My pal Suzy Conn maintains the Blogway Baby blog devoted to Broadway musicals. For as long as I've known her, she's been working steadily at a musical called "Plane Crazy," a singin', dancin' tribute to swinging sixties stewardesses in the age of the Pill, the jet, and the sexual revolution.
A year ago, I got to see the musical performed at a workshop at Toronto's Poor Alex Theatre and it was fantastic: funny, catchy, engrossing, with a really authentic sixties-kitsch feel: like Hair at 30,000 feet, with seasonings of Jesus Christ, Superstar and Germaine Greer.
The play's going to Actor's Equity Showcase
production this summer, and Suzy's launched a website for it that includes MP3s/MIDIs of all the songs from the production, as well as synopses and background material on the era.
Plane Crazy is set during an explosive time in history: The intersection between the dawn of the Jet Age, the introduction of the Pill, the genesis of the modern Feminist Movement, and the Golden Age of Advertising.
Stewardesses represented the first-wave shock troops in a changing world. This was an exclusive sorority of women who had freedom. Freedom to travel wherever they wanted. Freedom to have sex with whomever they wanted. And freedom to have a career without needing the support of a man.
Alas, men were not as quick to adapt. Most guys were interested in a woman who was a cross between Betty Crocker and Betty Page – they didn't want a Betty Friedan. Society itself, as typified by the advertising industry, was also slow to adapt.
