Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish, listening to Vaughan Williams’ The Pilgrim’s Progress, which I somehow have never heard before. It’s really nice. Sir Adrian Boult conducting – the greatest of all Vaughan Williams conductors, with an excellent cast. Beautifully recorded, this, and I wish they’d remaster the Boult stereo symphony cycle like they have this. I’ll tell you one thing – there is no mistaking Vaughan Williams’ music – so easy to identify even after only a few bars. I’ve now watched the first four of six episodes of The Chestnut Man, from the creator of The Killing. I’ll say this: He really understands how to do these things, unlike others who don’t. The Killing did go on too long – too many episodes and too much stretching to no purpose – but he learned his lesson and this show is much leaner. He understands completely how to keep you hooked. Of course, if you’ve seen the original The Killing you’ll know he definitely has a template he follows, although this one is based on a novel he wrote. Anyway, the actors are very good, and it really does move right along. I’ll probably finish the final two episodes before I go to bed.
Yesterday was a bit of a day. I only got four or five hours of sleep, got up, she of the Evil Eye arrived, and I was out the door by nine. We had another birthday, this one a cast member, so I stopped at Gelson’s and got a cake before moseying on over to the theater for our rehearsal. We were missing a couple of cast members, so we ran as much as we could of the group numbers and Richard Allen was with us, so we got to run a lot of music, too. Also, our costume designer came and took some measurements. I had to have discussions about the set and how to make it work in this space and we had to make some difficult decisions and cut the platform sizes down in order to have enough space for the band – hopefully, we solved it and it won’t cause too many problems or me having to re-stage anything. Finally, I let everyone go around one except for those involved in the wrestling scene. We spent ninety minutes re-staging that, very slowly, beat by beat. They’re not retaining it yet, but I told them to go home and write everything down, broken up into sequences and to really get it in their heads. I can’t and won’t let them do it up to speed until they’re absolutely solid and not having memory issues as to what comes where. But it was great to finally get it done and we’ll put it in for the first run-through we do, probably Tuesday or Wednesday. In the original production, the wrestler was Freddie Blassie, but we didn’t have anyone who could do that here, so I changed it to Mr. Moto, who we mention in the song portion, and that turned out to be a great change and we have a Japanese fellow who’ll be very funny.
After rehearsal, I went to the mail place, where I had a weird notice from the bank that a deposit I made on March 2 wasn’t credited into the account until the seventh. Well, someone screwed up because it was a cash deposit that is always credited instantly. So, I came home and called Bank of America and asked for an explanation and after being on hold for a bit the nice lady couldn’t really tell me anything other than there must have been some sort of screw-up and she suggested that I go to my branch and hash it out with them. Unfortunately, I don’t have the receipt anymore, but that shouldn’t matter. I just want to make sure it never happens again. The I moseyed on over to Stanley’s and had a chicken Caesar salad and proofed three chapters whilst eating it. It was excellent. After that, I got a muffin and then came back home. I caught up on e-mails and stuff, and then I sat on my couch like so much fish and watched The Chestnut Man. The rest you know. If my ears don’t deceive me, I do believe that Vaughan Williams repurposed some of the music from The Pilgrim’s Progress for his amazing fifth symphony. At the time of writing the fifth, he hadn’t finished Pilgrim’s Progress yet.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do whatever needs doing, I’ll finish proofing the book, I’ll try to write a little, I may pay a visit to the theater to see how the set is coming along, but mostly I need to watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow, I have a meal with my brother, and then I’ll write and try to pin Grant down about when we can enter this final set of fixes – there really aren’t that many – probably wouldn’t even take an hour to do. Then Tuesday we’re back rehearsing, and we have a lot of that to do. We’ll begin rough run-throughs and continue doing as many of those as we can. I don’t have a main actor on Tuesday, so we’ll have to do everything but what he’s in. But I’ll have him come in around five-thirty for an hour to run his monologue – he needs to run that as much as possible from now on. The rest of the week is more of the same.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up when I’m up, do whatever needs doing, finish proofing, eat, write, maybe pay a visit to the theater (then I can eat around there), and then I’ll watch, listen, and relax. 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, happy to have finally re-staged the big wrestling scene.