Ten Little Chances to be Free

Obviously I have gone completely off my nut, because I've spent several successive evenings looking up information on parrot ownership. Even though I absolutely do not need a feathery bundle of terror in my life, my parents would kill me, I'll be going back to school at some point and won't have a stable living situation, and I'd have to save up for a while to afford the initial expense. Not to mention that apartment-hunting once I'm on my own will probably be hard enough without, say, a conure or an African grey in tow. But--they're so awesome. And intelligent and obnoxious and fascinating and my boss has started teasing me for getting all excited whenever we end up boarding a big bird.

And yes, I have pulled some April Fools pranks slightly less lame than rickrolling musicals.net, but they're all IRL. My mom TP'd the hallway between my room and my brother's and then laughed like a loon when we each blamed it on the other. XD But I got my revenge: I baked a completely normal spice cake and left it in the kitchen with "Happy April Fools Day!" written in icing on it. The suspense made a much better prank than anything I could actually have done to it.

I'm totally tempted to go audition for this. Looks like it'll be fun and fairly low-key, which is good because it would be my first audition for any non-school show. Now I just need to spend the next ten days agonizing needlessly over preparing 16 bars of operetta. Which shouldn't actually be too hard--yay for being in the Mikado my last semester--but I'm rusty. ;)

Went up to NY on Saturday--for the first time since January--to see Jeff in SITPWG. Which is a great show, but it didn't really grab me--honestly, I was just there for Jeff, and to hang out fangirling with mmebahorel and lady_iphigeneia. Jeff is adorable; he came out the stage door before the show to say hi and was bouncing up and down and dancing with excitement that he got to go on. ♥ Also adorable onstage, at the stage door post-show, with Nikki, and just in general. Jess and I drove up together and spent the whole four or five hours chattering about fannish things, then more over a lunch of utterly delicious hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese food, and then over dinner with Jenn, and then we went to Starbucks and geeked out for about four hours before somebody finally noticed the time. I somehow managed to lose my voice during all this chatter, and wound up singing along to the PRC in baritone register on the way home. Oooops.

So on Wednesday I went up to NYC and saw Jerry Springer: The Opera. It was utterly bizarre in what I'm pretty sure is a good way; much brain-breaky resulted from the sheer juxtaposition of Jerry Springer characters singing a fiendishly difficult and, yes, operatic score about their weird fetishes and extramarital affairs. Act I was an episode of the Jerry Springer Show, culminating in a Ku Klux Klan tapdance number(!) and Jerry getting shot onstage, paving the way for Act II, where he goes to hell and Satan forces him to put on a very special episode so he can duke it out with Jesus. Um, yeah. The first act was actually a lot stronger than the second, which wasn't as funny as it could've been--I mean, you have various theological entities all catfighting on Jerry Springer, and the best you can come up with is Jesus being all butthurt over the crucifixion? But the first act was hilarious.

I probably wouldn't have bothered to go had it not been for Les Mis people, and... well. Max von Essen in fishnets and a turquoise miniskirt? Flouncing around stage for his two big numbers, entitled "Chick With a Dick" and "Talk to the Hand?" It doesn't get any more fabulous than that. Even from my back-of-the-second-tier seat I could tell that he was having tons of fun (and that his legs look disturbingly nice in fishnets and high heels). Couldn't really pick out Rob from where I was sitting, not until the very end at least, but I got a big hug at the stage door. ♥ Oh, Rob. Kevin and Ali and Marissa were there at the stage door too.

I passed Studio 54 just as SITPWG was letting out, so I decided to scope out the stage door, but Jeff had already left. Oh well. (Tried to get tickets for the matinee, but it was sold out, woe.)

Greyhound has also hit a new low; I've been stuck on overnight buses next to people with no sense of personal space before, but I'd never actually been groped until the other night. Ewwwww. And this creep totally didn't get the message: I woke up and his hand was in my lap, so I smacked it away and he pretended to be asleep; woke up again and he was stroking my thigh, and I told him to get his hands off me RIGHT NOW; then near the end of the trip he started humping my leg and I went "I TOLD YOU TO STOP TOUCHING ME" loud enough to wake other passengers up, and he finally cut it out for good. If he'd tried again I would've broken his fucking fingers and gotten the bus driver to dump him on the side of I-95. Creep.

