Mrs Lovett’s Spies

I popped along to a local school to see their production of the musical Sweeney Todd, not just because it is one of my favourite musicals, but also it is next year’s production by the Hessle Theatre Company and I like to begin my preparations early. Not wanting too much fuss I travelled incognito so was able to observe at the end of the evening that I was not the only one doing a little bit of spying out of the lie of the land. As I left I saw that Martin, John and Chris had been sitting upstairs in the hall taking in the show.

No doubt they too enjoyed the rousing performance by the pupils, and it was good to see so many youngsters taking part. I particularly liked the performance of the youngster who played Toby and her singing of ‘Not While I’m Around’. The set was also an interesting one and the barber’s chair and trap door were used to good effect, as was the clever way the performers clutched the blood to their throats each time Sweeney slashed away at his customers. It was comforting hearing the ‘proper’ beginning to the musical (“Attend the tale …”), unlike that watered down version of the recent film.

A final photo…

..from Barnum of the equipment used backstage to support Neil as he did his tightrope act across one side of the stage to the other. Looks pretty heavy duty tackle that.

Upping The Tempo

Clashing with the Barnum production this week has been two football matches at the KC stadium and I knew I would miss them both. Well, that was what I thought until I realised that I would be able to make the last part of the afternoon Saturday match if the matinee performance finished in time and I cycled across town. That needed a little bit of help to achieve, but I managed it. For example, Mark and Nigel were able to up the tempo of the drumming and keyboard playing during ‘Join The Circus’ and ‘Black and White’. I even asked the stage hands to shave a couple of minutes off the interval (I even considered pushing the hands of the stage clock forward five minutes so the stage manager started five minutes early!). No need to worry though because as the matinee finished I was on my bike and across town via the bus station and the railway car park, over the footbridge and into the stadium to manage to catch the last twenty minutes.

After that I reversed the route and was back in the theatre by ten past five! A quick meal in the Clarence (massive fish and chips) before getting ready for the final performance. Rob got his plate spinning going before he came on stage tonight (his theory being he couldn’t get it up on stage) and that seemed to work fine. Nice to see a number of friends in the audience, including Luke who had journeyed down from Newcastle and made it (somehow) into the post production party. At the end of it all Neil was able to have his first drink for some time now that he was not going to be getting up on a tightrope.

And after all that it is the end of another successful production but the wheel now turns on to Hessle Theatre Company’s next production of Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street.

Roll Up! Roll Up!

This week is the Barnum production and I am dashing from work to the theatre each evening. I always guessed this would be a challenging production because of all the additional skills we need for the circus element of the show, but people are standing up well to it. The audience seems to be enjoying it too and joining in the ‘we are at a circus’ atmosphere, particularly the finale. As part of that it has been good to be able to get out amongst the audience pre-show and develop that atmosphere by doing some juggling, etc. Of course if you have not been yet then get yourself along, there are still some seats for you slow coaches. To get some idea what to expect you can have a browse through Carl’s set of photos on Flickr to get some idea of what the show looks like.

On that subject of photos it was perplexing to see that a local shopping centre has banned people from taking photos inside the shopping centre (their reason being that it was part of anti-terrorist security measures). Perplexing because they don’t seem to mind if you draw sketches inside the centre, as evidenced by this one I made of a set of escalators. I accept the sketch might be so bad as to lack any usefulness to a terror group, but imagine what damage a pencil could do if it got into the hands of a more adroit person. Maybe the ’sketch banning’ might be part of a later anti-terrorist course that the centre managers have yet to go on, but for the moment they don’t seem to object.

A beautiful morning

Went out early yesterday morning before the fog and frost had cleared to take some photographs. The marvellous thing about the unseasonally warm weather we are having at the moment is that the clear skies leave it frosty early in the morning. One particular photograph turned out well. This one of the frosted spider’s web on a footbridge (click on it to see it at a larger size). The metal uprights on the bridge gives the web a frame, and probably helped it to freeze a lot more easily. What happens to spiders in frosty weather? Where do they go?

You can see some of the other photographs I took during my little jaunt by following this link to my flickr account.

