AIBU that I'm unsettled by a school play for making a joke about prostitution

[Woolyminded]

I'm either becoming a raging, permanently angry feminist in my middle age, or I'm justifiably miffed. I need to be told whether I need to get a grip or send the email I'm thinking of writing.
I love musicals and on Monday night I went to see a performance of the Sound of Music at my partners kids school. The school is known as a predominantly middle-class, well off families, very disciplined, very Christian sort of school. So I wasnt surprised when the performance was very swish, polished, and the kids were confident and sparkling. I was impressed.
In the first half two of the von trapps servants are engaging in a bit of banter about being in the navy. The pretty female housekeeper says something like 'i wouldn't know, I've never been in the navy', the male butler replies 'thats a shame, youd have made a fortune" with a sly wink at the audience. I cant think of what this could refer to apart from prostitution?! It just seemed so wrong to be said by a young boy, to a girl, in front of an audience of children and parents. They couldve left it out. I'm not a prude but I don't see whats funny about a joke referring to the objectification and exploitation of women.
When I mentioned it to my partner he brushed it off with 'it was a joke only the adults would get, its harmless'.
The older I get the more bothered I am about the normalisation of shit like this.

I remember when some kid on Britain's got talent made a joke about Amanda holden being a dog, I thought that was horrible

Making my first ever MN post for this point…
If you search the three main companies that hold the performing rights to plays and musicals, look for shows with big enough casts, which people have actually heard of and will pay to come and see, where you’re allowed to use performers over the age of 13 (so not Disney), and which have musical scores which the singers and musicians in a secondary school can handle, you end up with about 8. One of them is Grease and one of them is Guys and Dolls, both of which are, let’s be honest, a wee bit sexist. Another is High School Musical, so if you’re presenting to parents with high aspirations for their children then that one’s out - and by the time you’re done it’s either ‘The Sound of Music’, the show with the joke that might be about prostitution but probably isn’t, or ‘Pretty Woman: The Musical’.

Do you also realise that there is no overtime paid for directing school shows, and the average musical will have taken at least two members of staff at least 60 hours of rehearsal apiece, which should amount to a Christmas bonus of about two grand each, but doesn’t, because they know what a life-changing experience it is for a child to be involved in a performance like that, so they just plough on with it. And those numbers don’t take into account the time spent reading perusal copies of scripts, scheduling rehearsals, sourcing props and costumes, and doing other admin.

Perhaps next year you could read all the scripts that fit the bill, combing them for any joke that could possibly be about something triggering to someone if they read it a certain way, and put your name on the programme so that people can complain to you after you’ve put in months of work giving their child an incredible opportunity for no money.

In primary we buy in and edit or write our own plays. And that's without being an expert in the field of drama.
So what's stopping, presumably secondary, from doing the same?
Plenty of non westend shows written particularly for schools, although, as I stated earlier, they usually need scenes cutting to be suitable.

@WorriedMumsDontSleep

In primary we buy in and edit or write our own plays. And that's without being an expert in the field of drama. So what's stopping, presumably secondary, from doing the same? Plenty of non westend shows written particularly for schools, although, as I stated earlier, they usually need scenes cutting to be suitable.

In secondary children want to perform and parents want to watch big, well known musicals.

Most secondaries will also be putting on straight plays or devised work as well.

This is it - I really can’t see the tickets getting sold for a show by an unknown playwright. Also, even with those, isn’t there some kind of copyright law so that the playwright’s name isn’t going on a piece of work that isn’t theirs? And when you say ‘edit’, is this with the writer’s permission? You can’t ‘buy in’ a play as far as I know, only pay performing rights to put it on. But if there are companies that will let you do this, that sounds fantastic for key stage 3 maybe.
By upper secondary most kids would expect to be in something full-length, and if I’ve got to write a two-hour play from scratch every year and then direct it for 60 hours, all for free, then I officially quit!

Many years ago I appeared in a play called ‘Lock Up Your Daughters’ performed by the local youth theatre. The plot is based on a comedy called ‘Rape Upon Rape’ and the plot, taken from Wiki, is:
‘ In London, 1735, naive young Hilaret leaves the over-protective walls of her father's house resolved to elope with her beloved Captain Constant. She charges Ramble with rape, and her maid Cloris charges Constant with rape. The cases are tried by the corrupt justice, Mr. Squeezum.’

I had no grasp of how weird this was at the time. Imagine that play being performed now, let alone by a cast of teenagers?

That joke in the play you saw will have gone right over their heads. But you’re right - they should cut the line. Times have changed.