Let's blow the old trumpet!

Just received this review of The Christmas Carol from a friend of the director. She'd come down from Wellington to see the play. (That's friendship for you!)

It may be a little over the top, but at least it's a review. It was sent to the editor at the Otago Daily Times, but they offered no comment just as they offered no review of the play when it was on.

Review of THE CHRISTMAS CAROL Production:

"Laughter and Tears"

Review of THE CHRISTMAS CAROL Production:

"Laughter and Tears"

Thanks to the actor Scrooge and his Contemporaries, I feel Richer indeed! The CHRISTMAS CAROL performed in the setting of the illustrious Mayfair Theatre (a Dunedin Treasure which deserves tender loving care) was "Bruuullient".

The Talented line-up of actors which included well known professionals, performing-arts students and children, drew you into the scene in such an animated way (like live performance can) that at times I had to remind myself I wasn't actually there in Scrooge’s Lounge. The humorous old Spinsters, the choreography of the little Dances in contrast to old Scrooge’s brooding moods, was up-lifting! The costumes and Set were a Dicksonian [Dickensian, perhaps!] Treat, the special effects around the Spirits, were moving, but I wish everyone could experience the EMOTIONS that were stirred through the acting; laughter, Love, tears and relief which gave an all over refreshing 'in-touch with reality' and reminder of what is important in this stressful pre-Christmas season.

What was even more surprising, even though the Saturday Night show was only $20, all profit proceeds from the week-long production were going to Habitat for Humanity.

Thank-you to all those lovely people that gave their time to the charming event, may they themselves be blessed. Cheers to Bert the lead role, and Liz Nisbet the courageous Director! It was no Amateur performance!

Janet Adams

Wellington.

Christmas Carol

One thing I don't seem to have mentioned in here is that we've started rehearsals for A Christmas Carol, a dramatised version of the Dickens' story. I have no idea who did this dramatisation, as there's no author listed on the script I have, and our director has had difficulties in finding out who owns the royalties (I think that issue has been resolved satisfactorily).

We started about three weeks ago, and I'm having a bit of an easier time than I did during When We Are Married, as I appear in the first act and then go home - pretty much. I'm playing Marley's Ghost, and Mr Fezziwig. Marley is wonderfully full of bile, and of course, Mr Fezziwig is full of delight and love of life. So they make a nice contrast. But I only have about eight minutes after Marley leaves the stage before I appear again as Fezziwig. Think they're going to be an action-packed eight minutes.

The Fezziwigs are pictured at right. (I'm not putting weight on for the part, incidentally.) By the way, there have been some fifty movie or television versions of Christmas Carol. It must rank as one of the most frequently made of Dickens' stories. In a blog post, Jon Michael Varese asks Why we continue to read Dickens, when many of his contemporaries have fallen on the wayside of literary history.

Christmas Carol has begun

The Christmas Carol has now been performed three times: twice to schoolchildren in the last two mornings, and once last night to an 'ordinary' audience. Enthusiasm for the play seems high, and verbal reports have been very positive.

People like the look of things: the sense of authenticity about the costuming; the way in which the lighting creates a good deal of mood (along with smoke machines) - this morning I came out to oohs and aahs from the kids in my appearance as Marley's Ghost. The smoke helped, of course!

And the play swings from the humorous to the bitter and twisted (Marley again, and Scrooge himself) to joyful to emotional. There are some great moments in it.

Looking forward to seeing you there...!

Christmas Carol draws to a close

One more performance to go with The Christmas Carol. In spite of having great feedback from the people who have attended, we've had very poor houses, generally, which has been a bit disheartening, especially for our director. Regrettably that's the nature of theatre: the show can be superb (as it is in this case!) but if people don't come, they don't come. We didn't get a review in the paper, which doesn't help, but it's not the only reason it hasn't taken off. I'm sure you could find heaps of reasons. In the end you have to play to the people who do come, and give them your best. And we have....

A (long) personal overview of A Christmas Carol

Young Jesse Hanan, who plays Scrooge as a boy, gets one of the few real solo pieces, a beautiful song about loneliness. It’s not long, but it’s very effective. Equally moving is Tiny Tim’s solo, a ‘thanksgiving’ for all the family’s blessings. This same song becomes his funeral dirge a few scenes later, and is even more moving at that point.

I've mentioned A Christmas Carol here once or twice before, but not much, even though it's taken up a great deal of my life over the last three months. 

It’s a somewhat curious opera in that almost all the chorus have specific roles, big or small, on top of their chorus work, so that there’s a requirement for the chorus members to be good singers as well as the principals. James Adams, playing Scrooge, the lead, has no aria to speak of ˗ when he’s onstage by himself he mostly sings a kind of recitative; the only ‘song’ he has is right towards the end, and it lasts less than a minute. Otherwise he sings in duets, mostly, and briefly in a quartet. But even most of these sections are not big sings; for a great deal of the opera he’s on the sidelines looking on, and commenting, or emoting with his mouth closed. Which makes it a difficult role. 

His opening piece, which is shared with Fred and his wife, Bob Cratchit and the chorus, is a tongue-twisting thing. Even though its tempo is a slow 12/8, Scrooge often sings long runs of semiquavers within it.

The rest of the principals are also mostly involved in ensemble music of some kind or other. Ben Madden plays Cratchit, and appears only during three consecutive numbers early in the first half, with only a small amount to sing; then he vanishes until halfway through the second, when he’s part of the Cratchit family ensembles. Marley’s ghost, played by Alex Lee, only appears in one scene, where he’s involved in two ensemble pieces, and curiously, is the only person listed with an ‘aria’. And a jazz one, at that. Alex spends his time in the chorus in the second half. He and Nathaniel Otley were present at all the chorus rehearsals and learned most of the chorus music. 

