Magic Flute

I do love Amazon.

We went to the Lamplighters Gala yesterday.  The gala is always preceded by a silent auction of things members of the company have donated, and other larger items they've been able to coerce people to give.  

One the table of thing that had been given by Lamplighters I saw this book.  Patricia Minger is a woman who performed with the Lamplighters for 3 years in the mid-80s.  I knew her name, I kinda sorta remembered what she looked like.  I didn't bid on the book, but looked at it and saw that it was praised by mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade.  The plot sounded interesting (flautist on her way up is involved in a terrible acccident that ruins her hand and she must find another way to add meaning to her life). 

It was about 45 minutes before the show was going to start and I was not interested in checking the other auction items because we are looking to divest ourselves of things rather than to add things.  I had my Kindle with me, so I went to shop on amazon and in a matter of minutes, I had purchased Magic Flute and was happily sitting in the lobby reading my new book.  And so far, it's good!  

I saw Pat at the party after the show and told her what I'd done and how much I was enjoying it so far.

As for the Gala, this was the 51st anniversary of this fund-raising show, and we have been  to most of them, including the very first one at the Harding Theater.  In those days there was unlimited champagne after the show and for several years, I went home definitely in my cups.  Now the champagne is still there but there is less of it and we do manage to go home sober (in fact, I drink water, not champagne).

Every year there have been Lamplighters manning the bar at the party and this year it looked like they had hired a professional company to do it.  There were snacks.  Last year there were bowls of snacks at several spots throughout the big room, but last night they were all concentrated in one tiny spot right next to the bar.

Most ridiculous set-up ever.  Several hundred people all wanting drinks and food and all trying to get into this teeny, tiny area.  There was a big box of snack bags in the back so bowls were filled as soon as they were emptied (almost immediately), but if they had been spread out throughout the room, things would have worked MUCH better (especially for people like me who don't drink alcohol, who were feeling overwhelmed by the crowd and the noise and who just wanted to sit somewhere and observe, while eating).  I also caused a problem asking for water instead of champagne.  First they couldn't find any and then they found one big bottle and couldn't get it opened.  In previous years I was able to pick up a bottle of water and take it with me. We needed Paul and Henry!!!

As for the show, it was, of course, very funny.  This year it was based on Saturday Night Live, so the format was more a throwback to the earliest days, when there was no plot line, but individual funny numbers, some funnier than others.  I think people who are fans of Saturday Night Live and Game of Thrones got more out of it than others.

At intermission was my least favorite part of recent shows;  the auction.  After the silent auction has closed in in the lobby, a live auction starts in the theater....the big ticket items.  There is a professional auctioneer who drives in from Davis to run the auction.  He's good, but very irritating.  And he raised over $50,000 for the company in half an hour, so an asset, but I truly hate it.  One of the big ticket items was this fancy framed tribute to the Golden State Warriors (here held by Jonathan Spencer, one of the writers for the Gala):

I'll give the auctioneer credit.  He did his darndest, but finally had to admit that this was a theater audience, not a sports audience and the thing went unsold.  The week trip in a villa in Italy, however, was so popular, he managed to get three different people to spend $5600 (each) for it.

I had to smile at the original lyrics for this show.  Back in 1983 when office manager David Witmer and I convinced Gilbert to do the first of the plot galas, his argument against it was the the chorus would never be able to learn new lyrics to songs that were not from shows they had done during the previous season.  We wrote a plot for Major General Hospital and a few of the songs had new lyrics and the chorus did a beautiful job.

That ushered in the era of plot galas and each year they have become more and more elaborate.  The first was written by Gilbert, David and myself, but then we started adding new people to the committee and by the time Gilbert died, in 1986, there was a viable committee to take over for Gilbert.  That committee has exceeded any expectations Gilbert ever had and the resulting show is worth the $100 ticket price.

When it ended, our friends Diana and Jill agreed with us that it had been too long...but then it always is, but somehow it doesn't matter.

The best part of the evening was the surprise for outgoing managing director, Sarah Vardigans, who is leaving to join the Peace Corps in Senegal.  The tribute to her was a complete surprise.

There was also another complete surprise of a Legacy Award for Chris Focht, who has been with the company for 50 year (we predate him by about 3 years, but we never performed).  I looked at all those people on stage and remembered all of the back stories -- who used to be married to whom, who had had live-in relations with whom, whose children have problems, whose children now perform with the company, who is no longer with us, etc., etc., etc.

It's an expensive evening, but it is always a full mix of emotions thinking back over all the galas I remember from previous years, and makes me so proud of having been a part of this San Francisco tradition for nearly 60 years.

Even if all my cheese doodles fell on the floor.

Sobering Thought

I have talked before about Swap Bot.  It is an on-line group you join for the purpose of sharing things with people.  Lots of different things.  You may sign up to send certain kinds of post cards to your partner, or partners.  I like the "journal" swaps where you create a journal out of art things or writing or poems or whatever.  There are exchanges where the more crafty among us will share things like quilt squares or different kinds of art work.  There are postage stamp swaps and tea swaps and chocolate swaps and sticker swaps. I learned about Pocket Letters from Swap Bot (though my passion for them seems to have run its course at the moment).  There are lots of pen pal exchanges, the hope being that a pen pal relationship will develop between partners (so far I have not achieved that).  I join a lot of pen pal swaps, but avoid the ones where it is mandatory that letters be hand written.

