Yay, Pinafore rehearsals! Principals only for the first day.
One, um, ‘fun factoid’ of this year is that all of our leads for both Zoo and Pinafore were American. We had not at all been trying to do that, it just worked out that way. Savoynet is an international company, but what this usually means is the bulk of the company is either American or British, with a strong representation of expat Brits (from Brussels or the Netherlands, mostly). There’s usually a couple of Canadians and Australians, and probably a random Swede or Brazilian. Doing a show with a mix of people who live in completely different places is what makes it fun, of course.
And we still had that, but our principals were all from North America this year, and there were some mutterings about whether the group at large would consider that a problem. For the record, there was a lot more talk about ‘could this be a problem’ than anyone actually saying ‘this is a problem’. The directors were all American (or at least live there) and we had a big New York contingent. So, I guess it’s something to keep an eye on, for company balance and comity, but almost all of our leads had been leads before and are quite talented and fun people to work with and I guess we just rolled with it.
But what that meant for me is that I’d actually worked with at least half the Pinafore principals on the music already, for our dry run concert in May in NYC, and coachings at my house. So I was way ahead of the game in terms of music prep. Today would (for me) be mostly about touching base, working on the small ensemble numbers and letting Rick start staging stuff.
Poor Rick. I met him a few years ago when he directed “Pirates” for Blue Hill, with Marisa conducting, and she persuaded him to check out the Savoynet sandbox. So he did some assistant directing for Ruddigore, did Mikado chorus (with me and Andrew), and got the Pinafore gig this year. He’s got a lot of great ideas, and our Pinafore was to be set in the mid-1950’s on the royal yacht – with all that implies in terms of costuming and how men and women are allowed to interact with each other, and also that the sailors on this ship are also entertainers. (there was a huge hue-and-cry because the festival program mistakenly said that our production was set in 1950, not 1953. What’s the difference? Well, in 1950, there was a king of England, not a queen, and if we were in 1950, suddenly quite a few lyrics of the show would have to change. I think the solution was to make a curtain announcement, but I really just didn’t care.)
But… three weeks before we all traveled to Buxton, Rick was visiting one of his kids out in Denver, went on a bike ride, had an accident and broke his leg in three places. Jeeeesus. Not only was this awful for him, it easily could have been awful for us. If he couldn’t have made the trip to England (entirely possible), it would have been far harder to replace him at the last minute than to replace me. (anyone who’d MD’d Pinafore before could have stepped in for me with very little change to the production, but Rick had concepts and plans and someone else would have had to either adopt them with little warning, or change the focus of the show) However, it was determined fairly quickly that Rick would be able to make the trip. A surgery or two later (with many pins being inserted), and pain medication, and the help of a service called Driving Miss Daisy, Rick made it to Buxton.
Purely by luck, he was one of the guys staying in the rental house right next to the rehearsal church, so only had to work his way up and down a little hill (plus some stairs) with his knee scooter and a crutch. So he was in the rehearsal room when I got there. (I didn’t find out until later that once he’d been dropped off by DMD, he’d essentially been trapped in the house, poor guy.) Brad was also there, meeting everyone for the first time.
We were quite mean to our dear Josephine and started the day by working on her two arias. Then added Ralph for “Refrain, audacious tar” and rolled into Chaz’s solo stuff after letting Lauren go.
Lunchtime, I went out and got lunch for both me and Rick, and then we worked on Captain Corcoran and Buttercup stuff. Rachel choreographed the Bell Trio, all five verses (two encores). Poor Brad ended up sitting around a lot, not playing. (sometimes, that’s the gig, but I felt bad for him) And finished with the Captain/Deadeye duet, which was going to be very funny.
That night was the Peak Opera “Patience”, but I was figuring out quickly that oh yeah, when you’re MDing, you’re wiped by the end of the day and not really up for going to a show. It was the night of our second meet-and-greet at the Old Club House, and I didn’t even get a chance to change. I ended up basically keeping Brad company since it was too crowded and loud to drag him around and introduce him to everyone, but friendly company members did come up to us and introduce themselves to him and that was fine. Then we skedaddled and had dinner together at Pizza Express. I was kind of amused that Brad has kind of turned into the same sort of ‘easily peopled out’ introvert that I am. Off to our separate abodes, and I watched the last episode of Bosch: Legacy.
