A Night on Broadway

The very same week that baby Colton made his big debut on the grand stage of life, Jeffrey was experiencing his own kind of drama. He was preparing for a big Broadway musical revue and a few days before the show, he developed a sinus infection and what the doctor suspected was strep throat. He ran fevers and had NO VOICE AT ALL! On Wednesday, two days before opening night, he had a temperature of 102 and he could barely whisper. Gordon gave him a blessing, and we drowned him in gallons of warm apple juice with lemon and honey, and any other home remedy we heard of. On Friday, he made it to school, but felt horrible by the time I picked him up. On the plus side though, he could talk and maybe sing a little? A miracle literally occurred, and aside from bloodshot eyes and a few stray coughs, he performed stupendously. After 14 hours of sleep, he woke up on Saturday feeling "Great!" He got through two more shows that afternoon and evening, each getting better than the one before.

Here are some videos of his two big numbers. The first is from "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" and is called A Book Report on Peter Rabbit. In it, you can identify the characters of Lucy, Schroeder (Jeffrey's best friend Alex, in orange), Linus (in green), and Charlie Brown (Jeffrey.) They had so much fun putting this together. I am only so sorry that my videotaping skills are completely dreadful. I taped all three performances and messed each one up somehow. So this is a spliced and edited version of the best of all three which I made into a little movie. I am very proud of it, and it has only taken me two weeks to figure it out. You might have to turn the sound up a little higher to hear parts of it--Linus' funny commentary gets lost because of a bad mic. Didn't one of the Farrell kids do this play? Hannah, maybe in middle school? I seem to recall a really cute show.

The second clip is from the play "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." The song is called Everybody Ought to Have a Maid. It is somewhat chauvenistic, or as Jeffrey put it "a little bit rowdy," but I think you all will think it is very cute, like I do. Jeffrey is singing with his friend Alex again. The togas were a fun addition (the play is set in ancient Rome)--but the first night Jeffrey came out I almost died. It looked like he had his toga on upside down, if that is even possible. I'm talking wardrobe malfunction here--good thing the boys were wearing clothes underneath. I sent him with some more safety pins and begged him to have some girl backstage help him put it on for Saturday. It was much improved the second time around!

The show was really fun. An 11th grader put the whole thing together start to finish as a special project to raise money for the Leukemia/Lymphoma society. Of course, we couldn't think of a better cause!