As we had a late night last night, we decided to order breakfast in the room. It arrived promptly on a little wheeled table, set with all the linen and silverware of a dining room table, and even had a little warming box underneath to keep the cooked breakfast and pastries warm. The thing only just fitted between the two beds (oh, why did I say double instead of kingsize when we moved?!) Anyway, we had a very civilised breakfast, albeit in our underwear.
Today started with a workshop on sight-reading and pitch which was interesting but not as informative as I’d hoped. I’d decided a while back that I need to start taking voice lessons to improve my singing and the workshop just reinforced that.
We were back at the Place des Artes for about 12:30 to try and secure good seating for the festival’s ‘No Talent Show’ (I’d heard that a particularly cute member of the Captain Smartypants ensemble was going to be doing a piece dressed as a Matador and I wanted a good view!) The show was a fairly good musical cabaret including ballad singing, a series of take-offs of Sonny and Cher, various short satirical songs, a two-minute summary of every opera ever written (where the aforementioned Matador and a ‘Kenny Everett’ style bearded, bad-drag Valkyrie give us a pastiche of common opera themes and hang-ups.) The whole show concluded by forty-odd rugby-build men doing a (very good) cheer-leading routine complete with pompoms, mini-skirts and BIG hair. So pretty much what you’d expect from Gay Cabaret…
On the whole it was a diverting two and a half hours – although it should only have lasted two hours. Consequently we were behind schedule and made a mad dash to the hotel to change into costume for our show. We made it with time to spare and were actually early for the call time. There followed the inevitable standing around before we were led down to a rehearsal room to warm up by our minder for the day.
Yesterday during the rehearsal, we had timed the show at 29 minutes, 30+ seconds long (we have a half-hour slot) and we were concerned that we couldn’t wait for applause to die down before opening the following number. Groups that have overrun have had their lighting and sound unceremoniously cut and we were keen not to suffer such ignominy. It was quite a surprise then that, as we were lined up outside the door into the wings, with about five minutes to go, Charlie came along the line and explained in whispers that we’d been asked to do an additional number! The chosen piece was ‘Coming and Going’ which (fortunately!) we all know well – and even includes a brief solo spot for Brett! Wehay!
The performance was a real buzz. We sang better than I’ve heard us in a long time. Technically we were almost perfect – although we did manage to mangle our surprise switch into singing French for ‘Stand By Your Man’ – and we got three standing ovations during the set. Afterwards, as we were being led out of the theatre to the adjacent one where we were due to have our Chorus Photograph taken, we were applauded and cheered all the way. The Melo Men, who had preceded us on the stage, greeted us with a rendition of ‘God Save The Queen’ as we exited the theatre (which was nice, as we’d serenaded them with the ‘Marseillaise’ as they’d been collected from the stage door.) There was also a guy, with tears running down his face, who wanted to know if we had ‘Come What May’ on a CD so I pointed him in the direction of the festival shop and thanked god we might sell a bit more merchandising so we wouldn’t have to carry it all home again!
So we ended on a high, headed back to the hotel to change into more appropriate party gear and then took a cab back to the Gay Village to meet up with the boys for dinner. We ran into John Goodwin and his partner Nick Bowles along the way and it ended up as a group of eleven of us descending on the restaurant, which coped admirably. I had a steak which was both a bit tough and a bit underdone, but it didn’t spoil the evening. We skipped dessert and coffee and went straight on down to the Sky Bar for the Twin Cities Chorus party. It was a lot busier than last night – you couldn’t move on the roof terrace for people. Unfortunately though the weather was somewhat cooler than the previous night so no one really fancied the hot tub or pool – and after I’d made a special effort to wear my shorts!
Brett bopped his way around the dance floor while I looked on (I am not a dancer unless I’m falling down drunk but he enjoys it so I encourage him to get up and dance whenever there’s an opportunity) and we mingled the night away with LGMC blokes and the various others we’ve met along the way. Called in at the Stock bar on the way home, really only to see it and so we knew what the other guys were on about. Sure enough the guys there were good – actually they looked more confident on stage and did better striptease than the guys in Campus. We ran into a couple of Brett’s former Capital City MC colleagues and chatted a while before cabbing home.
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