring back Camelot? That was the best.

My very first movie seen in a theater was the Sound of Music, and has ever since been my favorite. I try to watch it every on tv and I have the DVD. One of my dreams has been to visit the “Hills are alive” in Austria, the spot where Maria twirls around singing. One of the most fascinating stories in history is that of the VonTrapps. Love it!

As a child, no doubt it was the Sound of Music. Even though it was made before I was born, I saw it in a movie theatre when I guess I was about 8 or so and it was an experience I have never forgotten. I went to Salzburg, Austria a few years ago and took the Sound of Music tour, which was quite fun thanks to a great guide, but a tad bit kitsch with all the singing on the bus the guide inisted we do - I just wanted to enjoy the scenery in the Alps! Donna W. - go to Salzburg - you’ll love it! There is lots of fabulous shopping too; and if you’re a Mozart fan - Salzburg is the place to be. When I was a freshman in college, over the Christmas holiday, I went to London with my family and saw Phantom of the Opera and became an instant Andrew Lloyd Webber fan. I still get chill bumps everytime I hear the overture!

I remember my parents playing the Pajama Game allbum along with Soutth Pacific when I was little. I loved going to Stratford Ontario with my husband for a wonderful weekend and we saw Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes”. What a great weekend. Our high school play was “Oklahoma” so that play has a special spot in my heart. I loved the sets for “Seven Brides for Seven Brother’s” with Debbie Boone. I LOVED watching “PeterPan” with Mary Martin on TV as a kid - it was an annual event and I liked it more than the Wizard of Oz. As a kid I didn’t realize this Peter Pan production was a play and not a movie. Boy does this question bring back memories. Boy I love the song “Some enchanted evening,, you will meet a stranger across a crowded room ” it will be playing in my head all day long now. I saw Mickey Rooney and Ann Miller in 42nd Street on Broadway. Recent musicals are great, too - so many great musicals: Tommy, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Phantom, Starlight Express, “Mary Poppins” I saw in London - what a fantastic treat!!! Geez I could go on and on.

During my senior year in High School our music department presented “Brigadoon.” I, being a late bloomer, had just discovered “boys” and was immediately propelled into the world of Brigadoon, from which I admit I probably still have not completely returned (at least in my heart of hearts). Those tunes still play through my mind - Brigadoon, Waitin’ For My Dearie, I’ll Go Home With Bonnie Jean, The Heather On The Hill, Almost Like Being In Love - and if I am lucky enough to hear one played on the radio I burst out in song (with my aging, raspy voice!). I am once again Fiona, in that wonderful enchanted village in the mists.