Is it old fashioned to love musicals? Maybe it’s the romance in them that catches me. Romance in the real meaning of the word – “a spirit of or inclination for adventure, excitement, or mystery” together of course with the joy and heartbreak you also associate with love. Who doesn’t like a fairy tale?
My mother loved musicals too. We had an old gramophone when I was growing up – one of those cabinet ones with two doors that opened onto a radio that you tuned with a knob and a pull-out shelf with the record player underneath! 
Slots in the side to store your LPs – and Mom even had some old Ivor Novello 45 RPM records. Don’t ask. I can’t possibly explain if you’ve never heard of either him or 45s.
And her collection of LPs of musicals was legendary. They were wonderful! We had Oklahoma, Gigi, and West Side Story, The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, The King and I, South Pacific … And I knew just about every word to every song. No dvds then and nothing to download. Just songs and imagined pictures of what they meant.
Then Bulawayo got its first theatre. 1969 it was and Rainbow Cinemas opened with a surround sound theatre! The very first movie I ever saw was Paint your Wagon with Lee Marvin ‘singing’ I was born under a wandering star. After that we actually got to see many of the old favourites and they all lived up to my mind-pictures. And the list grew longer, with films like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Hello Dolly!, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Mary Poppins, Fiddler on the Roof, and The Wizard of Oz. Bugsy Malone, Grease, Cabaret and of course the Elvis movies, Cliff Richard and the Beatles.
Disney was a god-send as the musicals grew thin on the ground for a while. New doors were opened with his spectacular versions of The Jungle Book, Aladdin, Cinderella, Snow White, Lady and the Tramp, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King. By then I had a daughter but it never mattered whether I went alone or took her. You don’t need a child to enjoy animation! They do help to remind you how fantasy is food for the soul if you’re getting a little jaded, but I, luckily, have never had that problem.
And I was old enough too to take myself places (like Dr Seuss). London West End and the smell of an old theatre! Broadway still to come but it will never matter where I see the show. I’m just a sucker for a musical! Some enchanted evening indeed.
And then again ... 