Dark side of the Rainbow

CHAPTER 25

The Missing Song - Title Explained - The Hollow ManFriend - The Town of Titipu - Meiosis at work - Crashing (counting sheep) - A few explanations

My continuity shall be my undoing...

"And so,/ Although/ I'm ready to go,/ Yet recollect/ 'Twere disrespect/ Did I neglect/ To thus effect/ This aim direct,/ So I object" and object I do! Although quite happy with how the Mikado {gong} is going (something I'm going to extrapolate on a tad later) I have a 'pet peeve' which many of my nearest friends (and other people who happened to be near me at the same time) will know by heart, and it is this: While it is true that the show lagged somewhat in the second act, and that Simon Galahad-her had 'vamped' it up a bit, I believe the wrong songs were cut. Our Director, who by-and-large is a great guy and quite a comedian with a firm grasp of characterization and visual pun, cut out The Criminal Cried (one of my favourite songs) and left in The Sun Who's Rays, which is a song I'd put on par with Katisha's [cut] song (nice, but slow and it puts me to sleep). And Mr esSGee cut out half of the patter song (the better half) I am so Proud! I could go on, but it would be pointless, as the songs aren't in the show and that's that...

In the Green Room the other day The Mikado{gong} (whom I shall refer to as Biscuit, which is a parody of his nickname) was talking.... a lot. He's quite a funny character and has a lovely sense of humor which is really refreshing if you're having a bad day. Biscuit was telling the few of us there that he was a Pink Floyd fan and as such had come across the Pink Floyd synchronicity. Biscuit went on to explain that (apparently) if watching the Wizard of Oz (good ol' Judy Garland) you have Dark Side of the Moon on pause and un-pause it when the MGM lion roars for the third time near the beginning and the two synchronize crazily! dum-dum-dum! I then thought of the catchy title Dark side of the Rainbow (and was quite happy with myself), which is of course an amalgamation of the names of these materials. Then I found out that this title is a well known phrase used in connection with this whole synchronicity thingy... bother.

I have had a few conversations with Francis recently (who is also known as Glenn, but not Biscuit) and within them a reoccurring theme has appeared. As is my wont, I have mentioned in passing a 'group' of friends in Melbourne (mainly two of them, Nick & Dani) and my activities with and around them. Glenn has taken it into his head that somehow I have created these characters in my head, and therefore they do not exist. This is a lie. They are as real as Euarro's Friend or Scary-Irish-Priest if not real-er! But Glenn demands that they do not exist, which has led to some very interesting conversations and interjections on his behalf. I feel that he may be pleasantly surprised when I point out my friends to him (at a distance) when they come to see the show on Saturday...

The Mikado{gong} is going well, as I said before. We had the final Dress Rehearsal on Thursday, and it went well... After a few shaky starts with lines still a bit not-quite-there throughout the week I really churned through it over and over and it started to come together. The space was huge compared to last time I worked in the Ford (there was a giant castle interior taking up most of the space... not that I got a chance to use the castle... stupid village...) and I had a bit of difficulty fonding my way around and getting into places that didn't feel like I was six hundred miles away from the audience.... By opening night I felt ready for anything... There were the odd lines mixed up and the odd thing that didn't do what it was meant to do, but all up it went well. I had survived an audience! There was even a [sole] response to my line "Yes, it's quite usual, isn't it?" (we later found out that the voice was my mum, bless her Irish heart, so we applauded her over the phone!). Then came the crunch. Saturday was a double set of shows, with one on nice and early and then a later show a few hours later. We were there from 11am 'till 10.30pm... It was crazy... I was still feeling shaky so I went over my first few lines of my first song... and again... and again... and again... then went on stage and promptly forgot them! This caused me to end my little song several bars before the band (an occurrence which I blamed on the inability of the ensemble to remember my instructions. A re-occurring theme already in place in that song during their windmill 'dance')! Thankfully this somehow didn't phase me and I managed to deliver My Little List without flaw, and the rest of the play flowed on... My memories of the second performance of the day are as follows - I didn't mess up my opening number & someone misplaced my handbag so I was unable to 'hide' my phone during the mega-mix. Also, Glenn messed up some of his character's titles, so I had to remember what he'd improv'd and "tax bloke" is what came out... That's it. I don't really remember anything much other than that.

People have accused me of undermining my acting ability or understating my situation, a sort of introspective meiosis if you will, and in some ways i guess they are right. I haven't held my 'ability' as anything exciting and still don't really. I wasn't even considering going for B&B until Dani practically through me across a train because me saying I couldn't act was BS (an occurrence which Glenn says never happened). I don't even know what I did during the performances that was funny. Oh, there are the odd things that were originally in there like the snot joke or the darth vader, which will always get a laugh. But the improvisation stuff I don't remember. People keep saying "OH, that thing you did in ActII was brilliant!" and I have no idea what they are talking about. For me, the comedy and improv is all 'of the moment'. I didn't even realise I had milked the snot joke more than usual during the second performance. But apparently I did. I just go out there and play the character and what happens happens. Bah!

So anywho, it's late, and Glenn is waking me up in less than 2 hours to go to some family thing, farewelling someone at some place, but I may give it a miss (as much as I don't want to). I am stuffed, and have work tomorrow. I probably should have gone to bed earlier, but I wanted to write this up, and it kinda sucked my brain out of my head... I swear I trailed through hundreds of pages on Synchronicity and Mikado{gong} lyric pages... My head is trying to kill me...

The 'explanations':
1. 'bother' at the end of the "title explained" paragraph... It's partly genuine feelings of bother towards other people stealing my ideas before I think them, and partly from Ron in PotterPuppetPals... silly Ron.
2. The {gong} after the word Mikado{gong} is reference to the play, where every time that word is mentioned it is followed by a gong noise.
3. good night.