MORE Japanese operetta; the Scottish play (badly)

Tomorrow night, Friday April 3, NYGASP will be doing "Mikado" at the Community Theatre at Mayo Center for Performing Arts, Morristown, NJ. This will be my last NYGASP Ko-Ko for, well, indefinitely. I am listening for your involuntary "Thank God!"

In other urgent news, last night I went to the New York debut of Edinburgh's REALLY TERRIBLE ORCHESTRA. It was pretty good. I went with PETER HIRSCH. As we were walking up 43rd to Town Hall we heard BAGPIPES, which never ever sound any good however well they're played. I guess these were played OK but it still sounded like the worst possible oboe-playing combined with screaming cats. It was from kilted guys standing outside Town Hall. Because the RTO is from Edinburgh.

PETER HIRSCH as Hoppy the French Horn Frog in the "Teach Your Retarded Child What A Brass Instrument Is!" video (VHS only).

It was a good-sized audience, with some empty sections. Quite a few people followed them over from Scotland. The orchestra was 45 - 50 white people, all dressed nicely and sometimes a bit eccentrically, but not at all uniformly. The principal cellist was a bald woman. The flutes were a beaky-faced middle-aged woman, a girl with fabulous knockers, and an old bald coot with wild bushy eyebrows. An ancient crone was one of the percussionists. There were two euphoniums, one played by a woman who was either blind, deaf, or probably dyslexic. She had a girl sitting beside her the entire time conducting her, counting out loud, and pointing at her music. Everyone in the orchestra was a character. They very obviously enjoyed themselves all the way through. It's the thing I love most about community theater productions. Their performance stinks but you never get tired of watching the individuals.

The music they chose was frequently kind of a drag. They did stuff that was SUPPOSED to be funny. They had a real Scottish Major-General sing a not particularly ingenious rewritten Major-General song, there was a pointless Sound of Music singalong, a Scottish thing with solo bagpipes, some original pieces composed for the RTO - a brief African-ish tone poem and an arrangement of "Over the Rainbow" for musical saw. Along the more entertaining lines for which I had hoped they also gave a miserable performance of "Pizzicato Polka" in which no one could get their attacks together, a couple of noisy marches, and the last 4 minutes of 1812 Overture, because the first 10 are much too difficult. We were given paper bags to inflate and explode for the canon cues.

There was also a lot of talk, mostly pretty amusing, from the conductor and the famous and prolific author Alexander McCall Smith (The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, 44 Scotland Street, Isabel Dalhousie), who is a founding member and first euphoniumist (I've got him on the list).

You should have seen the orchestra's faces when we gave them a standing ovation! They were thrilled to death.

Comments

[Michelle]

The orchestra should return in July to do their musical saw piece at the annual NYC Musical Saw Festival (http://www.musicalsawfestival.org ). Only they would have a problem with their choice of music... last year 30(!) musical saw players played 'Over the Rainbow' together (watch the video on the festival's page).

[Doug]

Each time I see you do "bouncing Ko-Ko" I get closer to what would be my first mercy killing. Just say when.

[Mr. Steve]

Last night that fucking bouncing bit, WHICH I HAVE ALWAYS HATED, was the only thing anyone complimented me on!