Yesterday's News

Today was a day off, so I knocked around St. Louis on a series of errands. First a new tuxedo for opening night. My faithful old double breasted Burberry is being retired. It has seen opening nights from Boston to Miami and New York to Orange County, so it has had a good life. This is a good show to inaugurate a new one.

After that a bit of opening night shopping. So in lieu of new pictures, I am posting a few from yesterday. The top one is Ko-Ko attempting to soothe Pooh-Bah before "So Please You Sir, We Much Regret".

Here are Pooh-Bah, Ko-Ko and Pish-Tush at the end of their Big Black Block trio.
And finally Yum-Yum, just before the shojis open for "The Sun Whose Rays Are All Ablaze". I love that wedding dress. Linda Cho found the perfect balance of modern and classic Japanes fashion for this one.

Once More into the Breach

So I took a day off yesterday to celebrate my wife's arrival to St. Louis. So today I will try to post twice, once before and once after rehearsal.

First we have Tammy Coil once more as our overture geisha. This photo does little justice to the beauty of this costume.
Matt Boehler, our Pooh-Bah, a vision in white.
Here are Matt Burns, our Pish Tush, and Alison Tupay, our Pitti Sing. There is a romantic undertone to their relationship that I find incredibly sweet and geeky.
I caught one photo of the changeover from The Mikado to La Traviata. It boggles my mind that the production team is able to flip between four different shows in rep, sometimes in just hours. It is a monumental triumph of organization and hard work.

Piano Dress

I'm not much given to hyperbole, but having the costumes onstage today was literally the most fabulous event in recorded history. Okay, maybe a bit of hyperbole, bu I kid you not when I say that the costues are fabulous. So fabulous in fact, that I am withholding most of them from the blog so as not to give anything away. Here we have Matt Burns (AKA Burnsy) as our Pish-Tush. The gentleman with the wig is Tom Watson, our wig designer and all around genius. Know how at a certain point in kung-fu movies the belagured peasants or oppressed villagers pool their meagar coins and find a hero of legend to defend them against the wicked samurai? Maybe not. But if what the oppressed peasants really needed was a fantastic wig, Tom would be their hero of legend.

Below Tom is Tammy Coil, who does a cameo as a geisha in the overture. And finally we have some of our schoolgirls, freshly free from scholastic trammels.

We are rapidly getting to the point where the awesomeness of Linda's costumes, Mark's lights and Mikiko's set far outstrip both my abilities and those of my camera to accurately capture them.

Tomorrow we do a brief dialogue rehearsal, and then Tuesday is our first orchestra dress. More then.

A Wandeling Minstrel...

That's our own Patrick Miller there, singing A Wandering Minstrel at today's wandelprobe. Always thrilling to hear the orchestra and the singers together, and hearing it in the theatre was even better.

A few pictures of our indomitable male chorus as well. You can see how they are curved out in an arc to address the full theatre. For those of you who are not familiar with the theatre, it has audience on three sides (see the last photo). That makes for some challenging staging situations, but makes for a much more vital and three dimensional experience.

So here is a Mikado Fun Fact (I need to get me a little TM for that). Did you know that as a child Gilbert was kidnapped? While travelling in Italy his nanny was convinced by some shady types that Gilbert's father wanted them to take custody of the young Englishman. A ransom was quickly paid, and order was restored, but it certainly shows something about Gilbert's repeated use of the themes of orphans, wards, and silly nurses who make big boo-boos. Katisha is related to them not in that way specifically, but merely as one of many women of a certain age that Gilbert likes to make fun of. One wonders if a modern writer could get away with some of the objectification of women that we let slip by in Gilbert's lyrics. (Schoolgirls we, 18 and under? Hmmmmm... Of course, if Bob Dole can appear in a Pepsi commercial ogling Brittany Spears, I guess we haven't changed all that much.)

Katisha is an interesting figure in many ways. Is her marriage a punishment or a happy accident? I tend to think the latter. Somehow, through the magic of romantic comedy, Ko-Ko and Katisha have found each other and will live happily ever after. Personally I love nothing better than the moment when the Grinch's heart grows three sizes, or the Winter Warlock melts, or Darth Vader throws the Emperor down that shaft, or Jimmy Stewart wishes a Merry Christmas to the Emporium. Gotta love redemption. These days especially.

Tomorrow is a day I've been looking forward to all week--our piano dress. We finally get to see all these fabulous costumes on stage. Oh, yes. Hopefully I won't be so entranced by them I forget to take pictures.

Think Pink

An excellent day today. A very full morning fixing some Act 2 issues, and then a run through of the show with lights, no costumes. I actually forgot the battery for my new camera, so these are pictures form yesterday's piano tech rehearsal.

It's actually just everyone standing around waiting for us to restart the act 2 finale, but I love the stage composition they have instinctively formed.

Tomorrow is the second and final sitzprobe (actually a wandelprobe). I cannot wait to hear it all with orchestra.

Tra la la la la la la la la...

End of a very long day, so justa few pics--Act I finale, mainly. Enjoy.

Ladies and Gentlemen...Fred Astaire

The production team are working overtime this morning trying to get all the finishing touches completed with the set and lights. I never quite know what to do with myself on a morning off this close to opening, so I am working a bit on my next project but mainly enjoying Fred Astaire in The Broadway Melody of 1940. Thought I'd blog it for two reasons:

1. They have a fantastic bit about a comic opera singer giving a deliberately bad audition. At the end she rollerskates into the wings and we hear a horrendous crash. Not to tip our hand too much, but we have a similar joke in The Mikado. Made me wonder when certain gags become classics. A person careening offstage to the sound of a crashbox has been with us for decades if not centuries, but when did it become classic? When did the sound of a cat yowling get added to the end of the crashing sound? I've known this gag (fancy folk call it a trope or meme) for as long as I can remember, but where and when did it start?

2. Dance sequences in movies today are so hopelessly edited that any sense of movement, grace, or energy comes form the simulated motion of the editing, not from the performers themselves. The shots for these dance sequences hit the 2 minute range easily. They are much more of a performer's medium. While I love movies from all times and genres, I certainly miss the focus these older movies put on the dance. Of course these days Fred Astaire would never make it on Broadway or the movies--not with ears like those.

Tonight we continue our stage piano rehearsals--getting the show settled into the space, working out technical issues, and playing with the lights. I've been too busy running around the theatre checking sightlines to remember to take pictures--I'll try to be better today...