Nathaniel is probably one of the busiest performers in the show, mainly because of what he’s been cast as. He starts off as one of the three drunks, so is involved in both the chorus work at the beginning as well as the drunks’ trio. Then he appears as the solo fiddler at the Fezziwigs’ party, and plays two dances (from memory). Finally, in Act Two, he becomes the Ghost of Christmas Present and spends the rest of the opera in that role (in a wonderful green cloak, with a huge Christmas wreath on his head). He has a great bass voice ˗ still young (he’s not yet twenty) ˗ and holds his own well with the two female ghosts. 

The first of these, Ingrid Fomison-Nurse as the Ghost of Christmas Past, has some very high lines, often with words that are difficult to get across easily. The same applies to the Ghost of Christmas Future, played by Lois Johnston. Much of her music is slow, though often over fast-moving orchestral stuff, and isn’t easy to communicate. Composers have to tread a fine line between setting words too fast or too slowly. Philip Norman, the composer of the opera, has chosen to go to both extremes at times, making it quite difficult for some of the cast. Both the ghost ladies do an admirable job, however.
Another singer who has to contend with a lot of words in a short space of time is Nicola Steel as the Charity Collector. Her music is lovely, but it moves swiftly, and Nicola does very well to get the words across in the short space of time they're allotted (!) Nicola introduces the children onto the stage, with their plaintive Alms for the poor number. The children later have a scene entirely to themselves, and it's organised chaos, with games of tag and such going on. In spite of that, in a moment, it seems, the kids can be all in back in place and marching together - and singing together, which is even more important!

Fred, played by Matariki Inwood, is initially part of the chorus, then transforms in the blink of an eye. In the process he suddenly acquires Mrs Fred ˗ played by Caroline Burchall. (Caroline stepped into the role late in the proceedings after another performer had to pull out.) Caroline began the rehearsals as one of the eight dancers, and still appears as a dancer in other scenes. Matariki has a great voice with great potential, but has no solo to speak of. However he particularly comes into his own in the second half at ‘Fred’s party’, when he spoofs Scrooge’s behaviour.

The other two drunks (besides Nathaniel) are Geoff Swift and Sarah Oliver. Geoff also plays Mr Fezziwig, and acquired a new ‘wife’ the night of the last dress rehearsal. Brenda Jones had  been playing her, but became very ill with the ‘flu, and hasn’t been able to perform since. Kathryn Constable took over the role, but couldn’t cover Brenda’s other ‘role’ as one of the quartet in the ‘poorly dressed townspeople’ piece because she was already singing in it! So, Sarah Oliver sings it. And all three still sing in the chorus numbers.

Lilian Gibbs plays Belle ˗ Scrooge’s young love ˗ and Keiran Kelly is young Scrooge. They have a lovely duet as well as being part of Fezziwigs’ party, and being involved in most of the chorus numbers. Many of the chorus sing more than the principals. The chorus tells the story, really, and have several chunks of big stuff. There are also two quintets, an octet and a nonet that the chorus cover. A great deal of good singing is required by the chorus, and they’ve come to the party with enthusiasm.

The Cratchit family is a delight. This is the only time Göeknil Meryem Biner (to give her her full name as listed in the programme ˗ she’s Tom McGrath's wife) appears apart from the Finale. She leads the Cratchit family’s first ensemble number (sung without Bob, who arrives for the next ensemble), and her terrific family, who all have individual bits to sing, and are very busy at the same time with the preparation of the Christmas meal, are terrific. The children are sung by Madi Dow and Sarah Hubbard, two teenagers, along with four younger children: Samuel Kelly (as Peter Cratchit) and Massimo Pezzuto and Ayla Biner-McGrath as the unnamed pair of children. Tiny Tim (Joseph Kelly) completes the family, arriving with Bob for the second number. The music for this group is a delight, being amongst the best in the show.

There are two ‘waifs’ ˗ Sam Meikle, who looks well-fed enough, really (!) and Ozan Biner-McGrath, who happens to look skinny! Their brief cry of ‘Feed me’ is only just audible under a fairly noisy orchestral section as well as the singing of Nathaniel. However, they mostly have to look as though they’re at death’s door, and they do that well.

Finally there’s Grace Hill. She’s part of the children’s chorus (some thirty of them) but she also plays the fiddler in a couple of the early scenes, accompanying the carollers. Confusingly, there are two sets of carollers in our production. Not quite sure why, except that one group in the score is listed as a quartet and the other as a quintet. In fact both of them are quintets in this production for various reasons!

There’s a minimalist set: two windows and a door with a profile of 19th century London across the back reaching to about chest height. Everything else is achieved by lighting (which is very good, as far as I can see from the pit). I was a bit dubious about the lack of scenery at first, but my daughter, after seeing the show, said it looks very effective. Above the door is a clock, which at other times shows the sign, Scrooge and Marley, and also at least one of the ghost’s face ˗ Marley’s, I think, though I haven’t actually been able to see that as yet. I’m not even sure how this is done: it’s obviously some sort of electronic device, but I don’t know what. I’ll have to ask.

Scrooge’s bed is, for some reason, enormous. When it first appeared late in the rehearsals it looked as though it was going to take over the proceedings, but the director worked around it without too much concern. Other than that there’s little else in the way of furniture: a park bench for the drunks, a chaise longue at Fred’s party, and a table and some chairs for the Cratchits.

Christine Douglas has done a great job with the directing. The chorus was worked with extensively to bring out character and detail, so that things are kept alive and lively every time they’re on. They never just ‘stand and sing.’ And in other scenes, such as the two parties, and the Cratchit family meal preparation, there’s a heap of things going on. I’d like to be able to see it all, but unfortunately have only my memories of what I saw during rehearsal to go on. I don’t play during every piece in the show, so I can watch some of it, but there are great chunks that I never see now.