Friday was our first ‘full cast’ rehearsal. We started with a lot of admin talkie stuff. When it came to me, I introduced myself with “Hi, I’m Eric. Two days ago I was a grumpy grocer…” which got a lot of laughs and boos. I then jokingly asked poor Rick if he, with his broken leg, wanted to run physical warmups. I did a bit of that with the cast instead, and did some vocal warmups. Then what we did is I’d run a big number musically, then Rick would proto-stage it. Really great rehearsal. The morning was staging the first act finale, up to ‘give three cheers’. After lunch break, we did “gaily tripping” through the Sir Joseph sequence.
Somewhere in there, I got to practice piano for “The Book Report”, which is a very funny quartet from You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and also run my cabaret number with Marisa. OK, so the cabarets. During the festival, after the night’s show, everyone goes next door to the festival club to drink and chat, and (usually) the performing group who did the show puts on a post-show cabaret. This is usually Broadway tunes and novelty songs and people try to steer away from G&S, unless it’s a parody or such. But nights where the professional company performs are open for ‘special’ cabarets, and my buddy Carol Davis had started a tradition of producing an “American” cabaret, featuring American music and (mostly) American performers. Carol, unfortunately, couldn’t make it this year, but an American cabaret was expected and Savoynet was going to have to put it on. Normally, Marisa would probably run it, but this year she was now the full Savoynet producer and had to MD The Zoo, so we’d managed to get Martin to organize both cabarets. I’d wanted to do Book Report for the Savoynet cabaret, and a folk song for the American cabaret, but Martin ended up switching them, and I just shrugged and ran with it.
(so just picture that in the breaks and post-rehearsal times, people are sneaking off to run their cabaret numbers)
Had a production meeting at the house next door, then I went off to the grocery store and to home. For dinner, went to the Cheshire Cheese. Brad was meeting a local friend first, and showed up just as most of us were clearing up, but I handed him off to Martin and Audrey and went home to do music stuff and watch Ransom Canyon. (I’ve given up on Ransom Canyon. It’s way too stupid. I can’t tell any of the women apart and all the teenagers are 27.).
Saturday was much the same, full cast. We started with “Carefully on tiptoe stealing” and got all the way to the 2nd act finale. After lunch, we did the beginning of the show (which the women are not in).
After rehearsal, I worked on “Book Report” with Dan, Olivia, Martin and Rick D. “Book Report” is hilarious. The four kids are writing a book report on “Peter Rabbit” (which if you think about doesn’t make a lot of sense, but whatever). Lucy is just trying to pad it out to get 100 words exactly. Schroeder gets distracted and makes his report about Robin Hood. Linus takes it way too seriously and turns it into a college-level lecture. (“In examining such a work as Peter Rabbit, in this report I shall attempt to…”). And Charlie Brown keeps procrastinating about writing the report, while stressing out about procrastinating. The rehearsal was kind of miserable, though – I was reading off an Ipad and the sun through the stained glass window above me meant I couldn’t actually read the music well. Also, I’d never used a foot page turner while playing piano before, and realized quickly that (with horn) I’d gotten used to using my right foot, and for piano, you need your right foot for other things. I eventually just had Audrey ‘turn the pages’ for me.
After rehearsal, I went to the Old Club House to meet Brad and his friend Tim. Tim is an older gentleman who’s a festival stalwart and who Brad knows from online and previous meetings. Tim was married until he was widowed about ten years ago, and since has fully come out of the closet and is embracing his wild side to a startling degree. I will not share the stories that were shared with me, but, well, um, good for him! Brad and I did Pizza Express again (their ‘ring pizza with a salad in the middle’ is kind of a perfect dinner) and then split up. Walking home, I stopped in the Old Sun (where, according to “Sailor Bears”, Savoynetters had been gathering in overwhelming numbers). The party had dwindled down to new company member Beth and her husband John (both sweethearts), Rick (who’d taken a taxi with his mobility scooter just to get out of the damn house), Oli and Alex. Nice wrap up to the evening.
Next up: Savoynet dinner, American cabaret, and Eric throws a diva fit!
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