Director's Note

Love, laughter, and a happy ever-after: These are the quintessential elements of a fantastic musical comedy, and they’re just what “Me and My Girl” offers. Back in December when we were looking for a show for Carnival, we wanted something big and warm and lighthearted—a musical with a lot of energy. We wanted a show with infectious charm and catchy melodies, witty humor and toe-tapping dance numbers. We found that in “Me and My Girl”.

From the very beginning, “Me and My Girl” proved to be a massive undertaking for Scotch’n’Soda. A cast of nineteen, half a dozen dance numbers, a two-story set, magical effects...the list of challenges goes on. Thanks to the dedicated staff of 68 students, S’n’S was able to overcome these challenges to bring to the stage what you will see before you tonight. Thousands of hours of work have been logged, both by the tech staff and the cast, all of whom do this in their precious spare time. Every student on stage and backstage has fit this enormous time commitment around classes, other extracurricular activities, homework, and a social life.

That said, we would like to take this opportunity to thank our dedicated production staff, headed up by Todd, Aaron, and Natalie, for their many hours of hard work making that picture in our heads of what everything is supposed to look like a reality. Thanks to our stage managers, Alex and Jay, for keeping this production rolling and playing mother hens by keeping track of our cast and their ever elusive schedules. Endless thanks to the immeasurable Matta and Dan, without whom nothing you are about to see would have been possible. And finally, to our fantastic cast, who put in countless hours of work to bring the world of “Me and My Girl” to life, we cannot say thank you enough. You are all fantastic, and we couldn’t be more proud of you!

We invite you to sit back, relax, and enjoy the show as Scotch’n’Soda Theatre proudly presents “Me and My Girl”.

Shannon Deep and Alex DiClaudio, Co-Directors

A Little History

When the revival of “Me and My Girl” premiered in New York in 1986, it was described as a trip through “the sunny, charming world of musical comedy.” This world was not far from the one portrayed by the musical. 1937 England was a place of unusual prosperity. Most of the country had only been lightly affected by the Great Depression, and many production industries in the south proved resiliant to the global economic crash. The horrors of World War I were a distant memory, and many people were looking forward to a golden age, with luxuries such as cinema and television becoming more accessible and general living conditions improving across the country.

Sadly, someone had to pay the price of this improvement, and the bill fell on the lap of the British aristocracy. One of the oldest in all of Europe, the gentry of England and Scotland were hit hard throughout the 1920s and 30s, with land reform bills and a downturn in farming hitting them hardest of all. To escape these very real problems, many packed their bags and fled their urban dwellings for their ancestral mansions in the English countryside. This has been a habit of theirs for centuries and has been well documented by writers like Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde. But for the nobles of late 1930s, this was the last vestige of the priveleges they had enjoyed since William the Conqueror.

These were the surroundings L. Arthur Rose and Douglas Furber were faced with as they wrote “Me and My Girl”. Originally written and premiered in London in 1937, it was a brilliant success on the West End, running for 1600 performances. The theatregoers of the time would have seen in the story a symbolic “changing of the guard,” a change that was occuring all around them, and most symbolically represented by the abdication of King Edward VIII to allow him to marry an American divorcee. Bill and Sally, with their Crass and blunt language and manners, were reapidly becoming the norm, while the Harefords and their ilk were fading into the pages of their own history books. Yet while Rose and Furber could have catalogued this change as sad, they used their words and the music of Noel Gay to give these nobles one last hurrah and welcome the rising lower classes in style and splendor.

Zander Miller, Dramaturg