Yeomen, Raptors, and a Guy in a Carrot Suit

Right, Yeomen. That thing with the costumes and the singing! And the guy in a carrot suit! And which happened so long ago that I've already caught up on work and sleep!

 
To be honest, I'm still impressed that I managed to survive it at all, given that I arrived back from Bali, after several hundred hours in transit, in the middle of the dress rehearsal. But I gamely put my dress on over my travelling clothes and trudged onto stage in my takkies in time to join in the excitement about an arquebus (fired from the wharf, unless I much mistake). I think the real excitement lay in finding out where Fairfax's apparently extensive knowledge of 16th century weaponry came from, but never mind.

Wilfred/Point. I ship it. (Memed by Jenny.)

Having not been on stage since I narrated my own house play in grade 11*, being in a show again was new and nervewracking and fun and chaotic, and involved singing and in-jokes and wholly fabricated rumours and fighting my hair into a turban and grapes and raptors and fancy dress and make-up and the occasional diva and forgetting what to do on stage because I was too tired to think straight.

Raptor raptor. (Photo by Lois.)

And it was fun. Sometimes, it was even quite good. (I have this on good authority from people with no investment whatsoever in being nice to me.**)

Do you have a flag? (Source)

Tower Warders. Can you spot my hair? (Source)

Finale Act 1. "It's so sad that Fairfax has to die. Wait, he's escaped? Quick! Find him and kill him!" (Source)

Fangirling over Wilfred, whom up till now we've found repulsive, because he shot Fairfax. OR DID HE? (He didn't.) (Source)

We made it all the way through four shows in three days with minimal loss of life or limb, and thereafter was The Crash, which is like a party, except that it has a special name and you only find out the location if you help with the tidying up. Unless you don't help with the tidying up, in which case apparently you get to find it out anyway, and you're already there with a drink in your hand by the time I arrive.

Anyway, I was on Team Sober, as usual, and made myself useful by handing glasses of water to those who were too committed to the opposing team, in an attempt to dilute them back into sensible decision-making. (My approach to not being good at parties is to be useful. I'm quite good at being useful.)

But it turns out I'm also quite good at being friendly. I was filled with grins to win the award for Friendliest Cast Member, because I'd suspected that everyone thought I was weird and antisocial, but it turns out that at least two people think more or less the opposite.

See? I'm friendly.

So that was my Yeomen experience. To carry on the theme of G & S in my life, this weekend we went to perform in Goole for a dozen senior citizens. My rock star lifestyle, let me show you it.

Goole is exactly as grim as it sounds, or maybe a little more so. We spent the afternoon rehearsing in a cold church, and then ate chips and talked about steak far more than I ever wanted to talk about steak, and then we sang for the senior citizens, and got excited about sausage rolls afterwards because we'd just had a song all about them.

Also, it was my birthday, and, being surrounded lovely theatrical people, they decided to be theatrical, and right before the last song everyone sang to me and got the senior citizens to join in. I felt very thoroughly birthdayed. It was lovely.

(In other birthday news, owing to my antipathy towards prime numbers, I've decided to be 22 again and then jump straight to 24 next year.) 

So, from knowing nothing about G & S several months ago, I've made a little progress. I'm not quite this cool, but I can now pretend to be one of the cool kids, fairly convincingly.

Things I've learned

1. There's a thing called Utopia Ltd. Nobody likes Utopia Ltd.
2. Everybody gets married (except Point). Everybody gets very excited about this (except Point).
3. Gilbert only had three jokes, and he made sure to get his money's worth out of them. This may be why I was the only one who found the jokes in Yeomen funny.
4. It's only acceptable to admit to liking Gilbert & Sullivan if you simultaneously hate them. Gilbert, right? That guy. *eyeroll*
5. Trumpets go "tarantara!".*** They do this more often than you'd think.
6. There's a thing called The Grand Duke. Almost nobody likes The Grand Duke.
7. There's a thing called Ruddigore. People actually seem to like that one.
8.  By the mystic regulation of our dark association, ere you open conversation with another kindred soul, you must eat a sausage roll (a roll a roll a roll a roll).
9. Any time someone says the word "never" is an opportunity to sing, "What, never?" at them in your best impression of a ship's crew.
10. Any time anyone says anything at all is an opportunity to sing at them.
11. Any time at all is an opportunity to sing.

To be fair, I already knew that last one, as poor Henrik would no doubt attest. Because if every day isn't a one-person flashmob in the kitchen, what are you doing with your life?

*Which happened more or less by accident, because it turned out that I'd written the narrator in my voice.
**This is untrue.
***Except when they go "tantarararararararara" (trumpet call of the Princess Zara).