Started Tuesday by trying half of one of the (small) quiches, not bad. And off to rehearsal, where we’d be running the show over and over, fixing it more and more each time. Needed to bring my costume-shoes, my contact lenses and (oops, forgot it), my flag.

The runs all went fine. The flag is because Savoynet is an international company and we have a performing tradition of all waving flags of where we’re from during the curtain call. (this can be a country flag, a state flag, whatever) As we continued to tweak the show, I found myself (as Grinder) being handed a Union Jack at the very end of the show, which meant I had to learn the flag choreo for “Britons never never will be slaves, hooray, hooray”, which I’d hoped to avoid. And that I had to then quickly find a way to get rid of that flag and get the American one out. Not a crisis, just a problem to solve.

I went out at lunchtime and got gift bags and cards for both Zoo directors and the other Pinafore director, for the surprise gifts they’d be getting (stay tuned).

In the afternoon, everyone but the principals went to the upstairs space (the actual church) to block the prelude, which was basically how all the chorus characters wandered on before the show actually started. I stayed in my nest working on Pinafore parts until I realized that Laura and Laurence were over in the other corner trying to nail down the harmonies in their duet. Oh, I can be helpful…. “guys, would you like me to play for you?” Yes, please, so I actually gave them some coaching from the piano on that, that was good.

Then we had to actually pack everything up in cars and get it over to the other church, the performance space. I took my own stuff back to my house, then headed over to the new church (St. John’s, where we’d rehearsed Ruddigore two years ago) to see how the space was set up.

Poor Andrew. Our rather brilliant director had figured out a way to create (in a church!) a faux bandstand, a refreshment stall, a bear pit and so on, with some signs, bunting and 12 PVC pipes. But only 6 of the pipes had shown up. He set up what he could with those, it still looked not-bad and we could live with that if we had to.

Pretty much everything else was done by that point, so I had a good discussion with Martin about the cabarets (more on that later, but shoutout to Martin, who organized two cabarets for us). Then a bunch of us went over to Buxton Brewery for dinner. I had fish and chips, which was fun. My buddy Audrey not only was volunteering to help mark up the orchestral parts, but was being unusually insistent about it, so I vowed to come up with something I could hand off to her without much supervision. (sometimes it’s more work to tell someone else what needs to be done than just to do it yourself) Bugged out early, as I could tell it easily could go into a hang around and drink and chat for hours kind of deal. Went home and watched more TV, and worked on the director gifts.

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Wednesday: day of show! We were pretty ready, I thought. We had a 900 call at the church for a 1000 dress rehearsal, show at 100. I had my ‘show bag’ ready to go, including the American flag. Amazingly, my entire costume was being supplied, except for shoes, which I brought. I made sure I wore a white undershirt, black socks, contact lenses. Costume was a white shirt, a greenish suit (we ended up omitting the vest, but there was a jacket), an apron (he’s a grocer!) and a bowler hat. Quite possibly the same bowler hat I wore last year in The Mikado.

The other 6 PVC pipes had shown up, but needed to be fetched from a postal depot or such. Unending drama. But that all happened and Andrew’s simple, but effective, set dreams were realized.

We gathered in the church, but we’d rented the upstairs rooms in the Old Club House across the street for our dressing rooms, and when that space was ready, we grabbed our costumes and the makeup box, etc., and headed over.

Our pit band for the show consisted of Clive on piano, Marisa as conductor/keyboards, and two woodwind players (flute and clarinet) who were seeing the parts for the first time. The dress rehearsal went well, but of course the wind players made some beginner mistakes and did some weird things, which they corrected in performance. I personally had the sort of dress rehearsal that they say results in a good performance – went up on lyrics, nearly slipped and fell on the slippery platforms, and so on. Nothing that would have torpedoed me in performance, but it did make me very careful and had me reviewing my stuff over and over for the next hour or so. I also kind of botched the curtain call because I needed to re-enter after the last line of chorus bows, and I couldn’t figure out which line was the last one (and then I fixed that problem and it was fine).

Back to the Old Clubhouse, where they served us lunch and we waited. We’d also put on minimal makeup – I hate doing makeup because I’m terrible at it, but no one commented on mine, so… And finally it was time to go back over.

