With three weeks to go we lost one of our maids to health issues - a secondary but incredibly important role as the maids are in charge of seating the guests, pouring tea, explaining that certain seats will be called on for audience participation and generally making sure the play runs smoothly. Like any distinguished, Victorian abode our play depends heavily on our maids! It was an amazing stroke of good fortune that Jess was willing to step in and even more willing to throw an extra pinch of sass into her character.
Left to Right: Trish (Maid 1), Piano Man & Misses Mumfords' nephew, Shaylyn (Maid 2) and Jess (Maid 3) with the delightfully dessicated Mummy
With less that two weeks until opening night our 'grand finale' actress had to bow out, leaving us wondering how on earth we would be able to close to the play. Cutting her part out left the play incomplete. Asking an audience member to play our specter from beyond seemed too demanding - the role has quite a few lines and needs to wrap the production to a conclusive end. But what's this? Miss Stella Mumford (Lou Valcourt) had an intriguing idea for her sister's not-quite-socially-acceptable actress friend: Miss Beatrice Atkins (yours truly) could play not only the tableau artist but the ghost as well. Which would perhaps make the play even more amusing as the audience is well aware that they've seen this particular face before.
I was never so grateful that we had rehearsed so often that I could recite almost every part of the play by heart. The show would go on!
Of course we also had the other usual bumps along the road: We couldn't find x piece for y costume. Could we do without it? Could we make it? Our set up is quite elaborate. Where on earth are we going to find that many tea cups and saucers suitable for Miss Mumford's parlour? Can we leave it overnight or do we have to tear down and re-set up each evening? We need a flask for our pianist, pronto!
The Sisters Mumford: Natasha Wiebe and Lou Valcourt
There were also some rather unique stumbling blocks. Originally we were going to create a mummy out of paper mache but starting from scratch would have been horrendously time consuming. Could we use some sort of wire frame? What about a doll? This leads to the rather hilarious saga of Nefertitty ...
Our brave and fearless leader, Natasha Weibe, approached the Love Nest for sponsorship and also to get an idea about the pricing of life sized blow up dolls. As it happens blow up dolls run for roughly $700 a piece. Just a wee bit outside our budget. But wait! The store manager was so tickled by the idea of our Fringe play that she called the store owner and together the three of them raided the basement, finding ... a returned (returned?!?!) blow up doll whose fingers apparently didn't inflate. Due to this defect the doll had been bought and then exchanged within a few hours, after which it had been left in the basement to suffer the cruel fate of unwanted blow up dolls. Undaunted, Natasha took hold of the doll and with many, many bottles of Javex got to work inflating and then paper mache-ing our would be Mummy. And really, what better name for a blow up doll mummy than Nefertitty?
But at last! The tables were set, the tea cups were washed. The mummy was wrapped and we too wrapped ourselves in Victorian trappings. I've been on stage many times before and I usually get a bad case of butterflies and stage fright before going on. This time however, it wasn't until the guests were seated and the sisters Mumford had elicited several enthusiastic rounds of laughter than the fist in my stomach unclenched. I believe the whole cast had they same thought: They think we're funny? They think we're funny! HOORAH!!
Left to Right: Miss Beatrice Atkins (me), Stella Mumford (Lou), Josephine Mumford (Natasha) and our previous maid.
Stay Saucy,
Miss Scarlet
