NYGASP had ONE MORE Yeomen of the Guard two nights ago (Saturday, Feb 3), three weeks after our final performance at City Center. This was at the McCarter Theater, Princeton, NJ. The very theater, and the same show, in which the late, great, CHRISTOPHER REEVE made his stage debut as a 9-year old townsperson at the Tower of London. Along those same lines it may also interest you to know that ANTHONY PERKINS' first principal role was in a college production of Yeomen, as Wilfred Shadbolt, the comedy jailer!
The audience was extremely appreciative and Al thought the performance was one of our triumphs. I missed not having done it for a couple of weeks, except for a principals-only brushup rehearsal the night before. My grasp on Jack Point is definitely firmer than it was at first, for sure. I used to think the role was just not written that well, that Point talks too much and says way too little, and that Gilbert tried but just couldn't make him that funny or consistent. I know now that those things are very much part of the character. He's sympathetic, he's a selfish asshole, he's perky and funny, he's dull and depressed. I have only begun to reconcile all that stuff. I've never seen a Jack Point that really put it all together, and I'm sorry to say that I haven't yet managed it either. The first thing Point says is that "There is humor in all things, and the truest philosophy is that which teaches us to find it and to make the most of it," and I hope that next time I do this role I'll be able to make something of the irony of that, and the way his not-very-developed sense of humor utterly fails to help him cope. Having a sense of humor isn't memorizing jokes from "Cap'n Billy's Whiz-Bang" or "The Merrie Jests of Hugh Ambrose" -- it's a general outlook, a state of mind.
We have Pinafore this weekend on Long Island and it will seem like DESSERT after slaving over these Yeomen.
My friend, company member Jennifer Piacenti -- she was Yum-Yum this season -- has beaten me to the punch with the "Girls of NYGASP" calendar idea. She had a novelty calendar made up for me at Staples, or something, with 13 photos of NYGASP babes. No actual nudity, unfortunately, but enough skin to give a G&S Society member vapours. But of course no Society member will ever see it because it's MINE, ALL MINE! HA, HA, HA, HA, HA! Jennifer's Myspace page, on which you can hear her sing a few things and look at the usual excruciating Myspace list of "friends," may be reached by clicking right HERE.
VAL has gotten a lot of good feedback -- THOUGH NOT ON THIS SITE, FOR SOME REASON -- on her nude photo session article in the February 'Self.' Yes, the lack of cellulite is real.
In closing, if there is no new business, I present you with these pictures of a LIGER (father lion, mother tiger). This is Hercules, at the Institute of Greatly Endagered and Rare Species in Miami. He looks awfully agreeable, for a cat the size of a friggin' HORSE.
For what it's worth, I remember Michael Douglas in a TV interview stating that his first acting role was as a fairy in his elementary school production of Iolanthe. "Tripping hither, tripping thither," he recounted...
Posted by: Brian | February 06, 2007 at 12:10 AM