Not just another Opening

The song from “Kiss Me Kate” goes... “another opening, another show”. In most cases that is true.  However, I have had some very exciting moments, on stage,  in my life. Doing my show at the Helen Hayes Theater and accepting a Tony on stage at the Radio City Music Hall are two that come to mind immediately.  However, being part of a show opening at the  Sydney Opera House to a sold out crowd on the Concert Hall Stage is absolutely like no other experience.  There’s no sound like the one you get from a theater that was built to be as near acoustically perfect as possible. It makes the audience reaction seem so present and immediate it’s magical.  

I noticed it right away.  The dressing rooms have sound proof walls and doors for opera singers to warm up, so the hallways are sound studio quiet. And until you walk into the wings backstage you really don’t know that there is huge crowd waiting.  But the minute you get in the theater proper you hear this mumble of thousands of people quietly in conversation.  The same thing that makes it great to hear the performers also makes the rumble of the crowd rich and beautiful as well.  I love that sound in any theater but in this one it is particuarly wonderful. Someone said, it is like being on the inside of a guitar and that seems to be the right metaphor.  

In America we say “Break a Leg” on opening night.  That is not the tradition in every country, although every country has some superstition about the opening night of a show.  Because we have an international cast I found out that in Germany they say, “Toi Toi Toi” (that is my phonetic spelling) and in France they say “Merde” and in Australia they say “Chookas”. At the Opera House there is a wooden wall up the stage left corridor that gets kissed.  We went for it and performed all the rituals.

I had to throw Shin Lim out of the dressing room for whistling.  Tradition is if you whistle in the dressing room, especially on opening night it it very bad luck.  To avoid the penalties of a bad show you have to go outside the dressing room door, turn around three times, curse and spit.  He thought I was joking but I believe that theater is all make believe anyway and you have to live in that make believe world.  So he did it as he was leaving to get some coffee from the Green Room.  Five minutes later he walked back into the dressing room... whistling. You would think one of the worlds greatest magicians could remember a routine. 

I am working on a video tour of the route from my dressing room to the stage at the Opera House and will post it here when I get the time.  I am running out of adjectives to describe the night.  Sandi said it best when she said, “The show is Unbelievable.”  Whatever Unbelievable is on steroids that would be what it was like to perform a show called the Unbelievables.  I am posting a photo that Sandi took.  

You might think that being such a high ceiling it would not be good for comedy.  Not so here at the Sydney Opera House,  because the domed wooden roof is actually designed to enhance the sound you hear.  It is hard to explain how intimate this large house feels.  

Our stage manager told me something that even he didn’t  know about this incredible venue.  While we were doing the show inside there was a tremendous thunder storm outside.  Of course we never heard it, but Terrence was worried the power might go out while one of the acrobats was doing some dangerous stunt.  The operations man said it will never happen. He was so certain that Terrence questioned him on how he was so sure. Seems that the building was designed with it’s own generator that matches the feed from the city of Sydney.  If the entire city of Sydney loses power moments before there is a noticeable dip in the feed the generators kick in and the power stays on.  They have enough back up power to keep all  six theaters fully running at the same time for 6 hours.  There is no other theater in the world  that can do that. 

Now that we have some free time I will edit that back stage tour video and post it here.  The back stage passages are just as impressive as every other aspect of this amazing place.

As you were,

Jay