Things get blurry now, and I didn’t take good notes, but I do have the call sheets and some helpful hints from friends.

Tuesday morning, we worked on large ensemble stuff while Rachel drilled The Bell Trio upstairs. (The Bell Trio was three verses and two encores and got funnier and funnier throughout. I’ll post a link in a future post.)

I don’t remember when some of this stuff happened, but I will say one of the best moments in rehearsal was when Rick, giving an acting note to the cast about Deadeye, said, in all seriousness, “How do we feel about Dick?” Heh heh. Heh heh.

In the afternoon, we did our first full run (in costume!) so the lighting designer and the stage manager could see the show. I will say that the stage manager had been pushing me for info on certain musical cues (like ‘are you doing a repeat on this playout’) quite early, and I had to keep saying, “I don’t know until we stage it”. It all worked out. And the run showed that the show was in decent shape. I will say that, because of The Zoo and because Pinafore is a short show, we’d taken the gamble that we could do with one less rehearsal day than we usually have. And we all regretted that, we missed that day a lot. Good to know for the future.

I’d bought tickets to the Brussels Light Opera’s Gondoliers (featuring many of our friends) for me and Brad, but I figured out very quickly I would not be up to going. I think I need to accept that, for years when I’m the MD, I’m just not going to see any shows, and that’s fine. I’d like to, of course, but I’ve been to ten festivals now and probably, for instance, seen Iolanthe at least 7 times, all on the same set! (now I’m thinking, is there any show I haven’t seen at least once at the festival? I saw my first-ever Yeomen there, I remember. And rarities like Haddon Hall. Yeah, I think I’ve seen the whole lot except Thespis and SWOG’s like Rose of Persia, although I’m hoping that will change…) Anyway, I gave my ticket to Andrew and after the post-rehearsal production meeting, decompressed at home, with a quick dinner at The Cheshire Cheese.

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Wednesday, our last day in the rehearsal hall, was a really good rehearsal. We had a very specific list of musical stuff we were tackling in the upstairs room (the sanctuary, I guess), cleaning up harmonies in the four-part men’s chorus in ‘A maiden fair to see”, working on the trio in “A British Tar”, the quartet in “Farewell, my own” and so on. Just some detail work that really helped.

Downstairs to fold the dancers into scenes they were involved in, and drill the flag bit.

I’ll post a link to that later too. (OK, this photo is not from the drill rehearsal, because they’re in costume, but was probably the same day.)

After lunch, we had the annual raffle (I contributed a scarf), then staged the curtain call. (Poor Brad, I had to spring it on him that he had to at least be able to hack through the Overture, which he of course hadn’t thought he needed to practice.) And then we did another full run, including curtain call!

And that was the end of our time in the rehearsal space. After notes and much instruction about what was happening next, we had to clean and pack up the church. Some stuff got ported over to St. John’s for the night, some stuff just lived in cars overnight, and a lot of stuff got schlepped home (like my stuff).

Brad and Trond had invited me to dinner at 1789, the restaurant at the Crescent, so I changed and headed over there. Now, when I first started coming to Buxton, the fabulously old Crescent was always buried in scaffolding and not open. Then we had our few years in Harrogate. By the time we came back to Buxton in 2023, the Crescent had been remodeled as a posh hotel (and a cute little shopping mall), but I had never actually been in the hotel, nor did I know about this restaurant. It was quite fancy! We had a really nice meal. I’m ashamed, yet evilly delighted, to say that after Brad announced that dinner was on him, I ordered a very expensive steak with an added sauce, plus some yummy mushroom side. I also had a cosmo, and we shared a bottle of wine. There was dessert, too, I forget what. (And, I’m just remembering, this was the first time I’d seen Trond since he’d gotten into town that day. Trond is charming, and we love him.)

And off over the hill and to bed, to rest up for SHOW DAY (dunh dunh duuuunh).