Barnum Rehearsals

I always hate it when you read a blog that hasn’t posted for a while and some lame excuse comes out as to why there has been the gap, such as their cat has died and they have had to go through the grieving process. (Actually Eunice’s cat did die just after Christmas, but I didn’t really like it so I have not spent any time grieving.) Naturally I have been far too busy with Barnum rehearsals to think up lame excuses for not posting.

Sunday was a typical example. Spent the afternoon rehearsing with the rest of the cast. It is an extremely demanding show physically, because there is all the circus stuff to do as well as the normal routines of a musical show. You have to keep your wits about you with plate spinning, juggling, unicycling, stilt walking, etc, going on all over the place. That includes throwing bricks at the end of the Museum song. (Can I just say at this point that I may come over all ‘theatrical’ if people keep dropping bricks. It’s not hard. Just practice catching the bloody bricks.)

Things are going well though, and it should be a cracking show. Of course you won’t find out unless you go, so all the details of tickets for the event are here. Remember last year, several of you never came to Titanic and it turned out to be an absolute smash for the Company. Barnum the musical will be the same, don’t miss out this time.

Après moi, le déluge

With river levels in the area rising after the recent heavy rain, and more predicted this evening, it is interesting to compare a photo I took this morning with one I took at the same spot in September. Taken at the point on the track where the Trans Pennine Trail crosses the Holderness Drain, we seem to be back to the water levels of June. With more rain forecast for Monday it could get even higher!

Talking Heads

Spotted this new addition to the local streetscape. Part of the Business School extension to the local university, their official title is ‘Moving Matter’. Two heads are always better than one.

Cast Your Vote

What’s On Stage is running a poll for the site’s annual Theatregoer’s Choice Awards and I notice an old friend, Michael Jibson, is nominated for an award in the category of ‘Best Supporting Actor in a Musical’ for his part in ‘Take Flight’ at the Menier Chocolate Factory. Michael was, in his youth, an active member of Hessle Theatre Company so I am sure many members of the company will be supporting him with their votes, I’ve certainly cast mine in his favour. What with his part in Take Flight and a previous role in the film Flyboys Michael must almost be a qualified pilot by now. One can imagine the scene on the plane as Michael jets off to his first Broadway starring role. Suddenly the stewardess reveals the pilot has been taken ill and asks if there is anyone who can fly a plane. Step forward Michael to save the day as he announces that he has played Charles Lindbergh in a musical. He certainly gets my vote, you can cast yours here.

My New Year’s Resolution

In 2007 I published a post about picking brambles in the middle of the city. Since then the place where I took the photo has been levelled and become an ‘ipark‘. As far as I can see the ‘ipark‘ is just a collection of large sheds that will contain the same characterless businesses that dozens of other industrial estates have. But just in case we thought it was only a collection of large, grey, tin sheds creating a new industrial estate on an old paint factory site, it has been given the catchy description of ‘ipark‘ by the developers. Nowadays anything that people want to sound technologically up to the minute is an ‘i-something‘, it used to be an ‘e-something‘ in the early 1990’s, and in the 1950’s (with the ‘atomic’ age) it was an ‘a-something‘. That only leaves ‘o’ and ‘u’ for future generations to play with. So my first resolution is to refuse to use any more ‘i-words’ this year.

Similarly, I am refusing to add the word ‘global’ to anything. Today I heard on the radio someone use the (made-up) word ‘globesity‘ to describe a worldwide problem of obesity. By adding the word global it often suggests it is too big for individuals to do anything about, ‘globalisation’, ‘global warming’, ‘global recession’, ‘global economy’. Anyone using the word ‘global’ in this way is using ‘globlique speak‘, a new phrase I have invented and intend popularising in 2008. Except I can’t use it because that would break my New Year’s Resolution.

Look Behind You

Being the end of the year I had a look back over some of the Music Man blog posts and other things I have done this year. Strangely, the most popular photograph on my Flickr account is one I used in a post about the Railway Cafe in Wilmington. It was a photograph of the menu boards! . Perhaps people in the area are using it as an ‘online takeaway menu’. A depressing statistic is that the less I write the more readers turn up (November one post in the month but more readers than October). By writing nothing at all I could have a popular blog.