Occasionally you will find a swap where you answer a series of questions and either mail it or email it to your partner(s).  Kind of like Sunday Stealing.

I stopped doing most international exchanges when I package I sent, which was suppposed to be something like $10 worth of things purchased at the dollar store, could not be delivered.  The package was returned to me with a note saying it was undeliverable, though I had the right address.  It had cost so much to mail it to England (far more than it was worth) that I didn't want to recreate the package and re-send it, so I offered to send my partner the something else instead.  I was marked down for that and was unable to qualify for some swaps since then.  So now I only do international post card exchanges, or exchanges that are electronic...like sending a Sunday stealing type of swap by email to other countries.

Maybe it's a "you had to have been there" kind of thing, but I have been with Swap Bot for six years and enjoy it -- it's always nice to get some sort of oddball thing from a total stranger in the mail, now that snail mail is all but dead.

Recently I signed up for a swap called "Know it All."  The partial instructions for this swap read, "you will write a letter (around 2 pages long) about something you are very knowledgeable about to TWO PARTNERS: for example a favorite hobby or passion of yours, or even something you dislike but happen to know a lot about."

It amused me to see that when the deadline for signing up came only three people had signed up for the swap.  One was the woman who initiated the swap, I was the second, and a woman I have come to know, somewhat, through one of the discussion groups which are also a part of Swap Bot.  I was not surprised to find her listed, as she does come across as someone who knows a lot about a lot of things and I am eager to find out what she chooses for her thing to write about.  Apparently nobody else felt like a know it all!

As I thought over things that I know lots about, I thought of the "periods" of my life.  When I have been interested in something, I jump in head first and often go overboard learning about that "thing" that I am currently interested in.  The pocket letters are a good example (though I by no means know all about them).  

In my childhood, I could have written about animal books that I loved and my obsession with Albert Payson Terhune and his collies.  I could definitely have written about Judy Garland, since I kept a 12-volume scrapbook about her and still have a whole shelf filled with just books written about her 

I probably could have written a decent tome on cooking and cookbooks.  I once had a huge collection of cookbooks that I finally gave away, leaving only three shelves of books remaining.  I almost never use those books any more now that you can google just about any recipe you want, but there are some interesting ones, like the book written for housewives during World War II, for how to make things out of the little that they were rationed (Walt used to make a lamb chop recipe from that book that I always loved).  There is a whole book about pies that I keep just because it has my favorite recipe for Lemon Meringue pie.  There is a bread cookbook that I haven't used since I got my bread maker, but keep because I might want to make cumin bread again some day.  Likewise, the soup book I keep in case I have a leftover lamb bone and want to make Lamb Soup of the Middle-east, my favorite soup.

But what I chose to write about, and perhaps it is the thing that I really do have the most knowledge about, is The Lamplighters.  When I started thinking about how to explain my knowledge of The Lamplighters (and peripherally Gilbert and Sullivan), it hit me that I am perhaps the only person in the world who knows as much about the Lamplighters.

There are people who have been around for decades, but the people currently performing, even if they have been with the company for 10 years or more, don't know the early history, especially since those people don't even know there have been two published histories (no longer available).

Co-founder Orva Hoskinson, who died this year, at age 90, stopped being involved several years ago, and his partner, Ann Pool-MacNab left the company in the 1960s.  She is now more or less housebound by physical problems but has not had any but the most peripheral contact with the company in many years.

My co-author, Alison Lewis, knows as much about the early years of the company as I do, since we worked together to write the two histories, but she has stopped being involved for the last many years.  Walt and I still attend shows, and a few social events, so we are still keeping in our oar, as they say.

I may well be the person who knows more about the Lamplighters than any other person and that is quite a sobering thought.  My knowledge of the goings on outside of the shows themselves is less intense than it was when I was working in the office for those years that I worked, and those years when we were collecting material for the books, but I am still at least peripherally aware of what is happening, which keeps me up to date.

So I wrote my "Know it All" entry about the Lamplighters and managed to condense it into three typed pages which may or may not be of interest to my partners.  I am still humbled by the thought that all things Lamplighter are stored in my head!

I See Dead People

What a fun evening.  After a day when I spent most of the time sleeping (after a night of insomnia), we headed off to Walnut Creek to see the Lamplighters' I have a Song to Sing-O, which is the story of Gilbert & Sullivan.  I first saw this show when the LLs first put it together in the 1990s and don't know if I've seen it since, but it would be fun to see how it has evolved over the years.

We started with dinner at a restaurant named Broderick, where we have eaten before.  We were seated at a booth against the wall, so that Walt had a regular chair and I had the soft seat attached to the wall, which was fine except when I sat down it felt like I was sitting in a hole.