In less skeevy news, the piano got delivered today. :D It's glorious.

So, closing weekend. I don't know. I don't want it to be over--the thought of never seeing the barricade boys all together again is distressing--but at the same time it's almost a relief. It was exciting and crazy and wonderful while it lasted, and now it's over and I can get on with my life. (Which isn't to say that I've given up on the LM fandom, just that there are things to do besides drive up to NYC twice a week to see the show, which is what it had come to by the time closing rolled around.) I didn't know what the last show would be like; I was almost afraid it would go on like any other performance and I'd keep forgetting that this was the last time I'd see it, but no, the energy was palpable and I cried buckets all through the show and got pictures and hugs with everyone at stage door, so at least there was a sense of closure.

I managed to forget the suitcase with the Cosette costume in it, so it was barricade boy both nights. Saturday matinee was sold out but I got a cancellation ticket in Box F, then stole a second row center seat at intermission. Matinee show wasn't actually that interesting as far as cast antics go, but afterwards I met up with viorica8957 at the stage door and Marie gave us all another backstage tour for lady_iphigeneia's friends who were also there. So now there are pictures of viorica8957 and me playing dead on the barricade, and I got my first and only chance to sing on a Broadway stage even if it was only a few lines of "I am not dead yet" as I jumped off the barricade. And Jenn stole an "Aux Armes" pamphlet.

Jenn didn't have a ticket for the evening show and the cancellation line was insane, so it was just me and nightbirdcomet. And we stole the exact same seats I snuck into at the matinee. Everyone was screwing around to some degree; Don kept up a running commentary during Master of the House, including "I love bosoms," and there was flag-throwing during Red and Black that culminated in Don draping it over Adam's shoulders like a cape. Superman Marius! I was very close to tears during One Day More.

We found out a few things that made us angry at the stage door--like the fact that they'd gotten a strict talking-to about not goofing around for the final show, or that Max has never been allowed to nail "they will come when we call" and gets yelled at if anyone applauds. Fortunately he threw that out the window for the last couple shows.

Sunday... what to say about Sunday? Amazingly enthusiastic audience, amazingly emotional performances, barricade boys crying onstage, swings taking pictures from the wings, gratuitous rounds of applause, and I was sobbing uncontrollably from I Dreamed a Dream to Castle on a Cloud and from Empty Chairs to the end. (I wasn't sure whether I'd actually cry, since I don't remember ever getting more than a little watery-eyed at Les Mis before, but I was a blotchy tearstained wreck by curtain call.) Really sad, but emotionally satisfying.

Nobody was crying at the stage door, thank God. Nehal and Nikki and Ali and Minarik were there, and we got pictures and hugs from everyone. Kevin said something incredibly sweet about us being almost a part of the show, it was Chip's birthday on closing so that was kind of happy and sad at the same time, JOJ actually talked to us (about chairs of all things), Nehal told entertaining stories about things that got people yelled at by the stage manager... ladybranwen gave Trafton a bunch of unspeakable shiny things as a present before the show and was fretting that he'd come back out to yell at her over the unspeakable-ness, but he poked his head out two minutes later to say "That's AWESOME!" and tell us about how he forgot to blow out the candles once when he went on as the Bishop. Jeff and JOJ and Ben were rather late emerging from the stage door, because the first thing they did after the show was shave off their Valjean beards. They all look about ten years younger clean-shaven.

elvenmongoose and misatheredpanda were also there at the stage door, in Frenchboy drag no less. I did not get much of a chance to talk to them when the stage door was full of actor boys and craziness, alas, but we roped an innocent bystander into taking pictures of all of us together outside the Broadhurst. And then we went to stalk actor boys find dinner, managed to tarry long enough that misatheredpanda had to run and catch a train, and finally wound up at Galaxy Diner, aka the place where back in the spring we sat and fangirled for an hour before we realized Adam was two booths away with his wife. (There were no barricade boys there tonight, obviously, since they were all off at the cast party.)

