Yay, it’s becoming fall! Long sleeves. Lounge pants. I was so sick of the muggy poaching weather.
Unfortunately, I just cancelled my long-planned birthday weekend in Provincetown because the east coast is expecting a nor’easter. Not entirely determined what will happen, but when it happens, Cape Cod will be in the middle of it. Even if it’s just really rainy, that sounds like a miserable weekend in Provincetown. Oh, well, RAIN CHECK.
I’m quite booked through the rest of the fall, so don’t know when I’m going to pick up that rain check, but I am going to visit my dad and brother two weekends later, down in North Carolina. Let’s hope weather doesn’t torpedo that trip either.
1776 rehearsals are going apace. We’re doing a stumble-through of Act I tomorrow night, which means tonight I really need to nail down my lines. They’re mostly there. And we block the big Act 2 scene (the end of the show) over the weekend. Which I will be there for (yay) because I won’t be in Provincetown as planned (boo).
Other show news. I was involved in a concert of The Mountebanks this past Saturday. I was in the chorus and also had the small role of Luigi Spaghetti (heh). Opera Picciona gave it as much rehearsal time as anybody could expect for this sort of event, but it’s a long score and harder than I think anyone expected. We did OK. I will say, having not known this score at all before prepping for this concert, it’s very pretty (and worth doing), but I found in performance, most numbers lacked bite (not because of the performances, because of the music itself) and much of it sounded the same. Like a giant bowl of vanilla pudding. So, valid project, but maybe more successful as ‘highlights’ if it ever gets repeated.
Fun cast, though, featuring many friends of mine from Opera Picciona, Savoynet, Blue Hill Troupe and VLOG. And some great performances came out of it. And two of my BB66 singers came to see it, nice to see them!
I just interviewed for a spring project that will be very Big and Exciting, even if I don’t get it, but I hope I do.
And Savoynet has announced its show for next summer’s festival, The Gondoliers. It’s about time, Gondo is the only show we’ve never repeated (and we’ve done a couple of shows three times now) and it was overdue. I’m not a big fan of Gondoliers as a show, but I love the score. I’ve already MD’d it once, and wasn’t that eager to devote the bulk of a year to preparing to conduct it again (assuming I applied and then got the job). I could just audition for it or go be in the chorus, but I’m thinking more along the lines of offering to be a rehearsal pianist. That gets me involved, I only have to deal with the music, not the awful script, and takes away the stress of performance. So I’m thinking in that direction. Since I’ll be retired by next summer, I’ll probably go for the entire festival, and tack on some travel before and/or after.
Doing some interesting reading right now. In addition to my usual smattering of romance novels, Terry Pratchett, Murderbot and so on, I’m reading The Talented Mr. Ripley. My office’s book club and film club are doing a joint project where everyone reads the book and watches the movie, then there’ll be a discussion. I’m missing the screening because I have rehearsal, but I’ll (re)watch it this weekend, maybe. And I’ve also started Lonesome Dove, which I thought might be interesting. I can follow that with the miniseries, as I’m finally doing now with Brideshead Revisited (it’s excellent).
I also had a hankering to reread some KJ Charles this past weekend and (although I had plenty to do that was not rereading historical gay romance thriller magic stuff) not only tore through the charming The Duke at Hazard, but reread the entire (amazing) Charm of Magpies trilogy (plus assorted side stories). She’s probably my favorite MM author out there – all her stuff is completely delightful and endlessly rereadable.
Speaking of MM, I am, I think, just one episode away from finishing Heated Rivalry (the TV show). As I’ve said before, if they can make a film adaption this good out of what is frankly a not-that-terrific book series, imagine what they could do with the good stuff.
Not MM, but I am also delighting in online discourse about Reacher, since I love the books (just finished a publication order traversal of the whole series) and think the Alan Ritchson TV series is about as good an adaptation as you can get. (I’m not done with Season 4 yet. I understand Pancake the kitten makes a re-appearance. Then I’ll roll straight into Neagley.)
Fun little note: part of my TV watching right now is a rewatch of both The Sopranos and Ted Lasso and just had a one-two punch of classic episodes: College and Carol of the Bells. “College” is amazing and creepy, and “Carol of the Bells” is as delightful as it could possibly be.
OK, so I have replan my birthday. I suspect I might spend the whole day at the movie theater. It’s not necessarily desirable, but it would be possible to head to Astoria and watch, one after the other, Shaun the Sheep, The Odyssey and Coyote vs. ACME. Hmmm.