 

I was sunk so far down that I had to hold the salad bowl in my lap in order to eat the salad. But I also had a delicious Maryland Sandwich, which was a crab cake and quite tasty but falling apart, so I had to eat it with knife and fork (tricky when you're sitting in a hole).

 

We headed over to the Lesher Center and were about half an hour early, but the lobby was filled.  I managed to squeeze in next to a couple of older ladies on a bench.

One of the ladies left and I chatted with the other for a long time (until Char and her friends from "the home" arrived).  She was a fascinating lady who hadn't seen a lot of Lamplighters shows, but thought this would be a good one to see because it had the best of the G&S musical numbers in it.  She told us something about her history and all the places in the world where she had lived

At the appointed time we went into the theater and didn't see this woman again until we were standing at the elevator in the parking lot, when we began chatting again and she mentioned being a writer.  When I asked her about that, she said she had been the Poet Laureate in Brentwood, CA for the past 17 years.  I looked her up on the internet this morning and discovered her name is Kati Short and I was able to get a better view of what her life had been like.  I love the internet.

By chance, we happened to be sitting in the audience with Jen Kiernan, who has been a member of the Lamplighters ensemble for years.  What's funny is that Jen and I seem to take selfies of ourselves every time we get together and we were going to try to get one together after the show, but the crowd was just too big and so I settled for a photo I took of her in the audience.

And then there was the show.  This is a small show, with Gilbert sitting on one side of the stage, Sullivan on the other, writing letters to each other.  The musical numbers take place in the middle, with the small orchestra in the back (they never look at the conductor!).  I found this video clip which is fun.

The show is indeed all the greatest hits and as the numbers rolled by, I realized how traditional the Lamplighters choreography is.  Such familiar numbers like "Three Little Maids" and the sailors from Pinafore and "Three Little Maids," and so many more have had choreography changed very little, if at all, over the past 65 years.

As I watched the great performers on stage, I could not help but see the performances of the past, Gilbert as Koko in The Mikado and while Lawrence Ewing is a great Bunthorne (in Patience), you can't help but remember the classic performance of Orva Hoskinson in a role of which a critic said "There was Gielgud's Hamlet and there is Hoskinson's Bunthorne.

So many Lamplighters of the past marched through my memory banks as I watched the show.  I realized how very proud I am to have been a small of this theatrical treasure.

Two Stage Shows and a Funeral

I was going to title this entry "Three Stage Shows and a funeral" and then discovered that I wrote that very entry on March 12 in 2012, when the funeral was for my mother's stepson, Fred Rynders.  And actually in 2017, you have to discount the show that wasn't, the night I wandered around the cemetery looking for the show that won't be presented until next month, so it's really only Two Stage Shows and a Funeral.  But it does seem that after 6,600 journal entries, I seem to be living my life in circles!

Today we said good bye to a great man.  If the impact a person has on the world is indicated by the number of people who attend his memorial service, John Vlahos was indeed a great man.

It was a beautiful day for a memorial.  The sky was blue and clear and this is that rare time of year, which lasts so briefly, when the hills everywhere you look are carpeted in a beautiful green.

The service was held at Mira Vista Country Club, high in the hills overlooking San Francisco bay.

When we arrived, there was a long stream of cars entering the club grounds and all of the parking areas were already full.  Walt let me off and he parked outside, down a steep hill, a couple of blocks away. (He was picked up by someone in a golf cart who drove him to the clubhouse).

There was a long line outside the clubhouse, waiting to file in.

All the chairs were already taken and people were starting to sit at tables on the side of the big room.

By the time the service started there were probably twice as many people as are shown in this photo.

John had been an attorney and comments were given by a couple of his partners and long  time friends.  One of his sons gave a wonderful eulogy that was both funny and touching.

A large group of Lamplighters performed songs that John had performed in his days performing with the company (after which he went on to be Chairman of the Board for 30 years or so), including a song rewritten especially for him for the very last time he was able to get to the theater (Music by Sullivan, lyrics by Barbara Heroux).

They ended their set with a beautiful song, "If these shadows have offended," which combines Gilbert & Sullivan and Shakespeare, that has become a Lamplighter standard (but which is copyrighted and can't  -- and shouldn't) be linked here, and the finale, "Hail Poetry," which left not a dry eye in the house.  I've decided that every memorial service should end with "Hail Poetry."

After it was a madhouse of people trying to just move but it was more congested than a New York subway at rush hour.  I met Judy N, who has been reading this journal, I was surprised to learn, for many, many years and was determined to check behind potted palms to find me.  We had a lovely chat until I had the first back pain I've had since I started the cream and I had to go find a chair to sit down (when the pain left, it left and I am still relatively pain free for several days now!)

I had a chance to visit with several of our friends and as I looked around that crowd, I got all verklempt thinking of how many very good friends have come from the Lamplighters, how much I love this company, and, sadly, how many memorial services we have attended over the years (we have another coming up in June).  Now we are getting old, grey, and doddering. Some are now housebound and were unable to attend today.  At least 3 of us that I saw had canes.  Bill Neil sat down next to me with a heavy sigh and said "It's really hard to get old...."  I pointed out that we were the same age, and agreed with him.