The costumes are wonderful. Considering that there were around eighty people to dress (including the dancers) Brenda Rendall has done an extraordinary job. There’s an authenticity about all the costumes; they fit, they’re colourful, and there’s a lot of detail. Both men and women have wonderful hats: not just top hats, but bowlers and even a pork pie for one of the men. The women have all manner of caps and bonnets. Plus cravats, shawls, aprons: you name it. What a job it must have been pulling all these items together. On top of this there’s a make-up artist who does most of the performers each night, and a hairdresser, who does most of the women’s hairstyles. So it’s a busy, busy production.

The music is played by four keyboardists, rather than an orchestra. We don’t each stick to any one group of instruments all the way through, but get to share things. Two of us play a triangle, for instance (a real one, not an electronic one), and most of us swap wind instruments and strings around. I don’t get to play piano, and I seem to have a lot of oboe, but I share the xylophone and celesta. At one point Sandra Christie is providing thunder while I’m adding in a rowdy wind sound. I’m fortunate that I have a keyboard that can be set up in advance so that it’s literally a press of the button to change a sound, but two of the others have a different model that requires the pressing of three buttons in sequence to get the next sound ˗ similar to what my own electronic piano at home requires. I think it’s probable that they could also have been set up in an easier way, but they’ve chosen to go this route, and it’s working. The third keyboardist, Moriah Osborne, has the same model as me, but she’s using it differently: turning one wheel to get the class of instrument and then another wheel to find the specific one she wants. Apparently she has time to do this. I only have to do it once, when I play one note on timpani (!). I find it a bit of a rush, personally. Ihlara McIndoe is the fourth instrumentalist. 

What of the music itself? It’s quite varied, from near-musical comedy to full-on operatic, and there are some quirky moments that could come from anywhere. A lot of it is very catchy, with syncopated rhythms, and much of it gets used at least more than once, so that the audience isn’t hit with an endless stream of new musical ideas to grasp. It certainly requires a lot of good singers; none of the small roles can easily be taken by people who aren’t up to the mark. We’ve been very fortunate in the cast we’ve got, I think. And our young conductor, Tim Carpenter, has all the energy required to keep the thing moving at a good pace.

Update: I only realised I'd missed out Shona Bennett's name when she made a comment on Facebook about this post. Shona is the choreographer for the show, and had already choreographed the dance pieces that were set in the score when we began production rehearsals. But then Christine George, the director, wanted the dancers included in other scenes, and Shona quietly slotted them in, gave them additional steps where necessary, trained chorus members - on the spot - how to dance in one or two scenes, and in general was an enormous asset to the production. This is apart from her being warm and friendly, full of smiles, and plainly having bundles of energy - and being shorter than I am. I only mention that because not everyone is....and she made the dancers' costumes. Does the woman sleep?
I should also add that Judy Bellingham took the chorus and small role music rehearsals with flair, enthusiasm (I'd come home absolutely whacked from playing for her rehearsals!), and in spite of claiming not to be a conductor, did an admirable job of pretending to be one. John Drummond also had a considerable part to play, early on. (He's the father of the young man, Jonathan, who conducted my own production, Grimhilda! back in 2012.) John took the original score and set it out so that it was playable by the four keyboardists. There are a couple of moments in my part that I wish he'd given to one of other keyboardists (and the same probably applies to the other players), but in general I enjoy what's been allotted to me.
Every time I add something here, you can see just how much additional work has gone into this show, work you're not aware of.

Charles Dickens - a life

I finished Claire Tomalin's magnificent Charles Dickens, a life, last night.  Magnificent primarily in the amount of sheer detail that's provided, and which must have taken vast hours of research to put together.  The book deals with the whole Nelly Ternan saga with considerable insight, and manages to take the cover off some of the matters that had been hidden for many years.  It helps that Tomalin has already worked over this particular bit of ground before, in her book, The Invisible Woman: the story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens. 

Dickens, as is generally well-known, was a great mix of a man - hardly unusual, especially in those who can be classed as geniuses - but there are aspects of his life that are puzzling to say the least.  His rejection of his wife, Catherine, after they had had ten children together, and his negative attitude to most of his sons whom he regarded with less and less favour as they grew and proved to be not geniuses like their father, are more than sad, and these attitudes lost him some friendships completely and curtailed others.  His favouring of his daughters and his two sisters-in-law was also curious, given that he spent a great deal of his adult life in the company of other men, behaving like a unattached bachelor.

While he could be harsh on members of his family, or contrary, or dismissive, he formed friendships with some males that endured through all manner of ups and downs.  Forster is the prime example; he could upset Dickens, but never for long, and Forster himself could be hurt by Dickens, but always came back for more.

Then there was the way he drove himself constantly.  Some of this might be attributed to his upbringing by a father who couldn't keep out of debt and Dickens' sense that if he didn't work hard enough he might end up in poverty like the old man. Yet that can only be part of the reason: the incredible walks (twelve miles was nothing, and sometimes he walked through the night from one place to another); the endurance tests of the public readings which increased his ill-health; the striving to do several things at once and managing to do so 99 times out of 100; the insistence on taking on far more than the ordinary mortal could manage; the restlessness of shifting houses and even countries; his self-assurance that he could cure people by what can only be regarded as approaches verging on quackery; and on and on.

But then there was the other side of Dickens: the generous, compassionate, public-spirited man, the man who genuinely cared for the poor (he might have been more sympathetic to his family if they had been poor!), the man who financially supported the widows and fatherless children of old friends, who paid off his father's debts - and those of his siblings - time and again even though it made him angry; the man who fought those who dismissed the poor as being beneath their contempt; the man who mocked the legal systems and brought changes through his writings; the man who celebrated life continually with endless birthday parties, Christmas parties, dinners for friends, dinners for other writers and men (sometimes women) of renown, jaunts hither and thither and yon; the man who fell passionately in love not only with the woman he didn't marry in his youth, but with his sister-in-law, with other lesser-known women and, finally, with Ellen Ternan.  Only one of these relationships ever became a sexual one (Ternan's) but there was more passion in the other relationships than many men have in their whole lives.

