Triumph Of A Bunny

Let us talk of the Triumph Of The Day: Sarah's musical, Sleeping Beauty, which got its first ever readthrough/singthrough this evening at Ieva's house. After handpicking a cast from the members of High Spirits, Sarah has been drilling them over the past few weeks, and tonight we gathered to spend a couple of hours trying it all on for size.

And it was an absolute blast. Sarah is still bouncing (well, almost bouncing, what with her hopped-out ankle).

A little background: Sarah wrote the first version of this musical as part of her music degree, thirteen years ago. It's the fairy tale rejigged for a feisty, independent princess who dismisses the Prince as the prat he is and ends up agreeing to go out with his servant who performs the actual rescue / rescuscitation. Along the way we meet a nutjob barbarian who gives up his bloodthirsty day job in favour of horticulture, a concerned fairy (renamed and rebranded as Wish Order Fulfilment Agents, or WOFAs), several unconcerned WOFAs, and a villainess with an even more villainous henchman. Add about twenty of Sarah's most gorgeous songs, and there you are: Sleeping Beauty.

She's kicked this around a bit over the years, fiddling with it, tweaking it, and letting me work on it a bit with her, but we never got around to doing much with it in England... we performed a couple of the songs with the Posse, and sneaked one of them into the Aladdin pantomine she MD'ed for LMCS in 2005, but aside from that... nuffin. But earlier this year, she performed one of the songs, Look, in a solo spot at a choir concert, and people fell in love with it - her take on love songs is always spectacularly offbeat and involving. After numerous questions and a lot of cheerleading from some particularly keen friends, she agreed to organize a readthrough... and here we are.

It's difficult to single people out for their performances tonight as everyone rose to the occasion with stellar focus and clearly a lot of hard work beforehand. So I'll list the cast:

Ieva - the Queen
Martin - the King
Susan - Ruby the evil WOFA
James - Prince Conceitus, and Conan the Barbarian / Agrarian
Barney - Burch the henchman
Catherine - Princess Frederica
Heather - Sapphire the WOFA
Kim - Opal the WOFA
Patti - Diamond the WOFA, and Narrator
Tara - Emerald the WOFA (and our flautist!)
Sara - Harriet the good WOFA
Me - Justin the servant

And candidly, we were all legends, although I think everyone would agree that particular mention must be given to James's incredibly camp Elmer-Fudd-a-like Conan, Barney's perfect overacting, and Sara's outraged Harriet.

But it was SO MUCH FUN!

Now we have to schedule a repeat performance, but this time with some VIPs in attendance, as there's clearly possibilities here.


In other news: Take December Off moves to its second day, and we've sold a copy of the song online! We've made $0.74! We're rich! Our first sale-by-download! We've been very naughty and asked friends and family to spam everyone with the link. Next task: a video, even if it's just of me sitting there pretending to be on the phone to my hypothetical gullible boss. Videos can go places where simple songs can't.

We also decided today was the day to go digital for our album sales. So look, here is how you can buy our singles:



And here is how you can buy our album:


Thrilling isn't it? So go buy something now.

That's us for the night - checkin' out. Much love.