White Christmas

White Christmas is one musical that puts everyone in the mood for the holiday season. With it's cheery music, and snowfall ending it made me want Christmas break to hurry up and get here. This musical took place in Brookings, South Dakota on Wednesday December 1st. The musical was held in the Doner Auditorium at South Dakota State University and showed at 7:30pm. My initial reaction was that everyone was dressed very festive. All the ushers wore red shirts and Santa hats and there were many of them. When entering the auditorium I noticed that it was a full house with barely any seats left. Our seats were towards the front of the house and we were located directly in front of the band, which was neat because you could watch them play during the musical. The elements of criticisms like plot, character, thought, diction, music and spectacle played an important role with the overall outcome of the musical.

The plot of the story is based on two World War 2 vets named Bob and Phil who have a very successful singing and dancing group. They meet sisters who are also a singing and dancing group and decide to go to a Vermont ski lodge with them. The men find out that their former Army commander, who is in desperate need of money or the lodge will be shut down owns the lodge. I thought the plot was pretty linear and stayed on one topic for the most part. Also the play was very feminine in structure because most the men danced in the play and did tap numbers which made it seem a little girly.

There were four main characters in the Musical White Christmas who consisted of Bob Wallace, Phil Davis, Betty Haynes and Judy Haynes. I think both men were very successful at being men that sang and danced on television because they had that squeaky-clean look but as for them being Army men it wasn't very believable. They didn't look tough enough to be men in the Army, I figured they would be more buff and be more disciplined. Betty and Judy had looked like they could really be in show business but unfortunately did not look like sisters. They looked more like best friends considering Betty had dark brown hair and Judy had blonde hair and was bigger than Betty. I feel like they should of looked more like each other to make it more believable. Another Character in the musical was Susan, which was the granddaughter of the commander. Although she had very few parts, in my opinion she stole the show since she was a little, blonde haired girl with a singing part. She sang so well for being younger than 10 years old that I was very impressed.

The thought behind a White Christmas in my opinion is that Christmas is the time for giving. Bob, Phil, Betty, and Judy all help put on a show at General Waverly's Vermont Lodge to save it from being shut down. They all want to help him financially so the General doesn't loose everything he owns. By putting on a show with Betty, Judy, Phil, and Bob singing and dancing, they