Drama mirrors nature | The Salt Lake Tribune

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The Jordan School District will only let the students of Herriman High perform the musical "All Shook Up" if they rewrite a song and other lines that don't meet "community standards." There are a lot of other musicals that our morals board should be on the lookout for:

• "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" celebrates kidnapping.

• "The Fantasticks" has a phony rape, and "Man of La Mancha" a real one.

• "The Music Man" romanticizes a swindling con man and "Guys and Dolls" does the same for gamblers.

• "Camelot" rhapsodizes that "lusty month … when ev'ryone throws self-control away."

• "Gypsy" engagingly teaches that "Ya gotta have a gimmick" if you want to be a successful stripper.

• "Charlie's Aunt" has cross-dressing.

And on and on. This is high school, for heaven's sake, not kindergarten. We need to teach our kids a little about life; otherwise, all sanitized, they're prey when they graduate.

According to Shakespeare, the purpose of theater is "to hold … the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure."

Life is more complicated than "The Sound of Music."

Rick Fontana

Park City