Closing Night (My Fair Lady Part V)

Earlier tonight (or last night, technically, as it is after 2:00 a.m. when I write this) we had our sixth and closing performance of My Fair Lady. The last night of a show is always kind of a bittersweet time. After several weeks of rehearsals and, in this case, almost a full week's worth of performances, you realize that you are doing it for the final time. It's also a time to say goodbye to friends I've met through doing the show. As readers of previous posts will know, I was not too excited to be doing a musical, and it's something I'm not likely to do again. I was happy with my speaking parts -- as the Butler, I had one line, and as the Bartender, I appeared in three scenes with two lines in each (except for the first one, in which I had only one line). I would've been content with that. I got to (or had to) dance in one scene, do a waltz, and frankly, by the end of the run, I was pretty confident with that. (They had to teach me how to waltz; I'm totally clueless when it comes to dance.) There were also two scenes in which I had to sing with between 10-20 other people on stage. What made me nervous about those scenes was that I can't sing, and I was primarily afraid of singing too loud, so that someone else on stage could hear me and be thrown off. I could've done without those bits.

It was a long night. After the performance, we had the strike, which took a very long time. Besides tearing down the set, we had to remove all of the community theatre-owned props, pieces, platforms, flats, etc. from the Opera House. (Some petty conflict between Opera House management and Civic Summer Theatre, which I'm not too privy to, and don't care to be, but they basically demanded that all CST stuff be removed from the building, instead of being able to store stuff there as they've done in the past.) This process took a long time. I worked harder than I'm used to, too. So after a long night of that, and a couple of gut-wrenching barbecued pork sandwiches (I appreciate the women who made food for all of us, but), it was about 2:00 a.m. by the time I got home. Not terribly late for me, but I'm pretty tired out.

Now we'll see how long it takes for all those songs stuck in my head to dissipate.