Magic Roundabout

Carousel is over now, and I have a better idea of what actually happens in it. If anyone's interested, there's a plot summary on Wikipedia- it helped me a lot in understanding what was going on (you can't see much from an orchestra pit, it being, well, a pit, and all that).

This nearly ended up being a Best of British post on amateur dramatics, but I think the Americans do a pretty good line in that too. Ah well. If this was in French, I could call it a phenomène anglo-saxon, but the last two words have different connotations in English, where an "anglo-saxon phenomenon" could only really be something to do with pre-1066 British history. Not that that would be an odd thing to find on this blog, but still, y'know...

Anyway. Yes. The production was very good indeed. It displayed a number of classic features of small-town amateur dramatics, to whit:

-one of the male leads was pushing seventy and clearly at least twice the age of his female counterpart (Mr Snow and Carrie, for those who're following

-the second female lead (Carrie) was visibly pregnant, in spite of the best efforts of the costume department to hide it

-a pretty spectacular range of accents- various forms of american (the story is based in Maine), generic northern, and one notable example of full-on Cumbrian: " 'e works ont' carousels..."

-most of the acting was really good, which made the two or three really bad actors really stand out, to great comic effect

-REALLY DODGY sound effects from a tape played over the PA system

-Overenthusiastic tech blokes with dry ice. Oh good grief, the dry ice. Cold smoke coming over the edge of the stage sinks. What's just below the stage? The orchestra pit, that's what. *Coughs, splutters, and the like*

Though some of this may sound critical, it's actually not. You see, these are the things that make amateur dramatics so wonderful. Everyone joins in, everyone gives what they can, and the audience goes along with it. There were teary eyes at the end of You'll Never Walk Alone, and they clapped along to June is Bustin' Out All Over. (Actually, my mother- no great fan of musicals- has a new set of lyrics to that one, involving the word "bra" and a nice rhyme of "jiggly" with "wiggly"- I'll let you work the rest out for yourselves).

So, yes. That, as they say, is that. The week is over. I'm going to miss it- well, once I've got the music out of my head I will- it aint 'alf tenacious.