THE SHOW MUST GO ON

November 11, 2019

The Davis Musical Theatre Company personifies the saying "the show must go on."  Three weeks before they were scheduled to open their production of Gypsy, a structural problem happened in another part of the building they share with three other offices.  The whole building needed to be shut down while everything was inspected (and fixed).

That left them with no place to rehearse and no place to perform.

Producer Steve Isaacson says that he had never talked with so many pastors in his life.  They found one church where they could rehearse, but the church was about to undergo a remodeling itself, so they had to find another church in which to perform.

They thought they would have to perform with no costumes and no sets, but they were allowed back into their own building for only an hour and were able to grab costumes, so they had some but not all.  They were able to borrow from another theater company and people used their own clothes so it didn't look like it was uncostumed.

The best thing about these strippers is that they are performing on an altar, so dancing under a huge cross. 

But there were no sets, just set pieces tables and chairs, etc. 

And the show went on...for free.  They decided not to charge anything for the show and, from what we saw on Sunday's matinee, a lot of people were  taking advantage of it.

It was our third show of the weekend.  I don't like 3 show weekends.  By the time Sunday rolls around, I'm really tired of theater.  We started with A Christmas Story: the musical, which was wonderful.  Then we saw Deathtrap, a "comedy thriller," which is more thriller and less comedy.  I had seen that show before in San Francisco and it had one of the most amazing scenes I'd ever seen.  A minor performer is a lawyer.  The actor playing the role was a friend of friends of ours and we had spent an afternoon with him before we saw the show, and he invited us backstage after  the show.

This guy was fair skinned and had white hair and at one point toward the end of the show, someone says something embarrassing to him and he bushes bright red.  On cue.  When I asked him how he did it, he said that the trick is learning where in the dialog you start holding your breath.  I still remember that so vividly and I was disappointed when the lawyer in this production didn't do that--but I suspect that no other actor did it.

But the show was really good and the hardest part of writing the review is that there are so many twists and turns in the plot that you can't mention the plot at all other than setting up the premise. 

And then came Sunday, and I really wasn't ready for another production of Gypsy, and one without sets or costumes. But it was a really good production and the woman who played Rose, the Ethel Merman character, was so good she made me think of Merman whenever she belted out one of her 9 songs.

So it was a good afternoon after all and I was able to write a good review of the production.

While we were out, Ned was putting together new cabinets for the kitchen.

Going to be great when it's all done and all the pots, pans and dishes are put away.