New Mexico Mercury

I recently treated The Darling Fiancée to a staging of Chicago, the classic and ever-popular musical. The evening’s performance had everything a girl wants: friendship, love, danger, well-coordinated outfits, a rousing finale.

Oh, and Chicago was pretty good, too.

A gentleman never discloses the details. But mere gentlemen don’t pull off date nights like I do—so I am spilling. Hear ye, all people (gentle or otherwise) interested in wooing a woman, this is my recipe for how to roll:

-Pull out your best sports jacket and wear it. Be sure to check the pockets. If they still contain ticket stubs from the last show you went to, springboard into a nostalgic reminiscence with your lady. This is sure to spark deep affections, unless it turns out you went to that show with your last girlfriend, which conveniently explains why your lady doesn’t remember ever seeing your best sports jacket before.

-Invite two of your lady’s dearest friends to a preshow dinner. Casually drop into the conversation that this is your anniversary celebration, even when it isn’t. Her friends will feel honored to pay! This inclusion of friends is more than just considerate; it’s morally obligatory, like waiting until your lady is off powdering her nose again to inform the waiter that today is her birthday, so that you get free ice cream and the restaurant gets a tax write-off.

-Use the dinner and dessert savings to buy tickets to your lady’s favorite musical production, EVEN IF, for the same price, you could buy her the DVD, the soundtrack, and a plane ticket to the actual city of Chicago. This is a good idea EVEN IF you and everyone else already knows by heart the story of Roxy what’s-her-face inspiring a bunch of imprisoned inner-city girls through the restorative powers of dance and lying under oath, as well as other stuff that happens.

Now, those EVEN IF points are real stickers. If you’re the kind of person interested in wooing a woman, strong odds you are also the kind of person who knows that musical theater is a racket for milking money out of those select few demographics who believe—often vehemently—that real life people ought to break out in song and dance.

Just because SHE enjoys ensemble numbers more than cinematic explosions, why should YOU have to suffer through two whole acts and an intermission in the kind of theater that doesn’t even sell popcorn?

I understand. I too grew up scarred by sisters ceaselessly watching The Sound of Music. But I’m here to tell you that Chicago is so much more than a musical. Whatever your proclivities, the live show contains dozens of the fittest young dancers bending and arcing and spreading and shimmying every which way in next to no clothing, which really draws your attention to their very fine hats.

I love hats. Fedoras, bowlers, trilbys, Panamas, pork pies. I love wearing them, I love trying them on, I love tipping them at a rakish angle over my brow. I hate shopping, yet I would shop for hats until the cows come home. (And I don’t own cows, so that will be a very long time, indeed!) Yet the objective nature of professional journalism prevents me from expressing my personal thoughts about stylish hats. It’s not fair that you, my most dedicated readers, still have no idea how I feel about hats.

So in the interest of full disclosure: when it comes to hats, I’m not saying Lee Harvey Oswald was right to shoot President John F. Kennedy. I just think he might have considered doing so before JFK butchered the hat’s coolness by never wearing one.

In modern times, wearing a hat in public in the United States of America is IMPOSSIBLE if you care to follow proper hat etiquette. For instance, no restaurant provides a hat check or even a hat rack. I’m supposed to, what, hang my hat on the ketchup bottle? Not likely—where I dine, Heinz comes in packets.

It’s also not Heinz anymore; I don’t know what brand it is, but it says “fancy” on the package. And in the days of yore that Chicago portrays with historical impeccability, any fancy restaurant worth its condiments employed a maître d’ ready to take your hat and pilfer your coat.

In the immortal lyrics of Mama and that other character whom everyone loves, Thelma or Valerie or something, whatever happened to class?

I know PRECISELY what happened to class. But after admiring the real class acts in Chicago, I’m going to try gentlemanliness on for size. And a gentleman never tells.

Finally, something I can hang my hat on.

(Image derived from photo by NC State University Theatre / CC)