Christ on a sidecar, I’m so far behind in blogging – mostly because a string of things all happened over the course of several weekends, and I was too busy living life to write about it. So I’m just going to do some bullet points.

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Grand Duke: a few weeks ago, my old theater group, the Blue Hill Troupe, did their annual spring G&S production. It was directed by my friend Gary Slavin, who directed the Grand Duke I was in at the Festival in 2009 (and then the second one my festival company did). Gary is a great director for the funny, and although GD isn’t a great show, it has great potential and Gary’s now directed it 4 times. He had two remarkable casts of principals, and a general company willingness to take a hedge clipper to the book and score to tighten up which is otherwise a pretty flabby show.

I saw both casts, both filled with talented friends, and both delightful. The production was set in early 1900’s Europe, with a police-state atmosphere (secret police in trenchcoats that read “Secret Police” on the back kept interrupting). It was very well-staged, and as I said, both casts were top-notch. Many scenes took place backstage in a theater, and they had a set innovation that was very clever – a dressing room that swiveled out so you could see the action within, then swiveled back when the scene was done. One of the funniest bits was as things got crazy in Act 2, when Ludwig has already had to abandon two fiancees for a third, during the dance scene, they just randomly swiveled the dressing room open and around to show the two jilted fiancees getting morbidly drunk – just rotated the whole thing and closed it up again. Hilarious. Gary also did a directorial bit which was very clever – as the “Ludwig’s fiancee” titles moves from Lisa to Julia to the Baroness to the Princess, each fiancee stole the bridal veil headpiece from the previous one and put it on – cue to the many audience members who’d never heard of The Grand Duke before. Anyway, bravo.

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A week after that, the Queer Urban Orchestra played its May concert. The last time I’d played with them – or was going to – was Oct 2023, and I had to drop out because of the heart thing. So it was lovely to be back, particularly to play Mahler 1 (as one of eight horns!). One of my favorite moments of the evening was we had a couple of large back rooms to use as green rooms across from the main part of the church where the concert was. During intermission, we’re all just sitting around, and I got up to go do something and just starting singing, “Another long exhausting day, another million dollars”. And half the queens in the room picked it up with, “a matinee, a Pinter play, perhaps a piece of Mahler’s! I’LL DRINK TO THAT! (and one for Mahler!)”

Anyway, the symphony went beautifully and we were all really proud of myself. Here’s the end, where the horns stand up. If/when they post a full concert video, I’ll post that too.

My good friend and Mahler aficionado, Martin, brought a couple of friends and afterward M and I went out for drinks, so that was a lot of fun. He has several friends in the orchestra and has become pretty faithful about attending them, which is fantastic.

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A week after that (not even) was our dry run of HMS Pinafore. A gig that I’d been planning for and working on for months, but basically knew, barring disaster, would run like a top. I got together on Monday with the aforementioned Martin (Sir Joseph) and Chaz (Ralph) for a coaching and we went out for drinks and dinner afterward. Then Thursday, we had a rehearsal for the principals (often these G&S Society concerts are whipped together with no rehearsal, but I wanted the experience). Despite the very hot studio, this was a lot of fun, because we got to meet our Bosun, Daniel, who was new to the crowd, but who will be doing the role in England as well and is quite wonderful. And Susan (Hebe) got to meet a lot of the folks she’d been hearing about for forever, and worked out some good schtick with Martin. And plugging Jen D into our little group as Josephine – she’d been one of the two terrific Julia’s in Grand Duke and was happy to be getting to getting another crack at a role she’d done a couple of Pinafores ago. We all went out afterward, quite fun.

And then the concert happened the next night and was exactly as delightful as it had promised to be. Everyone sang great. Favorite moment – Jen leaves no crumbs in the Act II Scena, then sits down. Me: “Get up Jen, you’ve got to sing again.” (the Bell Trio). Jen (audibly): Shit! Cast and audience guffaw.

So that went great and now those of us doing the same stuff in England in August know what we need to work on.

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The next day, my buddy Sam (who’d been our Dick Deadeye) hosted a “QWERT” (G&S singing party) in his apartment. I was finally getting to do my first Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe, a plum role that everyone asks for, so I’d never gotten it before – I just wish I’d had more time to work on it. I’d done the Nightmare Song many times, of course, and “The Law is the true embodiment” isn’t particularly challenging, but I found I really had to work on “When I went to the bar”, osmosis was not helping me. In the last verse, LC sings about “other professions” and usually does some schtick for each of them. I decided to do this, which got some good reaction:

• “the army”: I sang the line “When I first put this uniform on…”
• “the navy”: “we sail the ocean blue”
• “the church: “I was a pale young curate then”
• “and the stage”: “how should I play this part? The Grand Duke’s bride?”

Poor Erica, our accompanist, had no clue what I was doing, but figured it out, and then caught me when I picked up with “said I, to myself, said I”.

I also got to do Grinder for “The Zoo”, the role I’m doing this summer, but then bugged out before the last two shows – by that point I just needed to crawl into a hole.

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So yeah…

I’m in Toronto right now, on a (fun) business trip, so I’ll have to write about that.

I had a great Memorial Day weekend, mostly about apartment organization, but Susan and I went to see Sinners, which was quite wonderful.

I finished Ludwig (great) and White Lotus season 3 (didn’t love it) and am starting to audition new shows.

For someone who bitches about how he never has enough time for anything, I’ve been doing a lot of reading. I’ll post some recommendations soon.