Thursday 27 June 2013

Three Weeks to Piratical Lift Off !

We are now just a day short of three weeks away from opening night of Pirates of Penzance ! Eek ! That is a slightly scary thought. We are doing well, but still have a 'way to go' before it is all finished and slick. The cast is great, really doing the job, and managing well without the missing Pirate King, who will not arrive for another week or so.

It is tricky to be entirely convinced about blocking when important folk are missing. The vacuum it leaves takes more than just filling musically, it means that all the parts working around that part, or moment, have to use twice the creative imagination, or have to dig deep and find responses to a non existent person!

The Pirate King is being played by T, who last played the role of Captain Corcoran in HMS Pinafore a couple of years ago. The great thing about T is that he will be word and note perfect when he arrives and will think very quickly on his feet re the blocking, and slide in the picture with energy and initiative! He is much loved by the group as a person and they will all raise their game when he is in swashbuckling mode !

Our second Major General will also arrive in a week or so, and hopefully after a years' rest and recuperation he will be more sprightly and less exhausted than he was last year after his serious stroke! He too is much loved within Inner Sound, and like T he too will slide into the moments quietly and with little disruption. The cast will look forward with relish to his imput and comedic moves and faces!

We re-ran the love duet tonight with Mabel and Frederick, and it is growing every time they sing it. This evening I asked for more truth, reality and 'opera' in the performance, and the more I ask, the more they rise to the challenge. What a great pair of singers to work with, and how far will they take the beautiful duet when they are under the lights. I can't wait.

The teenagers, by the last rehearsal seem to have fully 'woken up'. I was concerned a few weeks ago that they were holding back, but on Tuesday they were really 'motoring', finding so much fun and absurdity in the story, and looking so wonderfully engaged. The pirates are stonking, they show such verve and colour. They are for ever trying hard to do the moves and singing like marvellously tipsy men having a ball ! That includes the lady men pirates too !

My elegant ladies are brilliant, superior and snooty, shy and bold all at the same time, and they are always singing their hearts out. I hope, when they start to wear the hats, they feel even more like Victorian ladies of the manor ! They certainly act the part !

It is that time again, when things are just edging their way to melding. The seams of the musical dress are almost sown together, and the story has a feel of order and flow. One of my tiny girls had her singing lesson today and she was so excited and sang me the most delightful version of 'How beautifully Blue the Sky' with clearer and more accurate words than some twice her age and more ! Like the Borg, she assimilates music by osmosis.

Of course the most exciting moment in her lesson was when I asked her to bring a teddy bear for the opening of act two. She smiled a smile as wide as the Mississipi !

Onwards and upwards ..........With Cat Like Tread .........see below Ha Ha!

 

 

 

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