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September 7, 2015:

KRITZERLAND AT STERLING’S 61

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, we are back and to prove it we are here. What an ordeal this was – down for the count for twenty-six hours. But more about that in a minute because first we have to accentuate the positive: There are Kritzerland shows and there are Kritzerland anniversary shows and tonight’s anniversary show, Kritzerland at Sterling’s 61 was way too much fun, and perhaps the best anniversary show we’ve done.

We had a packed to the rafters crowd, oversold, and they were a wonderful audience. I always know right in the beginning of the opening patter how much I’m going to have to work to get them with me and the show, and I knew instantly they were great – huge laughs throughout the opening patter, including an accidental gift that just happened and that I went with. The Pacific Overtures/Peter Pan What If went great – those two long cuts I made made all the difference in the world. Add to that having a perfect cast doing really fun material and you have a good time. It was a long show, but it never really flagged. I cannot say enough about Brennley Brown (stunning Not While I’m Around), Jason Graae (hilarious as always and then that gorgeous voice on She Touched Me), Damon Kirsche (tearing up the jernt with Ten Percent, a cut song from Chicago, and his other two songs were glorious), Sharon McNight (getting howls of laughter with Haiku and then blowing the roof off the jernt with her amazing arrangement of The Man I Love), Darcie Roberts (what a powerhouse – doing He Has a Way from Busker Alley – she starred in the show opposite Tommy Tune – and loving her from the audience was Richard Sherman, who wrote it with brother Robert – and then doing an amazing Don’t Rain on My Parade), Hadley Miller (eleven and killing it with The Dressing Song from The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T), Jenna Lea Rosen (doing a gorgeous put-together of Here’s That Rainy Day and Now When the Rain Falls), Sami Staitman (doing a bang-up job with Note to Boys, which is from Welcome to My World), Sammy Williams (what a joy to have him recreating numbers he did thirty-eight years ago in my musical, Stages), and our very own Robert Yacko (who introduced a brand new song I wrote for an upcoming project – my little paean to the magical place that was called C.C. Brown’s in Hollywood – his rendition was perfect – and then doing our very own Skip Kennon’s great song She Dies along with the title song from his musical of Jack Finney’s Time and Again). John Boswell was amazing as always, and Alby Potts played for Sami’s song, as he’s the MD for our show. So many great folks in attendance, including two original A Chorus Line members, Kay Cole and Ron Dennis (cheering on cast mate Sammy Williams), Armelia McQueen, Barry Pearl, Patricia Ward Kelly, Michael Kerker, the Shermans, Walter Painter, our very own Amy and Mark, neighbors Tony Slide and Bob Gitt, Shelly Markham, and others my brain is to tired to remember. And, of course, Adryan Russ, our mighty co-producer. And now on to October. Here’s our merry troupe of players – left to right: Darcie Roberts, Adryan Russ, Jason Graae, Robert Yacko, Li’l Ol Me, Hadley Miller, Brennley Brown, John Boswell, Sammy Williams, Sami Staitman, Damon Kirsche, Jenna Lea Rosen, Sharon McNight and Alby Potts.

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Back to the ordeal. I’m surprised I managed to get a decent night’s sleep of about seven or eight hours, given how irritated I was. I went to bed at midnight, woke up at three to find we were still down (at that point we’d been down eleven hours), texted our web guy, then went back to sleep, was up at around seven to find us still down, went back to sleep and woke up at nine-thirty, to find we were STILL down. At that point I had a conversation with our web guy, who was on his way to the inept data center to move us and hundreds of other websites across the street to a new data center. That was a long and involved process and I was receiving updates, none of which resulted in us being up.

During that, we did a run-through of the show. There’s always one run-through where things just aren’t clicking, and this was ours, but we got through it and after I gave notes and I’m sure we’ll be right back on track on Tuesday evening. Then we headed over to The Federal for a long sound check. At around five I texted our web guy and he finally had news – the site was on the new server BUT wasn’t coming up and he was sussing out the problem. Ten minutes later we were up – finally – after twenty-six damn hours, the longest we’ve ever been down. Happily, I’d e-mailed him the notes and he posted them so sorry pretenders to the throne, we did not miss a day of notes – they were late but up well before the end of the evening. That allowed me to finally relax and enjoy the evening.

After the show, a bunch of us went to Little Toni’s – I probably shouldn’t have done what I did, but I had spaghetti and meatballs in meat sauce, knowing that it usually makes me sick later in the evening. It was very good going down and I hope it just stays down. Then I came home.

Today, I’ll hopefully arise after a good night’s beauty sleep and it’s a holiday so I hope to just relax. I do have to go down to the theater at one to see the fixed and adjusted light cues, but that really shouldn’t take more than a half-hour, then I’ll eat, then I’ll jog, and then I’m sitting on my couch like so much fish.

Tomorrow, we add costumes to the mix. Sami will arrive around four-fifteen and she’ll have an hour or more to work her quick changes. Hoping we all like everything, but if we don’t, then things will have to get adjusted. Then we do a full dress/tech run-through without stops, during which Michael Lamont will be taking the production photographs. Tomorrow we have an invited dress. I don’t know that we’ll have a lot of folks, but I think it’s extremely necessary to have bodies in the seats for Sami to play to. Then Thursday and Friday are our official previews, we open on Saturday, and play a matinee on Sunday.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, see lighting fixes, eat, jog, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite nuts? How do you like them – raw, salted, roasted, flavored? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy that Kritzerland at Sterling’s 61 (and our fifth anniversary show) went swimmingly.

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