Well, dear readers, I must say that we had a really fun stumble-through of the Kritzerland show yesterday afternoon. Most of the shows we do I’m pretty intimately aware of the material, but for this show that really isn’t the case. Oh, I knew the famous Coward songs, but before we began assembling this, I didn’t know The Girl Who Came to Supper at all, and there were a few others, too, that I just discovered as I was listening to a lot of CDs. So, for this show every time someone sings it’s very fresh for my ears, and that’s really nice for a change. Hearing these wonderful songs is a bit of a discovery, and I’m really glad I decided on Mr. Coward for this one. Our cast is just fantastic – Eileen Barnett, Lisa Livesay, Jane Noseworthy, John Sloman, Robert Yacko, along with our young ‘uns, Oliviana Marie and Sami Staitman, and our guest star, Susan Watson.
Our stumble-throughs are probably my favorite part of what is now our Kritzerland process – just the cast, Adryan Russ, me, and the parents of the kids – in my living room, with our wonderful Lloyd Cooper at the grand piano. Everyone in that room is so supportive and you can just feel it. And while everyone did a stellar job on all their songs, I do have to give a special shout out to Jane Noseworthy for this show – she had the daunting task of learning an eight-minute number called The Coconut Girl, from The Girl Who Came to Supper. It’s about six songs and quite a bit of dialogue and she just nailed it, and her performance of it is kind of classic, and solid gold, baby, solid gold. And I do have to mention that people were in tears when Susan Watson sang If Love Were All. I did have a few little nitpicky notes, so we addressed those afterwards and now it’s on to the sound check and then show.
Other than that, I had a perfectly fine day. I was up at nine, did a three-mile jog, had some bacon and eggs, did some banking, then came home. We had a little work session with Lloyd and a couple of our singers who wanted to work a little before the stumble-through. After, Karen Staitman, Sami, and I went to Casa Vega, where I had one taco, one cheese enchiladas, one small salad, and a bit of rice. I felt very guilty about it, and so when I got back home I did another two-and-a-half mile jog. I wasn’t in the mood to watch a motion picture, so instead I played on the computer.
I went through my iPhotos to see if there were any fun photographs I wanted to post in these here notes, and I did export a few for the next few days. One photograph I’ll post now is a classic James Thurber New Yorker cartoon. I have been a fan of Mr. Thurber ever since I saw A Thurber Carnival at the Huntington Hartford Theater, the national tour of the show with Imogene Coca, King Donovan, and Arthur Treacher. I thought it was the wittiest, cleverest, funniest thing ever and even went back to see it a second time. Of course, I then had to seek out all Mr. Thurber’s books and cartoons, and I just adored them, especially the cartoons. Thurber was a one-off with a completely original sense of humor and way of looking at things, and his line art is so simple and so brilliant, as are his captions. You know how you know someone is funny? When the show curtain, a Thurber drawing, gets a laugh as soon as the theater curtain rose to reveal it. I felt such a kinship with Mr. Thurber and was certainly influenced by him. So imagine my surprise to find out that we were both born on December 8. Anyway, this cartoon is amongst my favorites of all of his. It first appeared in the New Yorker in 1938.
If you click on the picture you can see the caption better. Isn’t that wonderful? And I sit here in wonderment every single day when I walk into my living room and see the original of that cartoon hanging on my wall. Yes, Virginia, the original Thurber drawing, with the caption, of course, in his own hand. Finding original Thurber drawings is not that difficult – he did a lot of them. But finding his published drawing is almost impossible, and finding a classic New Yorker cartoon from the Golden Age is a miracle. And it was a miracle that I was offered it. I couldn’t afford it, of course, but I had several things that the dealer who had it (a book dealer) wanted and we made a trade that made both of us very happy. I’d been offered other drawings over the years, but none had been published and I just couldn’t see spending that kind of money on something that hadn’t been published. Am I glad I waited.
Today – now wait just a darned minute. You see, you see, I’m now into what used to be the second half of the notes. Of course, we had the Unseemly Button and so it made sense for me to go to the current day. But now I do it without a segue. It seems abrupt to me, this no segue routine. We need a little traveling music or something, don’t we? Perhaps another Brain song in French – yes, that will be a lovely segue – this one is the finale of act one – Now.
There, that’s much better. Today, I shall do a jog, I shall relax, then it’s sound check and then it’s show. I will, of course, have a full report.
Tomorrow, I’m hoping we can cast the remaining cast for the next Kritzerland show. I already have a good deal of the music and as soon as I know who our other two folks are then I can assign the songs. I’m hoping we get approval on two packages, so I can prep those releases for later this week, and I’ll start some new liner notes. Tuesday I’m seeing the Tommy Tune show about Studio 54 – really looking forward to that, I must say. The rest of the week is meetings and meals and hopefully picking up packages and, of course, work will continue on the house.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do a jog, relax, have a sound check and do a show. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland where I shall fall asleep to my favorite Thurber line: Well, if I called the wrong number why did you answer the phone?” Brilliant.