The show went pretty damn well if you consider that a week ago there was no show at all. She went up on the first song, as she has done at every rehearsal, all four of them. She just couldn't retain it. But I gave her a line to say if it happened and told her to say that and then embrace the fumfer wholeheartedly - as soon as she went up, she said the line and it got a huge laugh and the audience was completely with her - then she started the verse over and finished the number. Second number was fine, but the third number, which was designed to do something very specific in the show - well, she started off great and they were totally entranced with it, and then, unfortunately, she skipped an entire verse and went to the end, and the pianist was totally thrown and she stopped and went back and still didn't do it right, so that the whole point of the second song was totally gone - tomorrow at the post mortem she will understand that the audience will forgive the first one but not the second, and you could visibly feel the tension in the room because they got really nervous she'd keep doing it. Fortunately that was the last time that happened. She did very well on my song, When You're Waiting For Love, got all the laughs - then she screwed up the set-up to the next song so much that it completely threw the pianist who then screwed up the opening of the song - my favorite arrangement in the show. She did the song okay, but the fumfer was kind of fatal for the mood. But then she hit the number that I knew would be the audience favorite - and she really took the direction I gave her yesterday and she KILLED it - they totally loved every second of it - she belabored one joke beyond its humor point, but otherwise it was perfect. And from then on, pretty much everything worked. She was too dependent on taking drinks of water - nobody needs that much water - it's a total crutch - but it all worked rather well and we'll probably keep about two-thirds of it and then build the rest of the act around that.
