Wig, hats and Wind in the Willows –singing at the Lowry 29 October 2016

Lovely to be invited again to sing in this fantastic space to help at the Family Fun Festival. We had fun too. Well, don’t we always when we sing? And getting to wear wigs and fancy hats and other funny things was just the icing on the cake.

Hats and wigs and other fun things. 

It was a bit of a challenge getting there:

·         Manchester United were playing at home in the afternoon

·         The matinee of a big musical was taking place at the theatre

·         There was an Open Day at Salford University

·         There were replacement busses on the Bury Metrolink line.

But would we let that put us off? Of course not! Twenty or so of us made it there and parts were well balanced.

We were looked after very well by Assistant Musical Director Daisy. I Got Rhythm; It Don’t mean a Thing; Deep River; Here, There and Everywhere / Long Winding Road; One Day Like This, Kiss the Girl, Deep River, Hail Smiling Morn; and we ended with Viva la Musica. Did we get the sound right up to the top of that gloriously high ceiling? I think we might have though we didn’t raise the rafters and the roof isn’t in need of repair. Ah, but that’s a song for another day.

Daisy doing great stuff. Love the new hair! 

We sang for forty minutes and what a nice selection of songs. In no particular order, as they say, because I can’t remember the exact order we did them in and forgive me if I’ve left any out, we performed:

We had an appreciative audience, so if you were there and stopped to listen- thank you.   

Several of us were able to stay on and watch Wind in the Willows.  It’s being shown here before it goes up to the West End. A real fun production, and even though it may have seemed a little sophisticated for this audience that had many children in it, they seemed to enjoy it. It’s a well-loved and well-known story so the adults enjoyed it.

There was some super music in it and I found myself thinking that several of the numbers would be fun to sing.

                 

The Hedgehogs, Field Mice and Swallows were delightful. There were a lot of different regional accents in the show – Irish, Brummie, Scouse, and of course Toad himself spoke a wonderful Received English verging on Posh.  

A difficult moment came when a piece of the set didn’t move; they had to bring the safety curtain down and the house lights up. We were still in Toad’s bedroom when he was supposed to be appearing in court. It only took a few seconds to fix and soon the show was underway again.

“It was just a technicality. You know how irksome these can be,” said Toad to the judge when he explained about stealing a car. HA HA!

It seemed like a cast of hundreds but there were just about as many in the cast as there’d been on our choir earlier. Gosh, they worked hard. And there was going to be an evening performance as well.   

The show finished conveniently at about 4.43. We scuttled off quickly to avoid the football crowds.

A fantastic afternoon all round.  No wonder we keep on coming back for more.