My father told me, when I was a kid, that Gilbert & Sullivan was the worst music in the world (that was before rock and roll came around, which replaced it) and I never would have learned of the Lamplighters without Walt, who brought me to my first shows.  The rest, as they say, is history.  60 years of history with us and the Lamplighters.  How very different my life would have been if I had never gone to that first HMS Pinafore (not even my favorite).  

I felt surrounded by love today as we all joined together with attorneys and judges and who knows what other groups, to celebrate John's life and to acknowledge what a very special person he was.

Those Early Morning Calls

When the phone rings at 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning after the election, I immediately start thinking of what happened to my mother.  When I check the caller ID and see that the call is coming from her phone, I really worry.

But when I picked up the phone, my mother said "who is this?" (so I knew she was alive).  I said "Bev" and  she said "where are you?"  I told her I was at my house and that she had called me.

"I need help," she said.  I asked her what she needed help with and, after a pause, she said "With...this."  She then repeated what she has said to me every day for the past 3 years, that she doesn't know what she should be doing and she needs help figuring it out.

This is her biggest frustration and sometimes it is a mild annoyance, but sometimes it become a big cause of angst.  Today was an angst day.  I got in the car immediately and drove to Atria.  I picked up 2 cups of coffee in the lobby (because I hadn't had coffee yet) and went to the apartment.  She was in a familiar state of agitation though furniture had been moved and the house looked "messy" (for her) and she had obviously been trying to figure something out.

I sat and talked with her, the same conversation we always have.  She is supposed to be doing something, but she wasn't interested in anything I suggested she do (everything from picking up her newspapers and leaving them for the cleaning ladies, sweeping her patio, which bothers her because there are a couple of leaves on it, to going out to the front lobby to check on what activities were being done that day).  She met each suggestion with a blank stare and then asked wasn't there someone else in the family who could help her, since I was such a failure at it.

I started thinking of possibilities and the only workable one I could think of is for me to just essentially move to Atria.  Oh, not move in, but go there more than I have been going (it's been so nice having a few days off) with the idea that we are going to do something.

Monday, for example, there is bingo at 1:30.  I also noticed that my mother was out of lipstick.  I was going to make a note to go and get some for her, but decided that this was something she could do so I told her that tomorrow I would pick her up and take her to get lipstick, then we would have lunch and then go play Bingo.  Then we went to breakfast and by the time we had finished breakfast, she was her old self again.

It is obvious that she is not going to do a thing on her own and that the only way she will do anything is if she does it with me.  So, for the foreseeable future, I am going to become an active part of the life at Atria and hope that will help ease my mother's angst.

The Davis Dementia support group also meets this week (it's the 3rd Wednesday of the month and I keep having conflicting activities) and I will definitely go this week, barring unforeseen emergencies.  I definitely need support...and more importantly, ideas!

---

With all the angst at Atria, I was terribly afraid I would not be able to leave my mother to go to the Lamplighters Gala, the show we pay big bucks for and that we look forward to each year.  But she was so much better that I had no qualms about leaving her (who knows if she will remember anything, but at least she was OK when I left).

The Gala is starting to depress me.  It was always a ...gala... time meeting friends and enjoying the show, but as the years pass, more friends are no longer with us or have stopped coming to the shows, the rest of us are getting older and sicker, the people on stage are people to whom I feel no connection any more, and since I seem to have lost my taste for spirits these days, I don't even look forward to the champagne reception afterwards.

There were wonderful bits in the show, like our friend Barbara playing Laffing Sal, the British mechanical figure that stood in the window of the Fun House at Playland at the Beach, rocking back and forth and laughing continually, and terrified me .... well.... forever.

...this Sal was from The Fun House at ‘Playland At The Beach’ in San Francisco. Her bright red hair, huge towering moving figure and loud boisterous laugh are etched in the mind of every child who saw her as a child. Most were terrified of her – and many still remember that fear when they see her some 30, 40 or 50 years later. 

Her interpretation was spot on, so much so that after the show, I was going upstairs to the reception and got in the elevator with Barbara and her husband and told her I wasn't sure I wanted to ride with her because of my memories of being terrified.

The show itself was not one of the better galas, though you can't really have a bad gala because there is too much talent, both in the writing and in the performing. 

The story this time centered around a scandal in the U.S. Treasury and I think maybe money just isn't all that funny!  But the Treasury museum, which was a real tribute to Hamilton was wonderful, though probably more meaningful to those who are familiar with the Broadway hit.

At intermission, former Lamplighters president (for 30 years!) John Vlahos was given a special "legend" award and many nice things were said -- and sung -- about him.  His wife had been doing her best to keep him from finding out about the surprise and she had been successful.  He was overwhelmed and it was such a touching moment, I was in tears from the emotion of it all.  I have had many connections with John over the years, and he's one of the good guys.

He's shown here with actor Bill Neil, who was in the show.  I suspect Bill may be the oldest living Lamplighter...and he is definitely the oldest living performing Lamplighter!

