The Anticipation Builds

The (very, very small) school that Cubby attends performs a play every year at the end of the school year. This is something that Cubby has been looking forward to pretty much since he started school. It's a Big Deal. They do it on the big stage in the auditorium of the college in the village. There are sets and costumes and they choose pretty ambitious plays for a group of kids who are all under the age of 13. Last year it was Peter Pan. The year before was Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. This year . . . I can hardly say it without doing a little dance of joy.

This year it's The Princess Bride. 

I really cannot convey to you how happy I was when Cubby announced this to me a month or so ago. Though he actually didn't know the name of it, and just gave me a garbled plot synopsis along the lines of, "It's about a man who wears black all the time and there's a giant and swords and a lady named after a flower." Such is my love for this story that I figured it out just from that.

The movie is one of my favorites ever. The book is similarly beloved. I can't believe that Cubby gets to be in a play based on it.

Not that he has a big part, obviously. He's only six. I have no doubt he could memorize lines (he memorizes entire long books, why not lines?), but I think the idea of stage direction or acting with others is a little beyond him. There are quite a few very young kids at the school this year, so they get to be Prince Humperdinck's soldiers (though Cubby insists he's going to be "a knight") and--this is the best--"The Ancient Booers."

Remember the scene where Buttercup has a dream that she's being introduced as Prince Humperdinck's bride and an old lady in the crowd starts booing and saying she threw true love away and that she's the queen of refuse? Yeah, that. Those lines have been split up for all the little kids, so they all get to boo--which I'm sure they love--and then they take turns with the other lines.

Cubby brought home his script yesterday. He's Ancient Booer #2. Ancient Booer #1 says, "Your true love lives!" And then Cubby says, "And you marry another!"

Suitably dramatic, no? I do sort of wish he got to be Ancient Booer #6, whose line is, "Bow to the queen of slime."

But still. I can't wait to see this. And I really can't wait to see who they cast as Fezzik the giant.