Like Puss, I have filled my Boots in the last few weeks with a number of pantos and Christmas plays. One of these was ‘Blue Cross Xmas’ at the Hull Truck Theatre. During the performance I was at there was a female member of the audience on the front row who got up part way through and walked unsteadily round the front to the exit. She caused a distraction but the actors carried on. A short while later, still during the performance, she returned but this time from the top of the stairs at the back. Sitting on the front row meant she had to come down the steps back to her seat. It was pretty obvious from her unsteady exit that she was well oiled, and this was confirmed when she fell down the steps. I never know whether to be impressed that during both of these interruptions the actors carried on, or if I want them to stop and tell her she’s a pain in the backside so we can all agree with them.

Happy New Year.

I Am Bloated

Yesterday felt like the dog end of Christmas so I decided to go and watch the film “I Am Legend”. Good film for the the first two thirds. The dog is sensational. In the last third of the film my attention began to wander. Too many bits of the story seemed to unravel. Began to think about other Will Smith films I have enjoyed. “Enemy of the State” is probably my favourite of his. Although “Ali” is another favourite, as well as “I, Robot”.

Then began thinking of all the films I could remember that start with the word “I” in the title. “I Was Monty’s Double”. “I Was A Teenage Werewolf”. “I Know What You Did Last Summer”. “I’m Alright Jack”. “I Claudius”. “I Dream of Jeannie”. “I Am Curious (Yellow)”. “I Spy”. Then the film finished so I ended that game.

A ‘viewing’ in Tesco

Yesterday I realised there were only two small items I needed to buy from the shop before Christmas. To avoid the madness of the thronging crowds I decided to go to the local Tesco in time for the usual Sunday opening time of 10 o’clock. I arrived at five minutes to ten expecting to walk in as soon as the doors opened, pick up the things I needed and be at the checkout and out by 10.02.

Imagine my surprise to find the doors already open and the place full of people wheeling full trolleys round the store. Then I saw a sign that the supermarket was open from 9 o’clock on this particular day for ‘viewing’. Why do people need an hour to ‘view’ the parsnips or the sprouts. It was obvious that they weren’t just viewing. Their trolleys were so fully laden they couldn’t ‘view’ over the top of them. If Tesco wanted people just to view the produce they should chain up the trolleys. Instead we have this ‘viewing’ euphemism as if we are looking at the latest Damien Hirst exhibition.

Consequently, my aim of being out of the shop by 10.02 was thwarted and I spent fifteen minutes behind three shoppers who had spent the previous hour enjoying the ‘view’.

Happy Christmas.

Blue Tree

Trying to be economical this Christmas (my financial situation makes Northern Rock’s look utterly sound) I have decided to make gifts of a range of things that I have made myself. Expect a jar of my apple chutney, bramble jam or even a small bottle of home-made sloe gin to be filling your stocking on Christmas morning.

One of my friends is going to receive my painting ‘Blue Tree’, a painting I did a few weeks ago in acrylic on canvas. It is based on a badly pruned apple tree I have in the garden (there is a picture of it in my post on stilt walking practice). It is also a pastiche of a Mondrian painting that I quite enjoy, ‘Grey Tree’. As my friend is a musical theatre devotee too I am going to keep the ‘economy’ theme going by tying his parcel in brown paper and string (“Brown paper packages tied up with string”) rather than proper Christmas wrapping. Hopefully he will like it. Don’t worry, I haven’t given the surprise away, he doesn’t read the Music Man blog.

Last rehearsal of the year

Monday and the last rehearsal of the year for the Hessle Theatre Company. We did a sing through of the second half of Barnum. Neil practised his tightrope walking. He’s getting good. I won a teddy bear in the raffle (I haven’t named it yet). And John took some photos of the company standing around the Christmas tree. It wasn’t our Christmas tree, just a conveniently handy one in the place where we rehearse, but it made a nice prop for the team photo. After all that it was down to the local pub for a merry get-together before we went our separate ways for Christmas and the New Year. After the New Year we are getting down to ‘floor rehearsals’ so the pace is quickening.

To keep you (and me) amused in the meanwhile here is a video of the start of the Barnum production from the mid 80’s starring Michael Crawford with one of my favourite songs from the show – ‘There is a Sucker Born Every Minute’.

If that whets your appetite, have a search for the other parts to the same show on Youtube.