First Rehearsal on your toes

Don't you just love the trousers!

The weeks are zooming by and I am teaching everyday monday to friday until I go to Hong Kong. I feel as if I am back in London !

Still, it means that I can squeeze in more lessons and rehearsals than normal and then I can at least leave them all with a clear conscience.

We had our first rehearsal last night for Patience. It went so well, they were all singing with a big and healthy sound, and we started blocking so that by the middle of February, L and C have a solid base upon which to work whilst the pianist is otherwise engaged. Patience is so full of 'nutcase' characters, the aristocratic ladies, all of whom are following the aesthetic movement, and are as barmy as 8 week old puppies !

We set the ladies opening chorus, playing heavily on the melodramatic and the languishing lovesick, with much in the way of fake weeping and eloquent sighing. They did it remarkably well - Oh Dear ! The chaps marched well in time as fairly smart Dragoon Guards, but may not, in fairness have passed muster at Sandhurst yet, but in a few months they will be as 'smart as a carrot' as my father has always quoted!

I love it when rehearsals get going for real, so to speak. The journey of a show, whether 6 months in an amateur capacity, or in 3 weeks in a professional theatre, is exciting, almost exhilarating even. So full of promise and potential, so much undiscovered musical country. I love watching all the singers catch the infection which is the 'stage', and light up when they can ditch the day job and become someone else for a couple of hours.

This show is new to virtually everyone, and whilst that makes it harder on the learning front, it is also much more interesting to watch it piece together. There is some cracking music in the show, and some marvellously ridiculous storylines, largely based on the sillier elements of the Oscar Wilde movement. Initially it is quite hard to understand the 'aesthetic' movement, but it quickly becomes obvious it is just another implausible and impossible Gilbert and Sullivan plot.

One of the few which does not involve babies swapped at birth !

Hurrah !

One of the more obscure and silly poems written by ' dear Archibald'. Ahhhhhhhhhhh


'Gentle Jane was as good as gold,
She always did as she was told;
She never spoke when her mouth was full,
Or caught bluebottles their legs to pull,
Or spilt plum jam on her nice new frock,
Or put white mice in the eight-day clock,
Or vivisected her last new doll,
Or fostered a passion for alcohol.
And when she grew up she was given in marriage
To a first-class earl who keeps his carriage!'