And then of course there was the writing: it could make him ill at times, could drive him mad, and sometimes he was troubled that it wasn't good enough.  He could write two novels at one time, and besides the works for which he is famous, he wrote countless other pieces: stories, articles, plays and tirades.  His Christmas stories almost all sold on the basis of the one really excellent one, A Christmas Carol; some of them weren't very good, and the ones he wrote late in his life were pretty awful.  He could write scenes that were pure melodrama, and scenes in which the women behave in the way they would on the stage (acting and stage directing and playwriting were all fitted into his frenetic life) but not in real life (or even in a novel), and he could write scenes that hummed along and couldn't be put down by the reader.  Some of his characters were pure sentiment, some were pure evil.  His best female characters were never heroines, or children, or young girls - all of these suffered from overwrought writing and bland characterization.  Some of his heroes weren't much better, but the best of them are real in a way only characters written by a master craftsman are real.

Besides these, there were the host of people who really do stick in our memories, and they are so many that to name them would take pages.  Not only are there the famous ones who are so well-known that they might have been real people, there are the innumerable characters who appear for a few sentences and still come completely alive.

I've read more than one book on Dickens and his life, but this one seemed more balanced and honest.  Furthermore it gave other people in the story room to breathe.

Little Women at the Playhouse, Dunedin

At this point, there hasn't been any review of Stageworks' latest production, Little Women, so this may fill the gap for the time being.

This adaptation by Peter Clapham of Louisa May Alcott's popular book play is being presented at the Playhouse, Dunedin, and is directed by Liz Nisbet, who also directed two other very successful productions in recent years: A Christmas Carol, and The Diary of Anne Frank.

There have been three film versions of Little Women over the years, the most recent in 1994. All three films had strong casts, and were very popular, so the story is probably still very well-known. Certainly people I've spoken to are familiar with it, and women in particular remember reading it with fondness.  This dramatised version focuses mostly on the original book whereas the movies have included some of Good Wives, the sequel.

It concerns the March family: Mr March has gone to be an army chaplain during the American Civil War, and has left his wife (Ruth Wheeler) and four daughters at home, along with the longsuffering housekeeper, Hannah (Sandra Shaw-Bennett). The March family are struggling financially, something that their wealthy Aunt March (played with enthusiasm by Carol Kruger) delights to rub in their faces. She also attempts to use the withdrawal of her money as a threat at times, to keep the family in line. In spite of their somewhat straitened circumstances, the March women are concerned for those poorer than themselves, and attempt to help where they can.

The four daughters, Jo, the writer (played with great energy and humour by Clare Thomson), Meg (Imogen Davis), Amy (Ava Straw) and Beth (Imogen Corbett) love each other - and squabble with each other, as siblings will.  Each has her strengths, and each of them is forced during the course of the story to deal with situations that extend them in some way.  The Christian underpinnings of the story are clear, from the need to forgive even the most 'abominable' behaviours to acting sacrificially when the need arises. Marmee (as Mrs March is known) has definite Christian convictions and presents them quietly and confidently to her daughters. She is a gentle woman, yet strong enough to keep her daughters from making enemies of each other.  Her highest moment of passion - in the play at least - is when she makes an urgent trip to Washington to care for her husband, who has 'the fever' (that all-encompassing word that covers anything that laid low people at that time).  For once we see her almost losing her calm.

There are male characters in the play (Mr March himself appears only at the last minute), but they tend to be satellites in orbit around the vividly drawn females. Laurie, the shy young man from next door (played by Lyndon Katene), is seen as a 'brother' to Jo rather than a lover - Jo isn't into falling in love. Laurie is a gentleman at all times, and willing to help the family in any crisis.  His grandfather (Bert Nisbet) is a seemingly severe old man - we understand why this might be in a moving scene in the second half of the play. However, he's also willing to use his sizeable income to help the family out when necessary.  And Laurie's relatively young tutor, Mr Brooke (James Tregonning) falls in love with Meg, as well as accompanying Mrs March on her trip to Washington.

Since the play relies heavily on its female characters, it's great to see an excellent group of women in the roles. They skip the play along at a great pace, and there's never a dull moment.  In fact, while the first half was entertaining in itself, the second half, where there are more dramatic scenes, proved even more engrossing. Last night's audience was thoroughly involved in the story, with some laugh-out-loud moments, some tears, and a satisfying feeling of having seen a good play well done.

A set of photos by Ian Thomson from the dress rehearsal can be found here.

The Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens' famous story comes to life on stage at the Mayfair Theatre, Dunedin, with Bert Nisbet in the role of Scrooge, that inveterate miser, whose experiences with a succession of ghosts changes his view on life forever.
Fred, his nephew, (played by Dominic Crowl) is a complete contrast: having little money, he still manages to make other people happy, including the impoverished family of Bob Cratchit (played by Graham Wilson). Their little boy, known as Tiny Tim, is a cripple, and in spite of his optimism (and that of his family) seems not to be destined for a long life.
The play is directed by Liz Nisbet, and other members of the large cast include Carol Krueger, Helen Wilson, and Cherrianne Parks.

The play will be presented from the 25th November until the 29th. Evening performances are at 7.30 and there is a matinee on the Sunday at 4 pm.

Tickets are available from Beggs' Musical in Moray Place.
Adults: $20
Children: $10
Seniors and Students: $16
Family and block booking concessions are also available.

The play will be presented on two mornings to large numbers of Dunedin schoolchildren.

Proceeds from the play will be donated to Habitat for Humanity.

The picture shows Bob Cratchit carrying his son, Tiny Tim.

Check out the Dunedin Events website

Updating the list of plays

This is now being updated here. 

14th Feb 2015: This is yet another update to this list. It's easier to keep it in one place rather than blogging all over again...I've also included the authors of the plays, something that for some reason I failed to do previously. 

