Martha News

We had our first floor rehearsal, last Sunday and it’s always a bit of a shock to the system trying to put moves to words and music that isn’t fully in the memory banks yet. Singers arrive to find some strange cabbalistic markings on the floor which are explained as the set. The director airily tells them that this consists of three rostra being a central 2x 2 flanked on each side by a 1x 3 which are slightly lower and by the way there will also be steps on the remaining 2 sides of the centre. She ( the director) stresses that people should not walk across the markings on the floor un less they have been told to step up onto a rostrum.

It is understandably very difficult to imagine a 2 tiered structure when the only indication is a series of hyphens on the floor ( because we had nearly run out of masking tape!!) Regular Heber singers have got used to the complexities of all this stuff and just shrug and go with the flow but it must be total gobble-di-gook to anyone who is working with us for the first time.

Never the less, we had a very productive rehearsal – a good session with principal soloists from 6.00pm and then with chorus from 7.30pm to 10pm. Sunday evenings are quite intensive and everyone works very hard especially Tim Nail our pianist who plays solidly for 4 hours – what a star!

The show itself is good fun with a lot of humorous moments and importantly for a change, nobody dies! The story involves social class divisions, brotherly affection, confusion over identities, the rejection of romantic love first by the girl and then by the boy but all finally concluding with and true love triumphant.

Tickets will be on sale from March 1st (via Ticketsource ) and for those of you who don’t like on-line booking, our telephone line will be live from March 2nd.

“Martha” is a lovely show and not performed very often so do come and see it.