It was 9 p.m. before we got home, and the dogs were starving, but we had a good night, in spite of the rocky morning.  Tomorrow will be another adventure, I'm sure.

Time Flies When You're Having Fun

One day you're burying your best friend and then you turn around and discover that you are commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of that sad day!

We held our 30th GRUB yesterday, the Gala Reinterment of Uncle Buddy, remembering Gilbert yet again.

There were 8 of us last night.  The first time we held this dinner there were four of us and the group grew up to near 20, I think.  Then we started losing people, some because they lost interest, three because they decided to share this celebration with Gilbert himself, and have passed on to whatever is beyond this life.

Jeanne Ziaja was the first to leave, all too soon and a much too young age.  Her husband John continued to join us until health problems kept him housebound.  Then we lost Adrian MacNamara, who an actor and also the first president of the Lamplighters.  He served as president for many years.  His wife Connie came for a year or two after Adrian's death, but it was a long drive for her.  Then Will Connolly, one of Gilbert's best friends, had the audacity to die.  A big spark left with him and he is still sorely missed, especially because he was the organizer of the event year after year.  

The wonderful actress Marie Clyde, who was one of the earliest Lamplighters and who had been Gilbert's friend and shared a house with him for many years, just gradually stopped coming.

We kept the group to people who had been his friends and didn't let word get out that we even had this gathering.  We made a big mistake last year, inviting a friend of a friend, who worked with Gilbert but wasn't really his friend.  She ended up telling lots of people who were hurt because they felt they should be included.  We decided not to invite new people again.

In the beginning we started meeting at restaurants that had been Gilbert's favorites, but over the 30 years, most of those have closed their doors, so we started trying new places, like the Portuguese Cultural Center (for no particular reason except the food was good and it was reasonably priced).  We went to the San Francisco Yacht Club once, because Will had connections and the food was good, and pretty spendy.  For two or three years we went to restaurant called Delancy Street, which was a place where the food was plentiful and reasonably priced, but the cooking and wait staff were all people from recovery programs trying to get their lives back together again. (I think we always had the best service there of anyplace).

In the last three years we went to a little restaurant in the San Francisco Presidio, which used to be a military base.  I can't remember what this building was, but it is now a trendy little restaurant, across the road from what used to be a military hospital and is now the headquarters of Industrial Light and Magic.

The problem with all of these venues, especially in the years when we had a big group, is that you only get to talk with the people directly around you.  I went for years without visiting with Diana, the contractor of the Lamplighter orchestra, who somehow usually sat at the other end of the table.  Other than greetings at the start and end of the evening we didn't speak at all, though I enjoyed visiting with those who were seated across and next to me.

The evenings weren't always without problems.  We always split the bill rather than try to figure out who had what, but at least one couple had more expensive tastes than others of us and ordered expensive meals and very expensive wines.  (I remember one night where settling the bill took longer than eating the meal and nobody was satisfied at the end). After a couple of years of difficulty about the bill, especially for people who were on limited incomes, they finally stopped coming.

So we have finally come down to 8 of us and this year Shelley decided to host it at her house.  What a GREAT idea!  For one thing she lives in a part of San Francisco I didn't know existed and can't believe we actually found.

She has a great patio where we sat and were entertained by the lovely Miss Lovely.

We had hors d'oeuvres and wine outside in the delicious 65 degree weather and chatted for a long time, then went indoors to have the main course(s) -- roast beef, chicken and sushi?? -- and dessert.  Best of all, we could all participate in all the discussions and, of course, there was lots of discussion about The Mikado.  We were the only ones who had actually seen the show.  (Diana, who is in the orchestra has heard it many times, of course).  There were differences in opinion about the wisdom of doing it because of threats from the Asian Community -- and how it was done, but everyone plans to see it and I hope we get a chance to share opinion about what they think of the production.

Once we reached 25 years after Gilbert's death, and especially after Will died, I started thinking maybe we had done enough, since none of us -- not even Marie -- knew him that long in real life, but we always go for "one more time" and at the end of the "one more time" I'm always glad we did it and ready to do it again next year.

I truly love these people.

The Town of Tirmisu

Gilbert and Sullivan wrote 13 operettas.  Of those 13, there are the three biggies --  HMS Pinafore, Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado.  Of these three, Mikado has always been my favorite.  It was Gilbert Russak's KoKo that made me a Lamplighters fan back in the 1960s.  

Koko was one of the two roles for which Gilbert was best known, so it has always been kind of sacrosanct for me.  When we first saw the show at the old Harding Theater in San Francisco, back in the early 1960s, I just loved it and dragged Walt back time and time again whenever Gilbert was doing the role (they were double cast, so sometimes someone else was playing--we got free ushering tickets). (Ironically it was not until nearly 20 years later that I actually met Gilbert and he ended up being my best friend)

Back in 1884-85, when the show was written, Gilbert & Sullivan had a few hits under their belt and Gilbert wanted to do another, but Sullivan was tired of what he felt was the same formula in each operetta and only agreed to do another one if Gilbert could come up with a new idea.