Good thing it was a beautiful sunny day, because we all had to gather outside the church. Saw many friends coming in to be audience. Saw Neil Smith, the head of the festival, for the first time, gave him a hug. And then I thought we’d start late, but we started pretty much on time. And the show was livestreamed, much to my surprise, so people got to see it who weren’t even there!

The show went beautifully. The church was full downstairs and the balcony was about half-full. We all knew about half the audience, other Savoynetters and festival people there to cheer us on. And I didn’t go up on anything!

Here’s my first entrance. As you can see, the simple set and costumes were very effective. Please don’t try to trace the geographical origin of my attempt at a British accent, it will all end in tears.

This scene was followed by the funniest number in the show, totally nailed by Laura . I’d post the video, but I don’t think there’s a linkable one, not that I’ve found, anyway.

And then I came back on, ranting and raving, to get yelled at by the whole cast.

And to get villain-booed at the curtain call, which I loved.

We all finished the curtain call by heading straight down the aisle and out the door, where we then hung around to greet our friends. Everyone loved the show. A lot of the commentary was that, since this was a fringe event at a church where they’d never ever done a staged presentation of anything, no one was expecting as much of a production as we put on. Our show was not adjudicated, but there was a lot of chatter that, yeah, actually, it probably should have been. We were all super-proud.

A couple of musicians passed us, seeing us in our old-timey costumes, and cracked that maybe they were in a time warp. One of them had a horn case, so I asked if he was a hornist and said I was too. And then asked if they were in the festival orchestra (yes) and said, “I’ll be conducting you in Pinafore next week!”

Back to the Old Club House, changed, packed up everything, and brought it back to the church. Said hello to the Flints, and to Philip Walsh, longtime Savoynet bass-baritone, who said (of my role) “That’s a part I should play!”. He’s right, great part for him. Finally got to see Chaz and Lauren, my Pinafore love couple, who’d just arrived in time to see Zoo.

After some strike, it became obvious that people were just milling about, waiting for something to happen, so I headed off. To the Portakabin (temporary G&S Festival gift shop) to buy a festival program, then across the street to buy an iced mocha and off for home.

Did some housey things and finally finished the gifts for Marisa and Andrew, which were knitted hats with bear ears. Assembled the gift bags with hats and cards for them.

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Next cool thing is that my best and oldest friend, Bunthorne Boy (Brad), who I’d done plenty of G&S with in college, and had been to the festival several times to see our show, was actually coming in to play rehearsal piano for us this year (for Pinafore only). And he messaged me to say he was in town, so yay! I wasn’t sure where people were going to end up, so decided to just head back to the Old Club House – only to find I’d been added to a Whatsapp group called “Sailor Bears”. This was a reference to this year’s t-shirt design, and made me laugh every time I saw it.

Anyway, “Sailor Bears” was an invaluable (and hilarious) resource for the rest of the trip, just to find out where people were hanging out or going to dinner.

On the way, ran into Thomas, a diminutive actor with a wonderful voice who’d been our “Go-To” in The Mikado last year. He complimented our Zoo, and like Philip, “I should play that part!”. He’s right. Grinder’s awesome and fun to play. (Maybe this is the point where I mention that Grinder is the first named role I’ve played on stage in about 15 years. It’s nice to be acting again, no matter how ungifted I am at it, and I hope to do more of it.)

Came into the pub, immediately ran into Marisa and Ali, and gave Marisa her hat. She was thrilled, and decided the hat made here the “nice baboon” or the “strong raccoon” mentioned in the Zoo lyrics. Said goodbye to Ali and Jon, our Laetitia and Carboy, who are real-life married. They were heading home to their three kids, two of whom performed in utero in Savoynet shows that I conducted, heh.

There had been a crowd of Savoynetters at a table, but by the time I got my drink, most had left (what did I say?) and I hung out with Tyler until Tyler’s family showed up. And Brad showed up, yay! Brad and I went to the Lone Star for dinner, where the service was seriously attentive. I had a rather large quesadilla, which came with a salad (good) and chips (why?). Brad had fajitas and we split a dessert.

I walked Brad back to his digs, which were a little bit up that very steep hill at the foot of Spring Gardens. I’d never been up that hill before, and kept going to the top to hit the cross street that’s above our rehearsal church. Never doing that again, it was ridiculously steep. Once at the top of the hill, it was a simple walk back to my own place. Some calmdown with herbal tea, and bedtime.

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Next up: Pinafore sets sail!