A Belated Post

So my current project (www.nytvf.com) has become all-consuming much more quickly than I had hoped it would, which has made it hard to gather my thoughts for the sort of final entry I would like. I am going to drop back and punt, therefore, and say that my final post will come after June 20th, when I am in St. Louis to see a matinee of the show. It will be nice to see how the show has grown in a month. In the meantime, I wanted to post an email I received from Alison Felter, the Education Director at OTSL:

With all the bustle of the season I thought you might enjoy a nice story of a very happy 12 year old from Jackson Park Elementary in University City who attended the student matinee of The Mikado last Friday. She was so enthralled with the production that she announced to her mother that she would like to take her to the opera using birthday money she received this month. Her mom says she can't stop talking about the production and that she (the mom) is now excited having seen tv commercials and reading about the show in the St. Louis American. So June 12 if you notice a 12 year old and her mom dining on the picnic grounds together, say hello and welcome new opera fan Deja and her mom Kym.

I must say that made me feel pretty good. I remember the shows I saw as a child and young adult so vividly (The Wiz, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, As You Like It, many others) that feeling like a show I directed had a similar effect on someone her age really makes my day. In fact, I remember asking for tickets for Joseph on Broadway for Christmas the year I turned 11. And after all, if the Dejas of the world don't find a taste for opera, I'll need to find a new profession in a few decades, and quite frankly I like what I do.

So forgive my evasions, and I promise to summarize in June.

The Big Night

Tonight is the big night. I have a feeling that I might be a bit late getting home to blog tonight, and tomorrow I travel back to Philly to start my next gig in New York on Monday. I promise I will give a "final thoughts" entry some time next week, as well as an update or two over the next month, but after today my daily entries will be no more. It has been a wonderful experience, and I want to thank my readers (all 662 of you, according to google). I hope this has been as fun for you to read as it has been for me to write.

The pictures here are another sort of Easter egg. I have gone on and on earlier about the excellence of all the shops here at OTSL, but I want to point out something that you might miss during the show. All of the women's kimonos in Act 2 are hand made and hand painted. What is unique about them, though, is that when they are lined up in the correct order, they form a single unbroken picture. You can see the sun above Yum-Yum's head below. I still am amazed by this, and seeing it never fails to amaze me.
Hopefully this is the sort of detail that makes the show special. What is best about it is that the singers themselves feel the sort of love that has gone into creating all the costumes, sets and props, and it adds to their performances in ways that are impossible to quantify. So many hundreds (literally hundreds) or people have worked so hard to make this show what it is, and I owe them all a deep debt of gratitude. And what is more, Monday morning they all turn their focus to the next show to open. Everyone here is not just a consummate professional, not just a superb craftsperson, but also a unique and wonderful artist, and I wish them all a fantastic season.
Yes, I gush but that is just me. This has been a wonderful month in St. Louis, one of the most enjoyable of my career, and I must admit that my joy in seeing the show tonight will be slightly tempered by my sadness in needing to leave. For those of you who will be there tonight, enjoy the show. As The Rude Mechanicals said, it is all for your delight...

Easter Eggs

Today is the calm before the storm. I generally spend the day before opening either happily writing opening night cards, or wallowing in a sea of blind panic. Mainly opening night cards today. Speaking of cards, at right are the cards that Pooh Bah hands out to the audience when he describes all his various entrepreneurial activities. He dines with middle class people, dances at cheap suburban parties, accepts refreshment at any hands and retails state secrets. His address has a few Easter eggs--the postal code is Gilbert's initials and the year the piece was written. The phone number has several references, most notably "42" which as any fan of Douglas Adams can tell you is the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything. The occupations listed are all included for their humorous value except the last. OBE (Order of the British Empire) is my nod to Colin Grahm, the late and much missed Artistic Director of OTSL, who shared that title. Hopefully he would find it a fitting tribute.

There are several other Easter eggs hidden throughout the show. For instance, one of the stickers on the back of Nanki-Poo's guitar case is the symbol the singer Prince used for many years. As Nanki-Poo is a prince himself, it seemed fitting. Most apparent, perhaps, are the references to the three other operas in the OTSL season (La Traviata, I Puritani and Anna Karenina). There are others as well, for the quick of eye and ear.

I am not posting any pictures of the show today, because most of my new photos are pictures of the show, and I want to maintain some surprises for those of you who will be there tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you there!

To Placate The Fates...

Today was our final dress, our last chance to try out the show before we go live on Friday. We had a lovely audience of several hundred people, which is vital for a comedy. Ideally we would have a week of previews before we open to test out what is funny, but sans that luxury I was thrilled to have at least one shot at it. Comedy is such a tricky business--half fate, half science and half blind luck. We learned a lot today, though.

I am sure you all know the superstition that a bad dress means a good opening. As I am very superstitious, I must point out that many, MANY things went wrong, if you catch my drift. Dropped umbrellas, mistaken cues, etc. Plenty to improve on for the opening. Which is good--nothing makes me more nervous than a perfectly smooth dress.

So another of the many groups of people who made all of this craziness come to life are my ninjas--the props and stage crew who move around buildings, tote rocks, hand off katanas and basically make the whole affair run smoothly. Like all ninjas, they are silent, swift, and deadly. I have yet to see any of them scale a sheer wall, but I have no doubt they could, if a prop needed to be delivered there. Those are their costumes, complete with flaming fists (most of them are in service to Katisha.)
That is our own Paul Kilmer. I thought he should be on the blog.

Ko-Ko, reading his little list, with the wonderful GYA Men's Coro behind him.

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.