Hi there, Urinetown welcomes you… but be careful, be very careful for you never know what awaits you just around the corner… It definitely won’t be a random bloke peeing on the pavement – I can tell you that much – that sort of behaviour does not bode well in Urinetown!
My name is Anna and I have joined SMP for their wonderful production of Urinetown – The Musical in an ensemble part of Suzy Whatsherface: a very poor but rather slutty lady (Suzy, that is, not myself!) who was recently bereaved of a dear husband and who did not lose any time in starting a quest for a new one!
SMP is an absolutely wonderful and incredibly talented bunch of people who are making an absolutely sterling job of staging the the best sounding, looking and dancelicious Urinetown production ever. It is never an easy thing to come in to a long-established theatre company as a greenie but, – and I think I am speaking for all the newbies here, – it was a breeze this time around! I always feel welcome and a part of the gang and our rehearsals on Mondays and Wednesdays are the two evenings I always look forward to and enjoy enormously.
Well, now that the paid bit of the blog is over, it is time to talk about what we did during the two rehearsals we had this week. Monday was a recap of all the dance numbers we have managed to put together so far with the help of our amazing choreography director Jo Bakhurst (who should be commended not only for the fantastic dance numbers she has set for us so far but also for the courageous way she has been fighting off some of the crazier ‘dance’ suggestions from our director, Warren McWilliams). As it turned out, we have done quite a few numbers which, of course, we all handled like pros and which all looked nearly perfect… there was even a couple of times when Jo did not have to pull her hair out in despair… In fact, the dancing looked so good that a young gentleman passing by the rehearsal venue felt inclined to pop in and enquire as to what show we were putting on; at which point he was, of course, laden with a cart-load of leaflets and sworn in to bring himself and all of his distant and not so distant relatives to the show! Force of positive advertising at its purest! He might have also been promised a wife from an unwed portion of our members, I am not sure…
After the action-packed Monday, Wednesday was dedicated to learning a new musical number ‘We’re Not Sorry’ with the help of the wonderfully talented MD Mike Benyon. Urinetown has some incredible musical numbers with the most complicated harmonies and Mike, somehow, always manages to make us all sound like Pavarottis in our own right. This song was no exception and by the end of the two hour rehearsal we really had that number down and all perfect. We always do other musical number recaps if we have any leftover time at the end of the rehearsal sessions; and, after us singing through the recap of the Act 1 closing number – Mike, Jo, Warren and our own local superwoman and organiser (and self-confessed ‘pregnapeach’) Joanna was in floods of tears from the sheer amazedness of it… Ok, so I might have gotten a bit carried away with the tears situation but the numbers did sound truly great!
Time to finish all the waffling with a little preview of what we have to look forward to in the rehearsals this week; and I am quoting Jo here, – ‘We will be working on Richs’ bits’; I don’t know about you, but it sounds pretty promising to me!
Book your tickets now – you will not be disappointed: the show will be totally amazing