My wife and I celebrated our seventeenth anniversary two nights ago by attending the Spokane Civic Theater’s performance of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music. The show was fantastic–elaborate sets, wonderful singing–a real treat. There were even a couple of songs that we had never heard before. It was also very special to see one of my former students in the role of Louisa Von Trapp.

My wife loves The Sound of Music, so one Christmas I bought her the movie, the soundtrack and the original book. Now I see that there’s a cd of music by the Original Trapp Family Singers available, as well as a book about the making of The Sound of Music. The Sound of Music is great family entertainment, and for Catholic families there’s the added bonus of being able to use the movie to talk about our faith.

As much as I enjoyed the performance on Saturday, I was more excited by the news that the Spokane Civic Theater was going to be staging a performance of Man of La Mancha next year! If you’re a regular reader of Literary Compass, you know how much I love Don Quixote, so this is great news for me. I’ve already put it on my calendar for May 2008. My wife and I are almost done listening to the audiobook of Don Quixote, and we plan to watch the film version of Man of La Mancha when we finish, even though we’ve been told it’s a subpar movie. I’ve never seen it and I’m curious.

Musical theater, The Sound of Music and Don Quixote: these are a few of my favorite things.