I'm Retired! Now what?

June 21, 2026

The last time Margaret and I took in a play at the local community theater, the Finley Playhouse in Sherman, Texas, she noticed that the musical My Fair Lady was going to be their next spectacular production.  “Cool,” I mumbled while hoping that such a comment was just a casual attempt at conversation.  Then I remembered that my wife never makes a casual attempt at conversation.  When she speaks one must grasp onto every word because there’s a great possibility that even the slightly stray noun or verb might come back to haunt me in later weeks, months, or even years.  So, with great fear, I returned the obvious response, “Do you want to go and see that?”  Apparently, my wife has been a great fan of the old 1964 Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison musical and has seen the movie deep into double figures.  As for me?  I had never seen the movie and was completely clueless.

I have no issues with musicals, and although I’ve never seen one episode of Glee, I’ve seen a fair share of musicals on both the Finley community theater stage and on the more prestigious stage at the Dallas Music Hall at Fair Park.  Margaret and I have seen Jesus Christ Superstar and Sweeny Todd at the local playhouse as well as taken on the pricier productions of Phantom of the Opera, Grease, Cats, Hamilton, Moulin Rouge, Wicked, along with a few others down in Dallas Theater scene.  As far as I’m concerned though, there are two types of musicals.  There are those cool, hip shows with professional/Broadway actors that we artsy wannabe folks dish out ungodly amounts of money to see just so we can brag on our social media about how hip and cultured we are.  Then there are those musicals that you might have watched on TV with your mother way back in the day basically due to the fact that we only had three TV channels to watch back in those days.  These were the musicals that your high school theater department put on because they were considered classics.

From my high school auditorium I watched my brother perform the lead in South Pacific while also taking on a role in the Music Man.  I even watch Margaret’s niece stand in the background as her little high school performed a ghastly rendition of Oklahoma.  I do hope someone eventually taught those kids how to sing in the correct key!  Anyway, those are the classics.  The King and I, The Music Man, Oklahoma, and I guess I would have to throw My Fair Lady into that mix as well.  Other than wanting to google at a young Audrey Hepburn (she was quite the dish back in her day) I had no real interest in seeing the movie or the stage production for that matter.  But anything that gets Margaret off the couch and out of the house, I’m leading the charge with great exhilaration!  So with my best artsy fartsy persona in full swing, we took off for the local theater!

Margaret thought we needed to invite my sister-in-law Colleen along for the theatrical outing.  Since my brother left us five years ago, Colleen has been living with her mother Barbra.  Although Colleen has a full-time job as lab tech in one of the local hospitals, her home life tends to revolve around her three kids and six grandkids, but more importantly, taking care of her ninety-year-old mother.  So, we were thrilled to take her out for something a bit off the beaten path of her daily routine.  Unlike Margaret and I, my sister-in-law has actually seen a few plays on Broadway in New York City, and considering she lived in London, England for a while as a kid, Colleen is generally up on all things English.  She even made a comment regarding the Ascot Gavotte horserace which is a scene in the play.  So here I was, off to see this play with a couple of women who were all too familiar with the musical My Fair Lady.  And of course, there was me who was still completely clueless.    

Other than the few high school productions that I was forced to sit through, my taste in musicals generally dips more into The Book of Mormon or The Rocky Horror Picture Show category, so I was a bit out of my element here.  I was quick to notice that this was certainly a girls’ night out, and much to my surprise the evening wasn’t only restricted to ladies who might have been around when the 1964 movie came out.  The girl sitting next to us looked like she was barely out of high school, and the entire row in front of me looked younger than those I had seen at the last screamo, metal rock show I went to.  It was a bit refreshing to see that the youngsters are still digging the classics, or maybe they just knew someone in the production.  This tends to be the thought process behind community theater.  The larger the cast means more friends and relatives to fill up the seats!

Speaking of the cast, the young lady who played the lead role of Eliza Doolittle was a talent not to be overlooked.  No off-key singing for this girl.  Not only was she as cute as Audrey Hepburn ever was, but she had a voice that should be rocking Broadway!  Of course, the play is about an impoverished girl who struggles with her hard-core cockney dialect.  I had to wonder how many times the woman had to sit through the movie Oliver to get that dialect down.  She also looked amazing in an evening gown, and when she made her appearance in the elegant gown the two girls behind me squealed in excitement as if the Jonas Brothers had just taken the stage.  I wanted to read about her bio in the playbill, but apparently, I didn’t look artsy fartsy enough to rate one of the publications.  The usher merely showed me my seat and that was the end of that!

More than anything, I was amazed at how these folks kept all their lines memorized.  That’s a long freaking play!  It started around 7:30 and ended around 10:30. “Yea,” Margaret said.  “The movie was pretty long as well.”  Indeed, I just read where the movie clocked in at 173 minutes.  She could have at least warned me about that.  I’m not sure I could last through the entire movie regardless how cute Audre Hepburn was.  As for the play?  It wasn’t exactly a male bonding experience, but I had a good time none the less.