I’ve had so many men before…

…in very many ways.

This is a line I have to sing in a charity concert in October. I’m trying desperately hard not to snort or, as they say in the business, ‘corpse’ after I sing the line, which, if you didn’t know, is from I Don’t Know How to Love Him from Jesus Christ Superstar. In the musical the ballad is sung by Mary Magdalene to a sleeping JC, hence the ‘many men’. So it looks like I’m a prostitute again, after my antics earlier this year in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Getting typecast I think.

The concert is a one-night only affair, as a thank you to the local Broad Street Methodist Church who have kindly provided our am-dram society with rehearsal rooms over the years. The songs are all from musicals so we’ve called the event “From Broadway to Broad Street”, which makes me smile.

As usual, what seemed initially like a few rehearsals, maybe once a week for a month, has grown into twice a week for six weeks or more. The whole shebang is getting more complicated with dance moves, not being allowed to read the music as if we were a choir, and having too many chorus numbers we all have to learn. There are always a few people missing at each rehearsal (holidays, sickness, other commitments) so we are forever moaning “We haven’t done this one”, “Yes, we have, we did it last week”, “Well I missed it, can we go over it?”, “Where are you standing?” “Were you next to me last time?”, “Do we go up or down on that line?”, “I’ve forgotten it already”. The under 30s seem to pick up lyrics and moves in an instant. We older ones have brains like sieves.

Struggling with The Rhythm of Life, a song from Sweet Charity which has some over-energetic moves and some ridiculous lyrics, like these, which have to be sung very fast:

Daddy was a new sensation, got himself a congregation
Built up quite an operation down below
With the pie-eyed piper blowing, while the muscatel was flowing
All the cats were go-go-going down below

I looked at the running order last night and discovered my solo is just after this number so I may well mime it, to save my breath for my own song, particularly as I will have to hot-foot it from the altar in the church up to the pulpit. Surely I can’t sing lyrics about my prolific sex life on a pulpit? We are also singing  Texas has a Whorehouse in it which should go down a treat too! God forgive us.

The concert is on 2 October so we’ve a couple of weeks yet and I’m hopeful we’ll get there. As the lyrics from Another op’nin, another show keep reminding me:

Four weeks, you rehearse and rehearse
Three weeks, and it coudn’t be worse
One week, will it ever be right?
Then out of the hat, it’s that big first night!