Hello! Hannah here, generator of all noises plinky plonk and Cockney piano. I thought it would be quite jolly to tell you about Steve’s last practice weekend as it appeared from the piano stool.

This wasn't this weekend, but I can't take photos while playing the piano...

This wasn't this weekend, but I can't take photos while playing the piano...

So, Stevefolk would be the first to admit that they weren’t great singers. None of them is ever going to perform the Queen of the Night aria to a packed house, unless part of some great sadistic doom plan. One would hope. But the great part of it is that you don’t need to be Pavarotti to do improv singing, and in fact *not* being Pavarotti is a bonus.  One of the great things about working with the folks in Steve is that they’re pretty damn funny whether in or out of tune. No one is ever going to forget Alex’s iconic ‘I’m a Butler’ song from the Murder Most Improvised rehearsals last year. Children as yet unborn are singing it in the womb, despite it not even having a tune.

Having said that about their singing skills, they’ve all come on leaps and bounds, especially the least confident ones. They’re harmonising and everything!  Some highlights of the weekend had to be the closing number of the Robin Hood Opera, ‘You Should Have Left The Friar Alone…’ performed by Rich and Tom and the Socratics and the Stoices [sic] decision to resolve their philosophical differences by making a tiger and a bear fight to the death, all in the medium of song. Operas are pretty hard work; I’m playing continuously for about ten to fifteen minutes (sometimes longer) with everything off the top of my head, trying to watch what the hell the actors are doing on stage - very dangerous just to assume you know what they’re doing because you might look down while they’re nailing the 95 Theses to the church door and next time you look they’re doing something suspicious with mimed haddock - and stop my wrists from atrophying from playing too many tremendous chords.  I’ve been trying to go for a sort of light Mozartian feel to the whole thing, but sometimes only tremendous chords will do.

There is a sense of heady power that comes from sitting at the piano stool. Mwa ha ha ha.  Sometimes it’s very easy to underestimate how much background music can affect the mood of a scene, and it’s been fun for this show coming up with music that adds to the flavour of the time period. Combined with the costumes (which I’m sure Laila will blog about later, there are loads of pictures) it all adds up to a great Instant Historical Era, just add actors. Oh yes, and there’s the power to induce songs in people, and create flashbacks. The cast has learned not to underestimate my love of flashbacks. I’ve been banned from creating second order flashbacks, they make me too unruly.

All in all, it was a really great weekend for the Stevites, and musicwise in particular, and now I’m so excited about the Fringe, I might explode. I’ll let you know how things go!  *Mysterious going off stage twinkly music…*