My life right now is an endless loop of rehearsals - first Madama Butterfly, now Oklahoma and starting next week, Pirates of Penzance. I have to admit the Butterfly cast spoiled me. All eight principals were off book from the start of rehearsal. Unlike my Oklahoma cast where only one principal, our Laury, has ever shown up off book. It’s been painfully obvious that some have even shown up to rehearsal never having read through the script. Really? I mean, if you’re cast as the lead of a show I’d think you’d at least read through the damn book so you’d know what the hell was going on. I understand that it’s community theater, but still. Work ethic, anyone? Hopefully, this will improve since we’ve asked the stage manager to send out an email requiring cast to be off book by the end of the month. I’m probably being harsh, but it’s odd when someone else’s “hobby” is your life’s vocation. Regardless, it’s no excuse considering everyone in the Butterfly cast, although granted they are professional singers, all have day jobs as well. And the score to Butterfly is way more difficult and in a foreign language to boot! I mean, how can you call yourself a musical theater performer, pro or not, and not know the lyrics to the title song of Oklahoma!? I even know them in Chinese for God’s sake (I used it to audition for Broadway’s Thoroughly Modern Millie and got called back). On an up-note, "Kansas City" is basically staged and choreographed, so that’s one dance number crossed off the list - only three more and a ballet to go!
Saturday night Trish, Val and I went to Westfield High School’s production of Anything Goes. As I’ve stated in earlier posts, I’m trying to be somewhat restrained when commenting on “non-professional” shows since so many of our kids are involved in them. Before going further, I want to make it clear that we did enjoy the show and thought that most of the performances were excellent. But I do have a few “what the f*ck?” items that I need to at least air out so that I can move on. First, when did “move center stage and sing directly at the audience” become an acceptable direction for a song in a musical? Reno, whose belt was off the hook and definitely has the chops to pursue musical theater professionally, impressed despite some horrific direction. She had to deliver “I Get a Kick Out of You” way across the stage from Billy Crocker (the “kickee”) and straight out to the audience while Billy sat facing away from and ignoring her. Did the song take place in her head? Was it a dream sequence? Was Billy temporarily deafened by Reno’s belt? Note to director: Reno’s trying to seduce Billy. In this version, she was trying to seduce him telepathically from across the stage. More odd was that some songs were "correctly" directed as "scenes-set-to-music" while others received the “stand-center-and-sing-out-Louise" treatment. Luckily, most of the performers overcame the bad direction through sheer talent. I won’t mention the choreography, except to say that a good choreographer will find a way to make everyone look good and include everyone in production numbers. Not just six people, who although executed impressive sounding taps, were rendered with bland movement (how’s that for passive-aggressive commentary?). I know several “good-movers” and dancers in the show who were relegated to the back row as scenery or just plain left off the stage. I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but the opening number to our Millie last summer was way more impressive yet probably not as technically difficult as any number in Anything Goes while still allowing the entire cast to perform. Although the ship set was impressive, it begged the question, “Did you spend all your money on your top deck and run out of money for costumes?” Several girls who I know to be quite slim and pretty looked like dowdy middle-aged women in shapeless sacks. I apologize if that was the “look” they were going for, but I highly doubt it. I am happy to say that three of our students, Billy Geltzheiler, Ellen Scariati and Mia Pafumi all created extremely funny, well-sung and well-developed characters (pat on the Pinedas' collective back) despite many hurdles. I also have to give props to the men in the show who were all extremely strong and gave their female counterparts a run for their money onstage.
Also this weekend, we finally cast Les Mis. After a long morning of auditions (having had three audition dates prior to this weekend) and a node-inducing callback we finally sent out all of the offer letters by midnight on Saturday. To date, it’s been the most difficult show for us to cast since the talent was ridiculously high this year. Any number of the young actors could play these roles successfully. It really boiled down to who “fit” the role best, vocally and type-wise, for how we envision the production to look and sound. It’s both a luxury and a curse to have more than one (or three or four) people of equal talent to choose from. I’m actually very excited to start rehearsals since I have no doubt this show is going to be pretty incredible. Now how are we going to build that friggin’ barricade?!?
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