At that time England was going through a craze of "all things Japanese," as a result of rapidly increasing European trade with Japan.  He had already completed the first act of Mikado when an exhibition of all things Japanese opened in Knightsbridge and as they were going into rehearsals, Gilbert invited some of the ladies from the Knightsbridge exposition to come to help the cast of his Mikado to get all the proper gestures and mannerisms right.

For more than 100 years, The Mikado has enjoyed world wide popularity (in 1888 at least 150 companies all over the world were producing it).  It has been performed for at least two Japanese emperors visiting England (one of whom requested it) and was performed in Japan many times.

However, times have changed.  We live in times of political correctness and the show has come under growing criticism by the Asian-American community for promoting "orientalist" stereotypes.   In 2014 a production in Seattle was attacked by a newspaper as "yellowface...in your face."  A year later there was such a firestorm about an upcoming production by the New York Gilbert & Sullivan players that they withdrew it altogether.  Similar complaints have had similar results all over the country.

When two local Asian-American theater companies threatened to picket every performance of the Lamplighters upcoming production, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Lamplighters San Francisco home for many years, threatened to cancel their lease.

At first the company made an outreach to the Asian American acting community, inviting them to audition for the show, but not enough people showed up to fill a cast of 40 and those who were interested apparently did not want to be in a production that also had Caucasians in "yellowface."  (Ironically, I remember a production of Brigadoon that Walt and I saw decades ago which was put on by the Chinese Cultural Center, where every single Scott in the show was Chinese)

The Lamplighters had to do something.  They came up with the idea of setting the story in Italy (Milan, since the opening song goes "We are gentlemen of Japan" and "We are gentlemen of Milan" fits perfectly), and making minimal changes to the libretto (as it turns out only about 1-2% of the libretto was changed) and set it in the town of Tirmisu (instead of Titipu) during the period of the Renaissance, which gave the opportunity for opulent non-Japanese costumes.

They changed character names:  The Mikado became "Il Ducato, the Emperor of Milan"; his son Nanki-Poo becomes Niccolu (the only name I really didn't like). Koko is now Coco; Pooh Bah, the Lord High Everything is now Pooba; Pish Tush the other nobleman is Piccia Tuccia.  Nanki-Poo is in love with Yum Yum, who is now Amiam, The Mikado's two wards, Pitti Sing and Peep Bo are now Pizzi and Pippa and the gorgon who is in love with Nanki-Poo who was once Katisha is now Catiscia.  Except for Niccolu all the names sound so similar to the original that you don't miss the old names.

Best of all Coco, played by the incomparable Lawrence Ewing, did not disappoint.

Shown here with Bill Neil as Pooba...loved him, hated the hat!

There are minimal, minimal changes in dialog.  Anything obviously Japanese was rewritten, but that involved only the opening song, and a couple of chants supposedly in Japanese.  Otherwise it is exactly as W.S. Gilbert wrote it.

The biggest change from the original is in the choreography, which the Lamplighters had been using, pretty much unchanged, for 60+ years.  You expect the 3 little maids to have fans and use them in a specific way.  You expect Koko to carry a big scimitar and things like that. The new choreography is as faithful to Renaissance Italy as the old was to 19th century Japan.  But it really works.

There has been lots and lots of controversy about this production.  Purists (I admit to being one) wanted to boycott.  The two founders of the company didn't think the Lamplighters should bend to the pressure. Ticket sales fell off. 

I originally did not want to see the show, but ultimately decided that I needed to see exactly what they had done to it before condemning it out of hand, and was pleasantly surprised.  All the stuff they did works, setting the story outside of Japan doesn't alter the story at all...and, in fact, when you remove the Japanese setting all those barbs which were aimed at 19th century Britain work even better.  The replacement lyrics and dialog are inspired (the Lamplighters have the most brilliant writers around, they have reverence for the original text and write things that might have been written by W.S. Gilbert himself.)

The changes were minimal. In the original, for example Koko, in describing a supposed execution, says "I seized him by his little pigtail" which was changed to "I seized him by the scruff of the neck..."

I constantly thought, as I watched the show, that for someone who had never seen the original, this would be a fresh new show and they'd love it.  The theater wasn't full, as it should have been for The Mikado and I can only assume it was all those people who don't want anybody messing with their Mikado.

I hope they give it a chance and go with an open mind.  I did and I'm glad that I did.

The ultimate squelch was that in looking over the chorus I realized that there are more Asians in the cast than I have ever seen in a Lamplighter show before!

My Proudest Moment

Walt and I (and the dogs) listened to "Says You" again this afternoon and while listening to the radio I managed to get through two boxes of "stuff" and throw away a lot of it.  I actually have the garbage can almost filled again. Ned will be so proud.

Most of the stuff was photographs, though lots of negatives, which I threw away, and some oddball things like...why in the world do I have Gilbert's musicians union membership card from about 1980 or currency from Hong Kong and Brasil which has been replaced in those countries by new currency. 

But, as with an awful lot of these boxes, most of the things were photographs and, of course, I had to go through them before deciding to throw any away.

Some of the photos reminded me of when I was creative.