Back in October 2011 I listed out the plays I'd performed in this century. The ones I acted in before that were in the 60s, so I've pretty much forgotten the details, though I did have a couple of small roles in a curious comedy called Lady Precious Stream, which we performed at the Globe Theatre in Dunedin. I also had some roles in one act plays that we performed the British Drama League competitions.)  

Early 2012 was taken up with working on Grimhilda!, as a repetiteur (rehearsal pianist), occasional assistant conductor, general factotum. No acting, but plenty of associated work. After that a bit of a hiatus until Easter this year, when our church put on a play in celebration of Rosalie Macgeorge, the first Baptist missionary to leave New Zealand. She went to what is now Bangladesh, and only survived the climate and the diseases for four short years.

The following is a complete list of productions I've been involved in this century:

1.      Mr Beaver in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, [second production by Narnia Productions], 2004 (Teachers’ College auditorium) - Director (and scriptwriter): Erina Caradus

2.      Uncle Andrew in The Magician’s Nephew, Sept 2005 (Teachers’ College auditorium) - Director (and scriptwriter): Erina Caradus

3.      Mr Dussel in The Diary of Anne Frank (Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett), 2006 (The Playhouse) - Director: Liz Nisbet

4.      The Father in And Then They Came for Me (James Still), May 2008 (Globe  Theatre) [also co-directed with Carol Krueger]

5.      Reepicheep in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Sept 2008, (Mayfair Theatre) - Director (and scriptwriter): Erina Caradus

6.      Ormonroyd in When We Are Married (J B Priestley), May 2009, (Playhouse Theatre) - Director: Natalie Ellis

7.      Jacob Marley and Mr Fizziwigg in The Christmas Carol (adapted from Charles Dickens' story; dramatist unknown), Nov 2009 (Mayfair Theatre) - Director: Liz Nisbet

8.      Pianist/Composer for Love – or Nearest Offer (Hugh O'Brien), Apr 2010 (Playhouse Theatre) - Director: Natalie Ellis

9.      Rev Harry Harrington in Shadowlands (William Nicholson), May 2011, (Playhouse Theatre) - Director: Natalie Ellis

10.   Paravicini in The Mousetrap (Agatha Christie), October 2011 (Mayfair Theatre) - Director: Bert Nisbet

11.  Grimhilda! - general all-round dogsbody [Mike Crowl & Cherianne Parks/music by Mike Crowl] April-May 2012 (Mayfair Theatre) - Director: Bert Nisbet

12   Reverend Hinton - Harvest Field: the ministry of Rosalie Macgeorge (Greg Brook)- March 2013 (Otago Boys High School Auditorium) - Director: Greg Brook

13   Al Lewis in The Sunshine Boys (Neil Simon). The Playhouse, June 2013 - Director: Natalie Ellis

14.  Padre in Hamp (John Wilson) The Playhouse, August 2014 - Director: Bert Nisbet
15. Sir William Rollander in Verdict (Agatha Christie), The Playhouse, March 2015 - Director: Natalie Ellis

Where's the "e" gone?

Well, there you go! I'd always thought blu-ray was spelt: Blue Ray. That makes more sense to my ear, but obviously I'd never actually seen the word written. So blu-ray it is - or even bluray in some cases (mistaken cases, I'd suspect, but that's by the by).

Why it should be spelt oddly is a bit of a puzzle, since it relates to the blue violet laser that makes the thing work, but blu without the 'e' is what it is. Maybe the people who put it together couldn't spell - nothing would be surprising these days - but you'd have thought that there'd be someone on the team who could spell a simple English word, wouldn't you?

I have a friend who swears by blu-ray and big screen TV. I haven't yet been to his house to view it (with surround sound, no doubt as well) but he and a few others from our church have been watching the movies known by the collective name of the Decalogue (or Dekalog, in the original Polish) - they're directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski (whose first name, you'll notice, contains only one vowel - unless you consider the 'y' a vowel in this case - it'd be a good word for Scrabble, if it was allowed).

These movies were made for television originally, and seem only loosely connected to the Ten Commandments (though number four, which we watched this week, did have leanings towards the fourth commandment about honouring your father and mother). They're fairly bleak, not only because the world they inhabit is bleak (always wintry and in the middle of a depressed time in Poland), but because the people in them don't get a lot of laughs in life.

And in the last three we've watched, the main female character has been ever-so-slightly-off-the-wall. The blokes are fairly well integrated people, though they have their own flaws, but they don't come close to the underlying feeling of insanity that the women carry around with them. You could say that Kieslowski was something of a mysoginist, but I don't think that's the issue. These women aren't put down by him - the fact that they're allowed to be so strong in the stories is something many other filmmakers could learn from. But they're not exactly people who'd you'd like to have calling at your house.

We have six more of these movies to go before Christmas. I believe one of them may be a bit more cheerful than the others!

By the way, the latest movie version of A Christmas Carol isn't exactly getting rave reviews, even though it's well made, and even though Jim Carrey gives several excellent performances - and even though it sticks very closely to the original story. Robert Zemeckis has decided to go with his strange approach to half-animation again; perhaps it's time to give this idea away.

Goodbye Marley, Goodbye Fezziwig!

Today's matinee performance of The Christmas Carol brought the season to a close. The audience was the largest of those we performed to (apart from the two school performances) and it was good to feel that the house didn't have lots of large empty spaces in it.

Unfortunately Habitat for Humanity, for whom we were fundraising by putting on the show, probably won't do very well financially out of it. However, their view is that it raises their profile further (as did our connection with them with The Diary of Anne Frank) and that's good for them in itself.

Within an hour of the performance finishing, the set was already in a state of deconstruction, props were being loaded into cars, and it was as if the show had never existed. Such is the nature of theatre, of course. But another feature of theatre which is always intriguing is what the audience doesn't see.

