Year of the Queen: The Making of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert - The Musical by Jeremy Stanford

Author:Jeremy Stanford [Stanford, Jeremy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781620959459
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2007-05-01T07:00:00+00:00

It’s Tuesday and the principles’ songs are scheduled for today. I’m terrified they’ll all be as high as the ensemble numbers and therefore be unsingable. I meet Tony as I arrive and I ask how his voice is doing. He rolls his eyes at me saying, “Not good”, and tells me he’d rung his mother, Toni Lamond, last night, freaking out about the keys being too high. She kept telling him, “Say something! Say something!” He vows to have a chat to Spud about it today. I’m relieved it’ll be him, not me.

Nick Hardcastle is filling in for Daniel today, while he’s in Adelaide, and he stays with us as the ensemble is shuffled off to the music room to drill harmonies. Both Sides Now has made it into the show, even after it went so badly at the second workshop. To our enormous relief, Spud has worked miracles with the arrangement for it. It’s in a lower key for a start, but he’s also put it into three part harmony and given us all parts we can reach.

We move onto We Belong. Spud says he’s worried the song is now permanently associated with Bridget Jones. I don’t have a clue what he’s talking about, as I haven’t seen the film, but he’s completely reworked the arrangement and it is now a big choral epic of a song. Again, it’s in a better key and the harmony I’m given is good for me. I feel the blood returning to my body.

After lunch the entire cast gathers to sing through the whole show. It’s like a joke. We only started learning this monster yesterday, and now we’re singing through the whole thing from start to finish, complete with harmonies. A lot of the songs have backing tracks and Spud plays along with them. The end result is that it doesn’t sound that far off being like a real performance. I find that my solo numbers are all in a good key to sing but my parts in the group numbers are still far too high.

When we reach the end, we’re all stunned at how good it sounds for day two. The ensemble is dismissed and the three leads stay to polish the principles’ numbers. My voice is ragged and I really, really want to call it a day. On the break I spy Tony taking Spud aside. I hope he works the Sheldon magic on him. When the confab breaks up, Tony makes a bee line to me and says gravely, “He wouldn’t budge an inch”. We’re both a little stunned as we know we can’t be singing way above our ranges like this eight shows a week. Our voices will be shot in a matter of days.

When we return after the break, I’ve got bugger all voice left. We sing through our songs a couple of times, but I’m getting seriously panicked about blowing my voice for tomorrow. Just as I’m about to raise my hand to pull the plug, Spud lets us off the hook.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.