We survived another weekend. Friday was a little rough in places because we'd had 5 (!) days off, but still a good show. Our stage manager even told me the next day that she thought I was particularly "on" Friday night. One of the audience members was someone I'd done Ruddigore with and who is a good friend of Albert's. So I got a passing "you were good" and he got most of her attention, which is fine. After all, he's her age, good-looking, single and male, while I'm only one of those. :)
Saturday night we had an interesting diversion, if you will. Just as we came to the last chord in the Act I finale, it started raining on the musicians! Very literally raining - it had just started raining hard enough that water was sluicing down along the column in their corner of the nave, hitting the ornamental ring near its top and spraying all over them! We had a mad scramble to move at least the woodwinds and piano out of harm's way, then had a longer-than-usual intermission while the musicians (fortunately only 5 of them) were relocated and the floor mopped.
Also on Saturday, I knew 4 or 5 people in the audience. One was a woman I know from the chorus at work who also sings in the choir of the church where we're performing. She loved the show, kept telling me "You were great! You were great!" B, with whom I've done several shows, was there to see his niece and remembered only when I made my first entrance that I was in it too. :D He's Jewish and teased me in a complimentary way about my accent, putting on one of his own to do it. C is voice teacher to B, his niece, and several other people I've done shows with; she was there with her husband. Both enjoyed the show, but C complimented me specifically on my enunciation and projection: "I never lost a line, could hear every word perfectly." From a voice teacher, that's a rave review! And the best review to date of my characterization of Mae came by way of the mother of our "Ursula". Friends of theirs came to the show to see Ursula and, as her mother tells the story, "We'd been hearing stories about his mother for years but had never met her because she lives too far away. After seeing the show, our friend told us that 'Now you've met my mother!' " So now the reviews from the "native speakers" are trickling in - the ones I've heard are all positive. Gotta love it! :)
I don't know whether I had anyone in the audience Sunday, but I think it was another good performance. The audience certainly gave us our biggest ovation to date when we came out for bows. Especially nice was that Albert complimented me on my "garbage speech" (when Albert says he doesn't need her any more, Mae rants "Go ahead, get rid of me! Put me out w/ the garbage!") later; said it was especially good. What was funny was that after Albert sends Mae home, she rants & raves, then exits in a huff, and the band strikes up "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah", one of the cast members greeted me backstage with "By the way, happy Mother's Day"! Too funny!
Randolph Macafee gave his "mom" a Mother's Day card; charmed everyone who heard about it. Before he gave it to her, he told a group of us that he thought Albert should give Mae a Mother's Day card; everyone laughed, including me. When he followed up by saying Mrs. Macafee was going to get one, everyone thought it was very sweet. It may not have occured to Albert to give me a card, but that compliment makes a nice substitute.
The theater-to-church-and-back-again drill was faster this weekend because our Conrad Birdie not only was directing things in a very organized fashion, but had wisely mapped out the previous weekend which legs and platforms went where so he could direct "traffic" more efficiently. He seems to have an excellent eye for that kind of mechanical thing; you'd never guess he'd never done the "riser drill" before! I managed to get through without a single splinter or smashed finger, though I do have an interesting assortment of bruises on my forearms from moving chairs, legs, platforms, etc. Good thing that fur coat covers my arms. ;) I do have to wonder, though, at the number of people who showed up in skirts, flipflops, mules and other attire completely unsuited to tech. I can kinda see the younger kids doing that the first weekend, but the adults? And a second weekend, when they shoulda learned the first weekend what this was going to entail? Although, in their defense, they may have been helping haul props, costumes and set pieces (and their numbers are legion!) while I was stacking chairs, carrying platforms, and strapping riser legs together.
I learned that after our last show on Saturday, we not only have to take everything apart and reset the church; we need to get the props, costumes and set pieces out of the building! Can't put 'em back in the parish hall storage area, as the company is losing that space. I'm already starting to make a mental list of the things I need to remember to get back (the phone and wooden chair used as props, the 2 mirrors backstage, gloves for Rosie, tie tack for Albert...)
This has been a very social cast. Several of the adults regularly go out for a "sociable beverage" after rehearsals & performances, and the teenage girls seem to have bonded quite well. So well, in fact, that the oldest young woman who plays a teen has been talking about having them all over to her place for a slumber party. That same woman organized a group of nearly 30 of us to go out to dinner for Mother's Day after yesterday's show. This weekend will see 2 more get-togethers: the producer is organizing dinner at a local pizzeria between Saturday's matinee & evening performances, and the cast party is Sunday.
It's also been a physically demonstrative cast. The girls have been doing something my friends and I never did when we were that age. They spend their down time hanging on each other: sitting in each other's laps, wrapping their arms around each other, or lying on the floor like a pile of puppies, with this one's head resting on that one's tummy, who's resting her feet on someone else. Kinda sweet. Albert & Rosie are pretty chummy (not surprising, given the onstage romance), we've been teasing Harry MacAfee about fooling around w/ Mrs. Merkle (although he's just as affectionate with Doris Macafee), and everyone's generous with hugs. Our director has been such a delight, as both director & human being, that I'd audition for something just because he's directing it.
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