So… good news! Great news!
Savoynet is doing a fun thing at the G&S festival next summer – we’re doing HMS Pinafore as our mainstage production, and The Zoo as a fringe production. I’d applied to music-direct Pinafore, but not Zoo (two separate directing teams). And I found out this weekend I got it! So I’ll be MDing/conducting Pinafore, stage-directed by my friend Rick Joyce, who recently directed Pirates for Blue Hill. And my buddies Marisa and Andrew will be MDing/stage directing Zoo. Rick, Andrew and I were all in the chorus this year, so we’re calling this the ‘revenge of the Mikado chorus’.
I’m excited! Even though I’ve been doing G&S since I was sixteen, I have some startling gaps in my resume. And although I know Pinafore extremely well – I played rehearsal piano for Savoynet’s last Pinafore (in 2007), and have sung Sir Jos, Capt. Corcoran, Deadeye, Boatswain and Carpenter (basically, all the roles that I could sing) in informal settings over the years, I’ve never performed it in a full production. Not as an actor, as a hornist or conductor. So it’s about damme time. Also, this will be the third of ‘the big three’ for me – I’ve already conducted Pirates and Mikado. That’s a loose thread that needed sewing up.
I love the show! For a long time, I didn’t. The show itself is pretty slight and silly, doesn’t have the depth and craft of libretto (and hilarity) that Pirates, Patience and Iolanthe have – but wow, that score. It’s just a string of gems all the way through. I’ve come to realize that Pinafore is its own animal, not to be compared with the other shows, and is a self-contained delight.
I only found out on Saturday, and we managed to pull together a quick touch-base zoom meeting yesterday for the four artistic directors. This is gonna be fun!
Since Zoo and Pinafore‘s rehearsal periods will be consecutive – Pinafore starts rehearsal the day after the Zoo performance – I’ll do chorus for Zoo. Unless I end up playing horn in the teeny orchestra that Marisa will assemble. TBD. But I’ll be involved. That will be a hoot.
I need to get my housing settled now. I’d planned to do both shows regardless, I’ve just been dragging my feet.
There’s a lot of excitement about these shows – people have reached out already about auditions and Bunthorne Boy and the Viking will come from Oslo to see it, which will be awesome.
Other than that, it’s fully fall now and I’m here for it.
This weekend, we did a long-planned trip. My buddy Susan’s parents are buried near where they grew up, in central PA. I’d been out there for her dad’s funeral, right before COVID hit. But she’d been wanting to make a weekend out there, to lay flowers on the graves of her relatives, and to enjoy the area. And this was planned to the nth degree, down to what snacks there’d be in the car.
Susan picked me up early Saturday and we drove out. Turns out that Stroudsburg, where I was in August to go to Rainbow Mountain, is on the route, pretty much exactly halfway there, so as we drove by it, we took notes of antique and outlet malls to maybe visit on the way back. It was an absolutely beautiful day and a nice drive, although towards the end, the GPS routed us over some twisty mountain roads that had Susan clenching the steering wheel.
We made it to the cemetery in plenty of time. (our buddy Janna, driving up from Philadelphia, was running behind, so she met us later elsewhere) Susan had bought various bunches of artificial flowers from Michael’s, and she had quite a few relatives there – both her families were from that area. I helped her as necessary, gave her space as necessary. It’s a beautiful piece of land, up a mountain, beautiful views. (For her dad’s funeral, it had been snowing, but this was a gorgeous sunny day.)
We wrapped that up and headed to what was to me the main attraction, Knoebels Amusement Resort. Susan had been telling all of us about this place for years – it’s been there for forever – she grew up going there with her relatives. It’s an amusement park and a campground and they have rides and fresh-cut french fries and kettle corn and an old carousel and all the good stuff.
We got there at noon, and it wasn’t hard to park. There were plenty of people there, but we realized once we started exploring that the park didn’t really open until 2:00. Damn! But they had some food stalls open and we could at least walk around and get lunch, which we did. Janna arrived (we found out via text) so we had to figure out how to find each other, which we did.
We found ourselves at five of two waiting like vultures outside the fudge shop (with many other people doing the same thing). Susan and I got pretzel sticks dipped in fudge and candy (I got peanut butter fudge with chocolate chips) and Janna bought some maple fudge and pickle fudge because why not?
Unusually, this park has free admission, but you buy ride tickets, which we did. The first thing we went on was the haunted house ride, which was hilarious.
The best part, though, was Susan’s reaction. Every scare was met with EEEEEK! heeeheeheehee. I was laughing my ass off. That was a hoot.
What else did we do? We got the fresh-cut french fries. We went on the Ferris wheel. (a sign: “warning – we are experiencing unusual bee activity at the top of the ride”. We saw no bees, but encountered quite a few ladybugs.) Susan and I rode the carousel and grabbed the rings, which was fun. It got pretty crowded, so we turned some rides down because of the long lines.
I also took this video of a ride to send to my brother, because they had the same ride at the carnival that came to my town every year – called either The Bullet or the Salt-and-Pepper Shaker. It was fun and terrifying. (I didn’t go on it this time.)
Apparently the official name is the Roll-O-Plane.
As it started to get dark, we headed out, buying ginormous bags of kettle corn on the way.
To the Pine Barn Inn in neighboring Danville, next to the Geisinger teaching hospital. We checked in, got settled, and got to the restaurant at eight. Actually, Susan and Janna got there first and found out that the kitchen was closing at eight, so a frantic text to me, but I was 30 seconds away from arriving anyway. Dinner was nice! They had several oktoberfesty things, so I had veal schnitzel with red cabbage and potato pancakes and an apple side. A pumpkin roll for dessert. And off to bed. (I had my own room.)
Up the next day for breakfast, then we bid goodbye to Janna and headed back to Stroudsburg. We decided to go to an antique mall, which was quite large. Great stuff, although we got almost nothing – I ended up buying a (luxurious) sofa pillow with skulls all over it for Halloween. Then to Main Street. I’d driven through it in August, thinking to stop at the candy store to buy something for my in-laws, but it was impossibly crowded and I couldn’t find a parking space. This time, we did find parking (and it was free! on a Sunday). Had lunch at an Irish Pub, quite good, then went to the candy store, where I bought a mint bark kinda thing and chocolate coconut haystacks. By this point, we were kinda beat, but that Main Street has a lot of interesting stuff and would be worth exploring on a future trip.
From there, the drive back to NYC wasn’t as pleasant – quite crowded and people driving stupid and of course it took a while to cross the GW Bridge and get into Queens. But Susan dropped me off at six-ish and I spent a nice evening chilling.
So that was pleasant, and a nice way to help a friend with a task fraught with emotion, and I hope we’ll do it again. I love an amusement park and don’t get to go to them very much.
And then I had Monday off, back to work today. Here we go!
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