Anvils! Make Beauty!

In our current production of Quartet, the script indicates that we hear a "rousing and somewhat out-of-tune" rendition of The Anvil Chorus. Our director, Malcolm Black, had the hilarious idea to get the staff of the Walnut Street Theatre together, ply them with beer, and record them singing this very silly piece of music.

Well, being the ace stage manager that I am, I sent out a bunch of emails pleading for people to turn up after rehearsal, bought lots of snacks and lugged a case of beer to the 6th floor. (Did you know the Beer Distributers open at 9am? I found this out that morning... and got a bunch of strange looks buying a case of cold lager at this time from the gentlemen who work there.)

Angela was so kind as to document the event, and I thought those of you who knew the Walnut Staff would appreciate some of these photos:


Note the nice rounded mouth shapes-- excellent singing technique! Len and Bernard are quite enthusiastic singers...


We all look so intent...


Bernard and Len may need to take a break from the hard business of running a theater and take this show on the road!


The ladies section... reach for those high notes, girls!


A HUGE thank you to everyone who showed up... I was sweating for a few minutes, thinking Angela and I would have to do it by ourselves! But I was amazed and incredibly touched by the support we received from the rest of the staff. And it was actually a ton of fun!


And last, but certainly not least, a gigantic thank you to Melanie, who dug around at the Curtis to get us the sheet music, in English. The translated lyrics were wonderfully ridiculous, hence the title of this blog.

I hope everyone comes to see the show and gets to hear our creation. Malcolm said that it was "wonderfully god-awful". I couldn't be more proud.

Now if only we could always have beer in rehearsal...