Just a Link for the Day

So, I took my mom to see a community theatre production of "Pippin!" this past summer. You might very well ask what she had done to me for me to engage in elder abuse, especially on the scale of a community theatre production of "Pippen," but she actually enjoys this kind of stuff. Anyway, at the intermission she asks me, "Who played the grandmother in the original Broadway cast?" (My kid sister in a serious theater geek, so I have educated myelf a little Broadway simply to have something to talk about with her. I got good enough, actually, that I got pegged to review musicals in my newspaper days.) I told her "Irene Ryan, of all people." And a passerby interrupted to say "It was her last perfomrance. She died." and other stuff, because there was something wrong, apparently, with the way I was telling my mother what happened.

And here it is. Pay attention to the lyrics, because the whole Beverley Hillbillies thing adds something, in my opinion. She died after suffering a stroke during the show. I assume not this particular performance, however, because the recording does not contain screams from the audience and Irene Ryan slurring her words and collapsing and stuff like that.