When you go to a play or musical or any other piece of theatre, as an audience member, your focus is almost entirely on what you see on the stage. What exists beyond is seldom thought about. The set and the actors are 'real' for you for the time being, but of course they're not in the least bit real for the actors.

Standing backstage you will see the person who's just come off in tears laughing at some whispered joke made by another actor. You will see two stagehands kneeling on the floor, on either side of the french windows, ready to pull the doors open as one of the Ghosts walks back through it. (The effect for the audience is magic; the reality is a lot more prosaic.)

You will see me bounding down the stairs after a serious scene as Marley's Ghost, tearing off his costume, racing up to the make-up girl, wiping off all the carefully applied talcum powder, having my face made up for a second time - this time as Fezziwig with bright pink cheeks - while the wardrobe lady helps me into my multi-buttoned waistcoat, ties a long blue tie around my neck, helps me on with my coat, and sends me pounding back up the stairs again to the stage where, breathing a little heavily, I wait to turn into a character who couldn't be more different from the bitter and twisted Ghost.

You will see the eight-foot high Ghost of Christmas Future backing out through a revolving door, taking a couple of cautious steps to turn himself to the left (otherwise he will walk straight onto the head of the prompt) and then, all scariness gone, being helped down two or three behind-the-set steps supported by the arms of a stagehand, without whom he would likely take a very serious tumble. You will see the same stagehand hoisting up Tiny Tim onto Bob Cratchit's shoulders: after several failed but hilarious attempts during rehearsal to do it on his own this was the only speedy way to get the child up there.

You might also see the fire warden wandering his regular route through the building during the show; he is probably the only real safety aspect available. It's not that safety products are unknown in amateur theatre (or in professional, if it comes to that) but they're few and far between. And accidents do happen. In this show we managed to get through with no more than a single skinned knee (another one of the Ghosts); in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader we had chips and bruises and cuts galore - some plays are more dangerous than others!

All the gold in the world...

A friend of mine who works at the Macraes gold mine was talking at a rehearsal of The Christmas Carol the other day. I came in on the conversation a little late but what I heard was that the entire stock of gold in the world would fit comfortably in the room we were standing in. And this wasn't a very large room: maybe 5 or 6 metres by 4. Height? Maybe 2.5 to 3 metres.

This seems incredible, but he seemed serious about it. Which presumably means that anyone who's a rare coin dealer (such as the firm, Monaco Rare Coin) doesn't have a lot of stock to play with, at least when it comes to gold. Monaco is one of the Monex group of firms, (I've written about them before in this blog on occasions), and they've been in business for forty years or so. I wonder how often the same bits of gold have passed through their hands in that time?

Of course, they don't just deal in gold, but in all sorts of rare coinage, and I guess there's plenty of that around the world. After all, most of us have seen large bags of coins in our lifetime (though perhaps less now than we used to) and it wouldn't take too many of those to fill a sizeable room. Though I guess if you're a rare coin collector, you wouldn't be needing too large a space to put your collection. And no doubt Monaco can point in you in the right direction when it comes to getting quality coins.

I'm really intrigued by this idea of the world's gold filling one not-so-spacious room. Why is Fort Knox so big, then? Is it because it's nearly all security and very little storage?

I'll have to get back to my friend and check it out properly obviously!

Amp me up, baby

I've written about amps before, usually with tongue considerably in cheek. My relationship with amps has usually been through our church, where for a while the size of the amplifiers seemed to increase every few weeks. Which just made things louder rather than more subtle.

When we did the New Zealand opera, A Christmas Carol, about three months ago, the four keyboard players and the conductor, tore their combined hair out on a number of occasions during the later stage of the rehearsals in the theatre, because it seemed no one was actually in charge of sound (a surprising omission) and yet we had sound to deal with. Keyboards don't sound good without amplifiers, as you'll know.

Thankfully, our assistant stage manager used her wide-ranging brain to bring the amplifier that we did have in-house under control. Initially it seemed as if all the sound from the keyboards was blasting its way around the orchestral pit. But gradually we worked out how to get some control, some subtlety and the audience heard a great sound, and those on stage heard more than enough to be able to sing along with.

All of which to introduce Bugera Amps, a kind of amp I'm not familiar with, but which are apparently available in all shapes and sizes, to suit all sorts of musical ears. (And probably a few unmusical ones.) The little stay-at-home-put-my-grand-composition-on-the-computer type to the I'm-playing-the-biggest-gig-I've-ever-played-so-this-amp-better-do-the-job type. Good old Bugera!

Somewhat quiet on this particular front

Things have been very quiet on here of late, for a number of reasons. We were away on holiday for a week, and the weekend before that, my daughter and her son moved out of our house - after eight years occupancy of the first floor. Sad to see them go, since my grandson has pretty much grown up here, but they're not far away, and we'll see them fairly regularly, I guess.

In the weeks before that, and again this week, I've been repetiteuring for Opera Otago's production of The Christmas Carol, an operatic version by New Zealand composer, Philip Norman. This has been full-on, with rehearsals every day of the week. I'm also going to be one of four keyboard players during the performances (the original orchestral score has been rearranged for the four of us), so that's another thing that's had to be worked on. Good for my brain and for the fingers, which need to keep working otherwise they stiffen up, but tiring nevertheless.

Just today the Production Manager was looking for a person to work on the sound for the show. I suggested the guy who did the sound for Grimhilda! back in 2012. He was very good, and very helpful. I'd like to say he'd be able to use a Behringer x32 to do the work, but I doubt if that's going to be likely. It'll be some old machine that's been around the theatre scene for a few years, I suspect. The Behringer is a super-modern digital affair and has all the bells and whistles. The photograph below probably doesn't do it justice:

So who was Behringer, you ask? (As I did myself.) His full name was Uli Behringer and he founded his audio equipment company in 1989. Not that long ago in historic terms, but probably centuries in audio terms. His original company has now become of the leaders in the field, marketing in a wide variety of countries. Here's another interesting bit of information (since I know you're keen to learn everything you can from this post). Behringer has perfect pitch; hence the 'ear' on his company's logo. 