And after dinner we were already in withdrawal so we went and stagedoored Spamalot. Facepalm. And then... we went home. Strange to think that it was the last NYC Les Mis trip.

As an aside, the audio of the final show is never ever leaving my hard drive. Not only is it muffled and bassy, you can hear me sobbing all through it. Loudly and annoyingly. So instead I present you with a compilation of goofs, "alternate" lyrics, disasters, and Epic Vocal Fail from Les Mis through the years.

Ooooh, it was so good to finally get back to New York and see Les Mis again. *g* I know, I'm an addict, and now my strike withdrawal is finally over. Hopefully it won't be as bad in January because I'll know it's coming.

Everyone seemed really glad to be back to work, the energy was great, and aside from a couple of lyric flubs it went really smoothly for a company that hadn't performed in almost three weeks. I might be imagining things, but there seemed to be a bit of the same "I'm not quite sure how we're going to do this so let's make it up as we go along" energy as when I saw JOJ's second night. (Speaking of JOJ, he's still awesome, as is Rob. But Mr. Jones is a world-class expert in slipping politely away at the stage door, so none of us have actually talked to him much.)

Judy's actually growing on me. Sort of. I still can't stand her voice, or her boring wooden IDAD, but she makes a really good whore. Not in the mean way, just that that's the point where she starts acting and she does a good job with it.

Don Brewer and Michael Minarik were out both shows; Minarik's got a herniated disc, which I swear must run in the show or something. I missed his antics, but we did get Matt Clemens as Grantaire and he's awesome. And Minarik showed up at the stage door after the evening show and said he might be back on Wednesday.

And Dan Bogart is back! :D I didn't realize how much I missed him until he actually sang his line in the chain gang and I went "YAY." Because Jeremy Hays is pretty, but he is Not Dan. So Bamatabois was actually scary this time, and I'd forgotten how absolutely priceless his facial expressions are in Master of the House. Especially when he's reacting to Jenny. Who is also awesome. And who starts undressing him at the end of the song, much to his horror.

It's kind of weird that Gary is a lot funnier when he's giving the BC/EFA speech than he is as Thénardier.

In more mundane news, it was fucking cold in New York, and I'm really sick of taking Greyhound. Sick of the uncomfortable seats and sitting next to people with no conception of personal space, and really sick of the DC Greyhound station and the sketchy neighborhood it's in. Taking the overnight bus means when I walk back to my car I get to pass by all the streetwalkers desperate enough to still be out at five in the morning--and yes I am aware of the grim irony in seeing Les Mis of all shows and then being skeeved out by a neighborhood with real live lovely ladies. Sigh.

Anderson Davis singing "And the Rain Keeps Falling Down."

Totally seeing him as Enjolras later this week.

Went to Pittsburgh to see Mother Teresa is Dead with lady_iphigeneia. Play was good. "White people go to India for spiritual revelations" is painfully overdone, but at least it didn't fall into the trap of making Nehal's character the token ethnic guy--I thought it struck a nice balance with acknowledging cultural conflicts while having the main Issue of his character lie elsewhere. Namely, that he's just enough of a bastard to be worth liking. ;) All the characters were well-drawn, really, and I liked that they all got their turn to have their say and call the others out on their bullshit, and in the end let the audience decide who to sympathize with. But I was there to see Nehal and the chance to see good theatre was just a bonus, so it was him I was paying attention to really.

We almost missed him after the show, but we did manage to grab him eventually and he seemed really happy (and surprised!) that we'd come out to Pittsburgh to see him. Talked to us for about ten minutes, hugged us both, asked lady_iphigeneia what there was to do around town, chatted a bit about the incestuousness of the theater world and how he'd just seen Justin Bohon in a production of My Fair Lady directed by the former Les Mis stage manager. Haha. The whole day was just a really good time--road-tripping, wandering around the South Side, seeing Mother Teresa is Dead, and then Nehal being a darling. ♥ Love that boy, will see him in whatever else he ends up in.

(And then on the way home I listened to my TAC for the first time in ages. Oh, the crack. Who the eff is that singing "and in a bed!" in ATEOTD? She sounds like Angela Lansbury on meth.)