I developed a hatred for musical theatre that is still with me today. I can enjoy a good, silly production of Kiss Me, Kate (Cole Porter, need I say more?), or a thoughtprovoking and stirring play like Caroline (or Change), but in general, I'm biased against musical theatre. It's a snobbery of mine, I suppose, but it seems to me that *most* musical theatre is pageantry and spectacle for the groundlings, without any higher purpose.

On the one hand, that's a perfectly appropriate medium -- hearkening back to the Commedia del'Arte where, in fact, most of today's stock characters arose. On the other hand, look who the Commedia was aimed at -- the audience for whom they performed is strikingly similar to the audience for children's movies today -- a large number of uneducated, unworldly people who need to be appeased in order to be kept quiet, and a smaller number of educated people who need a few clever, adult jokes to keep them entertained.

It's not my medium, I'm afraid.