There you go!

Changing looks and computing plays

A few days ago I decided to change the look of this blog to Google's new dynamic approach, which means that not only can the writer of the blog change how everything appears on the page at the drop of a hat, but so can the readers.

However, there are some frustrations with this new look. firstly, it's much harder to search on it.  For one thing on some of the dynamic pages you can't even find a search box.  Secondly, all the additional matter that you've so carefully added to the page over the years seems to go AWOL.  The Google ads are still there - on some versions of the page - but not consistently.  Links to other sites seem to vanish completely, and other interesting bits and pieces are all hidden away somewhere that I haven't been able to discover since I did the change.

So tonight, as the observant will note, I've changed the look again (or the 'template' to use the correct term).   In fact I've done it on all the blogs I have on Blogger.   Given them a facelift, but left them so that they're still easy to follow and won't go swishing all over the page as soon as you touch something.

I quite enjoyed that, but I didn't enjoy trying to find some information again on one of this blog and spending far too long doing so.  In fact, anything that's older than this year, it seems, just comes up as a complete chunk of stuff: all the posts from 2008 will arrive if you ask for some info on a post that was done that year.

Not so hot.

Incidentally, what I was trying to find were the dates of the plays I've acted in over the last decade.   It's been quite a productive time in that regard, with roles in nine plays, and music written for a tenth.   Here's the list.

1.      Mr Beaver in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, [second production by Narnia Productions], 2004 (Teachers’ College auditorium)

2.      Uncle Andrew in The Magician’s Nephew, Sept 2005 (Teachers’ College auditorium)

3.      Mr Dussel in The Diary of Anne Frank, 2006 (The Playhouse)

4.      The Father in And Then They Came for Me, May 2008 (Globe  Theatre)[also co-directed]

5.      Reepicheep in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Sept 2008, (Mayfair Theatre)

6.      Ormonroyd in When We Are Married, May 2009, (Playhouse Theatre)

7.      Jacob Marley and Mr Fizziwigg in The Christmas Carol Nov 2009 (Mayfair Theatre)

8.      Pianist for Love – or Nearest Offer Apr 2010 (Playhouse Theatre)

9.      Rev Harry Harrington in Shadowlands, May 2011, (Playhouse Theatre)

10.  Paravicini in The Mousetrap, October 2011 (Mayfair Theatre)

I've kept a journal since 1987 (the first entry discusses my daughter waking up in the night with a rat in the room - the only time such a thing has happened - and dropping it down the toilet to get rid of it) you'd think it would be easy to track down the dates of these productions.   But for some reason there are chunks of time when I didn't make entries in the journal, and often they seem to coincide with the productions of these plays.  Furthermore, I've often written about these plays on this blog - or so I thought.  But in fact I hadn't.  I only seem to have mentioned Anne Frank in passing - after it was finished - and the two earlier Narnia plays barely get a look in.  Odd.

The Star newspaper is supposed to have some references to a number of these plays, but when you click on the Google search results, invariably you find that you locked out of the archives.  So you try the Star page...worse still.  The search box that's supposed to be available according to the help page is missing and when you try to access 'all' newspapers, it happily gives you nothing more than 2011. 

The photo is from The Mousetrap: all cast members on stage in Act II (Natalie Ellis, who played Mrs Boyle, doesn't appear in the second act).  I'm sitting comfortably on the couch keeping the audience guessing as to my role in the situation.  The photo was taken by Andy Cook, who designed the set.

Update as at 30.3.13: I've now completed another role, or rather two roles: Rev Hinton, and the Doctor, in Harvest Field, the Ministry of Rosalie Macgeorge.  This play had its world premiere last night, and its one and only performance, as part of the Dunedin City Baptist Church's 150th Celebrations.  The script was by Greg Brook, who also directed.  The play was performed at Otago Boys' High School Auditorium.
And, while I haven't acted otherwise since my part in The Mousetrap, the first part of last year was greatly taken up with Grimhilda! which I'd written with Cherianne Parks, composed the music for, played the piano during rehearsals for (and occasionally stood in for the Music Director).

Marley's Ghost

Rehearsing for The Christmas Carol has been a little odd: because I'm only in the first act, I've had no reason to go to the rehearsals for the last couple of weeks, and since the last rehearsal I attended I'd begun to feel rather disconnected from it all.

While I was on holiday, one of the cast (who's also doing props) texted me and said I could fill up the second and third acts by doing props. So that may be the case. Not sure what it entails as yet, but there are a number of props floating around the play, so no doubt there'll be something to do.

Anyway, even though I wasn't called for today, I went along to see how things were progressing. The whole play is underway now, and the second and third acts were being rehearsed this afternoon. It's starting to shape up, though obviously needs a lot more pace and energy than it's got just yet. No doubt it will gain those over the next couple of weeks when we work through the whole play each rehearsal.

I did my short scene as Marley's Ghost with the actor playing Scrooge at the end of the rehearsal. Boy, what a difference a couple of weeks makes. Where I'd been confident about the cues and lines a couple of weeks ago, I seemed to be grasping for words today. However, that'll pick up again, and Marley will make his nasty impression on things once more! (Marley's Ghost even gets his own Wikipedia entry - crikey, I'm famous!)

Procrastinating....

Philip Norman

Work on the neverending book, The Disenchanted Wizard, has sludged to a halt again, though we're only inches (yards, metres?) from the finish line. I've been so busy with working on Opera Otago's production of Philip Norman's A Christmas Carol, that my brain is struggling to think about the book. Rehearsals every evening, and afternoons on the weekend as well, plus keyboard rehearsals - three so far, and two more to come - plus practice at home for the bits I can't play properly, plus being at home alone because my wife is in the UK attending to an unwell sister, and I'm having to do all the housework and feed myself. (No biggie, really. I do both of these regularly anyway! Just thought I'd throw that in.)

