Back from a good Kritzerland show. Almost full house. Not my favorite of our shows, although there were many highlights. I just didn't have the time to do what I normally do, and we cast it so late that I had to let some of the singers do stuff they knew - unfortunately, that rarely works for our shows, which are highly structured. I never had any real time to finesse the commentary and therefore didn't even notice that I'd left one song out of the commentary - fortunately I knew the history of the show pretty well and was able to improvise my way through. And we had so much trouble casting the second male, and I took a chance on someone Doug suggested and while he's a very talented fellow, cabaret is too new to him and he was too uncomfortable and nervous (he was much better at the stumble-through), and he blew several lyrics in his first song, which just put him in a bad place in his head. I will never do that again - I either have to know or hear the person - cannot cast blindly. Kerry was superb as was Damon Kirsche and Brittney Bertier and Amy Gillette both did well, but again, I should have chosen their songs, not them. Maude Maggart everyone loved. And opening the show with our entire cast of the LA show was great. Some of my patter landed very well and the tiny What If I did actually got howls of laughter. One of the most assured performers in the show? Sami Staitman. She inverted a lyric in my song about movie theaters and I heard it right away and was so scared for her and how she was going to work her way out of it - but not one single person in that room had any idea and she got back on track brilliantly - the two lines involved thankfully could go in either order, but it was musically getting out of the second line (which she did first) that was worrisome and she was just perfect.
