Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish, listening to Andre Previn’s cello concerto, kind of Previn in modern mode but not too modern. Surprisingly, it has never been recorded and it certainly should be. Previn has always been one of my favorite film composers and I’m fond of his classical pieces. we had all our actors with us and that was lovely. Ah, he withdrew it several years after he premiered it in 1967. What I’ve got and what I may issue on CD if we can clean it up enough, is a radio broadcast – I think it could be cleaned up and I’d love to issue it and I have a couple of other classical pieces by film composers that I’ve been sitting on, so we’ll see. Earlier, we had another rehearsal, our first with our entire cast. I began where we left off, with the remaining ten pages of the show. It ended up taking longer than I wanted it to, but there are six songs and a lot of dialogue to negotiate in those ten pages. And I’m staging everything – trying to keep it simple, but staging is staging, especially the musical numbers. Once I finished, we went back and ran the stuff from just before it, as a refresher. Then we began at the beginning and put in our actor who’d missed two rehearsals. He’s done this many times, but there are also quite a few changes in this version. He’s pretty quick, though. His solo stuff was easy in the early parts of act one because it’s him narrating to the audience and singing a few short ditties. There were some memory lapses in the blocking, but I think eventually everyone finally remembered what they were supposed to do. We got through all of act one, and then began act two, where our guy had to learn the staging to a few musical numbers, so we got him up to speed on those and I got us through act two right up until what we’d started the evening with. So, it really was kind of a start and stop stumble-through with a lot of stumbling but getting through. The cast is really fun and really creative, which is what I love – actors with sharp instincts, especially comic instincts. So, we’ll mush on and hopefully get a run-through in tonight, after which I’ll just clean up stuff. After the rehearsal, I stopped at Gelson’s and got a Caesar salad (no chicken) as I hadn’t eaten since nine in the morning. It was very good and, of course, lettuce has almost zero calories, and I took it easy on the dressing.
Yesterday was almost okay, save for one brief annoyance, which I reacted to so strongly that it became comical and there was laughter instead of drama. I was up at seven after only four hours of sleep, and out the door by nine. I went to Art’s Deli only to find their prices went up AGAIN – absolutely absurd and I’m done with them. $23 for an omelet – I don’t think so. I mean, what does it cost them to make a bacon and cheese omelet? Under two bucks, I’d imagine. After that, I went to the mail place and picked up nothing, then went to the nearby Westfield Mall. I bought a nice black pullover shirt – a little heavier than a t-shirt, but very nice – then went to the Apple Store. I don’t think they’re coming out with a new version of what I have anytime soon, although I’m sure the second I got something new, it would suddenly appear instantly. So, I’d either have to get the 24-inch iMac from three years ago – that has the new M1 chip, but not the newer M2 chip. And do I really want to buy a computer that is three years old already? Then they have what they call the Mac Mini, which is a station that contains the computer – a small square thing and then you have to have a separate monitor. And those two things together would cost slightly more than I paid for my computer, so that’s an option at some point, I suppose. My computer is now eight years old and no computer is built to last that long without having problems.
Then I came home, answered e-mails, then sat on my couch like so much fish and watched the first thirty minutes of Hollywood or Bust, a Martin and Lewis movie directed by Frank Tashlin. I’m not sure I’ve seen it all the way through since I saw it back when it came out. There are some fun gags, of course, but considering the title, there are woefully few location shots in Hollywood. It’s more of a road picture and once they get to Hollywood, the best we get is the Hollywood Bowl and an empty lot near Paramount that they dressed to look like a used car dealership. I fell asleep thirty minutes in and slept for forty-five minutes and then finished watching it. Then I went back and watched what I’d missed.
After that, I shaved and showered and then moseyed on over to the theater for our rehearsal and the rest you know unless you skipped the first paragraph.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do whatever needs doing, I’ll eat something light, and then I’ll get to the theater to join Doug, who wrote down all the blocking for the missing actor, and the missing actor, and we’ll just drill him on the one scene where he has a ton of blocking, which has to be super sharp to work, and we’ll drill him on his musical staging. Then at six we’ll do a stumble-through the show, no stopping unless we absolutely have to, and then once that’s finished we can spend a couple of hours doing clean-up work and running the numbers that have staging. Then I’ll come home. Oh, and a very happy Father’s Day to all the fathers out there in the dark.
Tomorrow, I’ll relax during the day, then we do a full-out run-through, no stops no matter what. Afterwards, we’ll take fifteen minutes and then do it again. Tuesday, we’ll do a walk-through the scenes that have a lot of blocking – there really are only a couple of those – and we’ll do the numbers that have staging. Then we do the show at eight. Wednesday, we do the second performance and that will be that. Then on Thursday Robert Yacko and I are seeing the new musical at the Taper, Transparent, based on the TV show. I really do wish they’d give shows based on recent movies and TV a long rest, but that’s all they seem to want to do.
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, eat, drill stuff with the now not missing actor, do a stumble-through, clean-up whatever needs it, and then I’ll come home. 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, as we salute all the fathers out there in the dark.