Take this quilt for example.  The woman who had been in charge of La Leche League was moving on and I decided that we should give her a quilt to thank her for her years of work.  I had taken a quilt making class during the year so I thought a lot in terms of quilts.

I solicited squares from every leader in California.  They all sent me their squares and I put them together into one gigantic quilt.

I was so proud of that thing.

It was so big the only way I could get a picture of it was to have Ned and Paul stand at the top of our gym set and hold it.

I wish I could remember the actual ceremony where we presented it to her, or her name, or anything else about this.  But all I can remember is the quilt and I was pleased to find this photo buried among the rest of the photos.

But that wasn't my proudest moment.  My proudest moment was with the Lamplighters.  After we finished writing the first Lamplighters history, I stuck around and worked as a volunteer for about five years, until Gilbert died in 1986, commuting one or two days a week from Davis to San Francisco.  I did a lot with the Lamplighters.  I learned how to work a computer.  Gilbert and I started a newsletter that is still going today (though now it's an on-line letter).  We wrote several shows together.  A lot of stuff.

But my proudest moment concerned the great contralto, June Wilkins.  June had been the leading contralto (all those full figured characters W.S. Gilbert made fun of in the operettas).  She had a tremendous voice and was wonderful on stage.  I was surprised when I interviewed her for the book how shy she was and how lacking in self esteem.

While I was working for the company, June finally decided it was time for her to retire.  I was shocked to realize that there was to be no big goodbye for her at all.  That just wasn't right.  I browbeat the Lamplighters general manager and he agreed to honor June at the conclusion of the current production.  It was during the time when I was doing cake decorations, so I decided to make 3 sheet cakes to serve to the audience.  Each was decorated with a picture of June in one of the costumes she was so famous for wearing.

The cake at the top left is Katisha from The Mikado.  The one at the top right is Lady Jane in Patience, and the cake at the bottom is the Fairy Queen from Iolanthe.

So at the conclusion of the show, they brought June up on stage for some nice words and tumultuous applause from the audience.  I stood in the wings with tears in my eyes, watching her realize how special she had been to the company all those years.

Then we went downstairs and she cut her cakes and we served it to the people from the audience who joined us for refreshments.

There were lots of accolades here too, and she was very definitely the center of attention.  

To my knowledge, she never knew I made the cakes.  I'm sure she thought they came from a bakery.  But I didn't mind.  It still stands out in my mind as one of my favorite days in all the years I worked with The Lamplighters.

Sadly, June died many years ago, as have many of the friends I made during those years, but it was a golden time for me...and I'm so glad that I took photos of some of the events, though I don't have a lot of Lamplighters photos, because I was too shy to take a lot of pictures.  But finding these two pictures today was a real treat.

Mine...but Not Mine

I get a pang whenever we go to a Lamplighters show (we saw Ruddygore today).  

This is the backside of the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, part of the Mosconi Center.  The company has been performing there (and several other theaters around northern California) for many years, but I was not part of the company when they made that move.  I had not been a part of the company for several years when they made that move.

The Lamplighters has been a huge part of my life for over fifty years.

In the beginning Walt and I got ushering tickets so we could see the shows for free.  They performed at the Harding Theater then, a dilapidated old movie house in a marginally bad section of town.  It's where my love of Gilbert & Sullivan and this company really began.

When the neighborhood started going downhill faster (and audience members were being accosted on the street), they moved to the Presentation High School theater.  That was my sister's alma mater and over the years I definitely spent more time there than she ever did.  That was where they were performing when Alison, Carolyn and I started researching what would eventually be "The Lamplighters: Twenty-Five Years of Gilbert & Sullivan in San Francisco."

I saw my first rehearsal there, it was Act 2 of Die Fledermaus and I still remember the great thrill of walking into the theater and sitting quietly watching them rehearse the opening chorus, which to this day I cannot hear without thinking of that moment.

We wrote our book and I stuck around as a volunteer in the office.  I became a Lamplighter and made lifelong friends there.  Gilbert & I collaborated on several original musicals there.  And I had my heart broken when he died in 1986.

Walt and I continued to be involved, though now the major involvement was his, as he joined the tech crew and the friends he made there are the ones who joined us at Arthur Sullivan's memorial a week ago.  We see them socially a couple of times a year.  It is sad that we have started seeing them at funerals in addition to dinner parties.

As time moved on and new people started performing, they weren't "my" people any more, and really, how many times can you see HMS Pinafore in a lifetime anyway?  We started skipping some shows, though we still see at least one a year (in addition to the annual fund-raising gala, which I used to help write).

So when we go to a show it's with a sense of familiarity, though when I open the program and find only 4 familiar names among a whole cast of new faces, it's not "my" Lamplighters any more.  And when of the names I recognize, one has been performing with the LLs for  50 years and the other for 40... They both used to do leads, this time they split the small character role of Old Adam, who has very little to say and/or do.  But they want to keep performing (and one of them is now also the company General Manager). Chris is still in the chorus after 49 years.

Walt pointed out to me the name of someone on the tech crew.  He remembered working on the tech crew with her mother when she was pregnant with the girl who has now joined the company.

