Epic Musical Article Forwarded by My Son Jonathan

For several years my son Jonathan has sent me topical birthday and Mother Day greetings in the form of articles he says he's found in the New York Times, acknowledging me as The World's Best Mother.    This year, the New York Times made no such declaration, but they did have something on the epic musical I inspired!

November 15, 2017

Epic Musical Coming to Broadway

There are many long musicals. South Pacific lasts about three hours. Les Miserables, The Producers, and Mary Poppins are only slightly shorter. But now a musical is coming to Broadway that dwarfs them all: Dear Tina Martin will be 14 hours long and will be presented in seven parts over the course of a week.

The show is inspired by Tina Martin of San Francisco, who visited New York City this past fall and saw seven shows in seven days: Come From Away, Katie, Miss Saigon, Annie, Prince of Broadway, Dear Evan Hansen, and Groundhog Day. 

The story of Dear Tina Martin begins in Vietnam, where a woman named Kim has raised a baby named Tina in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, after Tina’s American soldier father evacuated from Saigon. Kim sings to Tina and Tina becomes addicted to show tunes.

Tragedy strikes when Kim takes her own life so that Tina can have a better life with her father in America, where there are more musical revivals.

Tina boards a plane to New York to meet her father, but her plane is diverted to Gander, New Foundland. There she receives such a warm welcome that she stays and becomes known as an orphan. She inspires the town with her optimism, befriending a stray dog and singing about her hopes for tomorrow.

Her hopes sour, however, when she starts to find that every tomorrow is another today. It is as though she is living the same day over and over again. But then she realizes: she awoke again and again on the same day only because of her segmented sleep.

A prince named Harold visits the town and offers her a role in a revue in New York City. She accepts. She loves her role in the musical and is taken in by the rest of the cast. But provocative questions about consent and going too far are raised when they respond to her love of musical theater by taking her to an opera. (It doesn’t help that the opera is Madame Butterfly.) She becomes distraught. But she begins writing to herself about the experience (“Dear Tina Martin”) and soon becomes enchanted with graphomania.

This is all in the first half hour. Highlights of the following hours include her years in the Peace Corps in Tonga, teaching abroad, having a son and a meque, and developing countless relationships with friends and family. The show, astonishingly full of interest and variety, is still being written.