Posts Categorized: Blog

Friday 7/22 – 3:35 pm The Dripping Barber of Fleet Street Temp: 89.5 DEGREES! YESSSSS!!! Brief burst of rain and a 13-degree drop in temperature.  Worried about wilting at our show? Now you’ll be fresh as a daisy, especially with that lovely breeze that’s wafting through the fins and across the house. And the Demon

Friday 7/22 – 4:28 pm Trivia Temp: 102 Reviewing my notes for the pre-perf discussion. Did you know that… Hugh Wheeler (Sweeney lyricist) wrote murder mysteries under pseudonyms? (Q. Patrick and others) Hal Prince & Stephen Sondheim did 13 backer’s auditions for Sweeney and didn’t raise a penny? John Lahr of Harpers panned the Sweeney

Friday 7/22 – 3:35 pm The Dripping Barber of Fleet Street Temp: 101 Attend the tale of Sweaty Todd Who wished his show was in cool Cape Cod The heat wave on him did descend And he wished very much for the scorching to end He prayed for snow or an act of God Did

Friday 7/22 – 1:08 pm Pre-show talk moved to the shade! Temp: 101 The National Park Service Interpretive program, with whom we collaborate on our preshow talks at the Filene Center, called to ask if we wanted to cancel this evening’s preshow festivities due to the heat. “No!” says I, for I want nothing more

Friday 7/22 – 11:20 am NBC 4  Temp: 97 Ashlyn Rust (Johanna), Ed Mout (Toby) and Dustin Lucas (Beadle Bamford) rolled in here this morning on 30 minutes’ notice to speak with Derrick Ward of NBC4. Their brief interviews should run as part of a weather story (It’s hot, y’all!) on this evening’s news at

Friday 7/22 – 2:45 am Overnight Tech Call: Hour 3 Temp: 81 Two years ago, we did Boheme at this theatre, on an epically beautiful night in August.  At the end of a day when the high temperature was lower than the low temperature will be tonight. Sigh. This is where I exit. The crew

Friday 7/22 – 1:27 am Overnight Tech Call: Hour 2 Temp: 82 Production Stage Manager Beth at her console, keeping me company on stage right as I try to type up notes for my pre-performance discussion tomorrow night. (Oops… later today…) Pre-performance discussion: 7:15pm at the log cabin, near the Encore Circle tent. I will

Friday 7/22 – 12:31 am Beginning of overnight tech call Temp: 85 It’s cooling down in the house. The bugs are coming out, though (they must have been waiting until the heat abated, shaking their heads about the poor fool mortals who were out there working all day), and the smell of Deep Woods Off

Thursday 7/21 – 11:06 pm End of Rehearsal Temp: 89 What an amazingly generous, smart and even-tempered bunch of people. From the designers who have one night to realize their vision to the players and singers who gave their all to an empty house so that we could tech sound and lights, to the production,

Thursday 7/21 – 8:15 pm Top of Rehearsal Temp: 95 The only moment of recorded sound comes at the top of the show, with a jaw-dropping rendition of the Sweeney organ solo, performed by Thierry Escaïch and recorded for the April 2011 production at the Théâtre du Châtele. Chills up and down the spine in