A note comes up on Gmail notifications regularly, telling me not to procrastinate on the book. But procrastinating is what I'm doing. Of course there's time to work on it; I'm just using all the above as excuses, because even though we're close to the finish line, there are some difficulties I have to deal with, and I'm not a person who's enthusiastic about difficulties.

There's only one way to overcome difficulties in writing, and that's to write. Deb Vanesse says, in her book, What Every Author Should Know: I hate saying this, out of fear of jinxing myself, but I’ve never suffered from writer’s block, which is in part a writer’s term for procrastination, often connected to your fears of vulnerability and failure. Once you call those fears out for what they are, you can write your way through pretty much any stuck point, and the bigger problem may become forging ahead with a project when you should have stopped to assess whether it was heading in the best possible direction.

And in a similar vein, Steven Pressfield, in his book, The War of Art, writes: Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance because it's the easiest to rationalize. We don't tell ourselves "I'm never going to write my symphony." Instead we say "I am going to write my symphony; I'm just going to start tomorrow." [He uses the word 'resistance' to signify all those things that appear to stand in the way of our producing good creative work.]

So there you go. Having been told off by Gmail, by Vanesse and Pressfield, I'll go off and....walk the dog.

Update, later the same day: After going on about procrastinating on the book earlier today, I must have prodded myself into gear, and by late afternoon, I'd done the revision work that was needed. And of course it wasn't nearly as difficult as I'd thought it would be. So Progress!

Printer to Script to Plays to Television

Following the example of my daughter, who has to print out pages and pages of University material this year, we bought a Brother printer which prints at speed - but only uses black ink, no colour.  (But there is a cash back promise comes with it.)

No problem, we thought: we hardly ever use colour.  Of course the first two things I print out both have colour in them...  We haven't got rid of the printer that does do colour; if really necessary we can just hook up that printer and go for it.

One of the items I was printing was the script for Grimhilda! - the prompt needs a copy.  It was printed in record time.  Stageworks, the company that's producing the musical, has a wonderful lady called Jan who'll be doing the prompting.  She prompted for The Mousetrap, and very occasionally got herself accidentally seen by some members of the audience (if they were paying attention to what went on backstage) when the downstage door was opened just a little too far by one of the cast.  Or when, as one night, it opened by itself...

Jan also prompted for The Christmas Carol, which we did a couple of years ago.  Prompting is not a job I'd like to do.  It seems simple reading along in the script as the play progresses and hoping nobody will dry.  That's the easy part; it's when an actor skips a section and another actor has to follow, and the poor prompt isn't sure whether they'll catch up with what they've missed, or forget about it entirely.  That's what happened to me once, in The Magician's Nephew.  The young fellow playing Digby skipped a page or so of dialogue, and, because I was in the wrong place for the line he spoke, I went completely blank in a way I've never done before.   The prompt was on the opposite side of the stage, and was prompting like billyo, but for some reason I couldn't pick up what he was saying - there was what seemed to me to be an eternal pause before we managed to find our own way back to native soil.

I always admire actors who do weekly television series, especially those who get long speeches that they've got to have memorised within a couple of days and be able to say with the utmost conviction.  I'm a slow learner, comparatively, and like to feel my way into lines so that by the time I'm on stage with them I feel utterly confident.

Which reminds me, for some reason, of last week's Doc Martin episode, and the uncongenial Doc's remarks to the funeral director's son who was taking supplements of various kinds in order to make himself stronger and bigger (and more attractive to the ladies).  He was also having cod liver oil (which made him unattractive to the ladies - one of them telling him to stay 'over there, your breath stinks.')   He was also tanning himself, and the cellar in which he was doing this was not only full of muscle-building supplements, but tanning supplies.  Doc Martin stormed in there, barely managing to avoid hitting his head on the very low beams, and verbally set the place alight, giving the funeral director himself an earful for letting his son go through all this nonsense - and bringing on him some obscure medical problem in the process.

People on these medical dramas/comedies never have plain ordinary illnesses.  You wonder where the writers dig up all the peculiar problems that beset the characters.   I understand that variety is the spice of life on television, but some of the illnesses are just plain ridiculous - though not to the characters, obviously!

Next week and then after

Concert's now only a week away - less in fact, since it's on Saturday - and the artists all seem pretty much up with the play. I'm getting to the point where I don't feel I can do any more with the piano pieces I play; if I don't get some things right now, I probably never will, but I'll need to keep practicing anyway. That's the problem with writing music that has passages in it that are just a bit beyond your own capability!

As for after the concert, well, I've got another play coming up, one that was to have gone on late last year, but didn't make it for various reasons: some health issues, as far as I recall. This one's A Christmas Carol, and I'm playing a couple of parts (as are some of the other actors): Marley's Ghost, and Mr Fezziwig (or is it Fizziweg? can never remember). The cast includes people from both When We Are Married and The Diary of Anne Frank, so it's kind of being amongst family.

What after that? I'd like to get on and finish the Children's Opera I started writing way back in the 70s, and which I've added some more to over the last few years. What's been holding me up was a lack of libretto. I did a kind of synopsis about a year ago, and things have stalled again since then. So I really need to sort this out.

I'd like to see if the three movements for brass band can get a play through. I've talked this over with a couple of the players from the St Kilda Band. It's up to me at this stage to go further with this, and I just need to get myself into gear, print out a full score, the parts and go from there.

And something else - something that I've already started on: while I was going through all the problems related to my prostate op late last year and early this year, I wrote a number of posts on another blog, WorkReport.net. Sometime after most of the hassle was over, I got an email from someone who was going through something similar, saying that the posts had helped him get some perspective on things. So I'm planning on turning the posts into an e-book, with some additional comments. I'm not sure how I go about putting an e-book out there, but we'll be working on it. (The link on WorkReport is a typical sample of the posts that were being written about this time. )