I looked over the extensive donor list and found John and his wife [last name]  I remember when they used to include the name of their daughter Alicia and when their daughter's name disappeared off of the form when they submitted their donation some time in the mid 1980s, I called them to find out who Alicia was and what had happened to her (she had gone off to college).  We had just gotten a computer that year and I was inputting all the donors into a database, which is how I happened to notice.

Paul worked a show one time and Tom was in a production of HMS Pinafore.  Ned worked on the tech crew for a production of Patience.  He still remembered the quote "oh to be wafted away from this black Alcadama of sorrow where the dust of an earthy today is the earth of a dusty tomorrow." I played the doorbell in the overture to Something's Afoot when it was done for the first time. Jeri was on the tech crew for several years too.

I can barely remember before there was Lamplighters in my life and can't see there never being Lamplighters in my life again, but it's not "my company" any more.  It belongs to the young kids who have moved it into a whole new level of professionalism. 

Still when I see Mad Margaret and Despard doing "I once was a very abandoned person" and realize that the choreography for today's production is almost exactly the same as it has been for the past 60 years (it was declared "perfect" and nobody wanted to change perfection), I realize that it will always be "my company" on some level.

Use the Farce, Luke

This was a 3 show weekend, but I only had to review two of them.  The third was this afternoon.  We went to San Francisco for the 50th annual fund-raising gala.  The Lamplighters is 62 years old and in its 15th year, they were having money problems and decided to put on a special show for which they would charge more money and serve champagne.  For the first year or two, a winery donated all the champagne, but I guess that we drank too much and they have bought it ever since.

I have fond memories of ushering at that first Gala (where a fire broke out backstage which delayed the start of the production) and after the show was over, standing in the theater getting snockered with leading tenor Adrian McNamara.

Tonight they asked from the stage how many people had been coming for 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years.  Only 5 of us in the audience had been coming for 50 years (though we skipped a few years during our baby-raising days).

Tonight also honored Bill Neil, who has been performing with the Lamplighters for 50 years (and was in tonight's show).  He received a proclamation from San Francisco's mayor, Ed Lee, congratulating him on his record.

In the earliest galas, and for many years, the shows consisted of songs from the current season used to fit some sort of silly plot.  There were no lyric changes, just the songs out of context to move along a new story line.  Things changed in about 1982 when then-office manager David Witmer and I convinced musical director Gilbert Russak to base the new show on soap operas and to use the entire Gilbert & Sullivan canon and change some of the lyrics to fit the silly plot.  Gilbert, certain that would be too much for the chorus, fought us on it, but eventually he agreed to try it. The three of us wrote the show and Major General Hospital was a phenomenal success and though when viewed today, the show can't hold a candle to the work that is being done now, it got rave reviews from critics who had not seen anything like it before.

Gilbert and I wrote the show the next year, under a lot of adverse conditions, and by the third year, we had begun to assemble a small writing committee, foremost among whom was Barbara Heroux, who would go on to become general director years later, and Geoff Colton, patter man and lyric writer extraordinaire.  The year before he died, Gilbert wrote his magnum opus, a Gilbert & Sullivan salute to Wagner's Ring Cycle.

After Gilbert's death, we worried about how the show would get done, but so many talented people stepped up, with Barbara and Geoff in the lead.  I stuck around for 2 or 3 more years, but learned that you really have to be there to effectively participate in all the silliness that are gala writing committee meetings. The galas now are head and shoulders above Major General Hospital and the writers. led by an extremely talented guy named Mike Dedarian with 13 other writers far more talented than Gilbert and I were in those early days.

Tonight's offering was Return of the Deadeye or The Farce Awakens" and was based, very loosely, on the first Star Wars movie, with characters like Luke Moonwalker, Princess Ida Organa, Obi-Bun Thornobi, Juan Solo, and Poohbacca. The actress who played the 3-CPO character (GCPO) was in gold costume with gold paint on her exposed body parts.  she had the movements of 3-CPO down pat, while the actress playing R2-D2 (Mark-O) was riding on some sort of ...gosh, I don't even know what it was.  It was like a hoverboard, controlled by her feet.  She explained to me that each half of whatever it was she was standing on had a motor and she could activate each independent of each other.  She did it so seamlessly that it seemed all one piece of her costume.

The songs were wonderful (I particularly liked one about the current drought called "I once was a very hygienic person") and easily understood thanks to supertitles (and a book of lyrics you could buy to read later)

It was another winner.  During intermission there was an auction which raised about $15,000 for the company.  I met the auctioneer before the show and found out he lived in Davis.  When we started playing the "what part of town do you live in?" game we discovered that we live just a block apart.

The champagne reception was upstairs at Herbst Theater and when my knees gave out, I found a chair to sit in.  I loved just sitting there watching all these people who had paid nearly $100 a ticket for this event and thinking back to its beginnings and its history through the years.  I wish Gilbert could have seen it.

Finding Sherlock

Tonight was the very first time I was sorry not to be a Dr Who fan.  I actually watched my very first Dr. Who episode a couple of weeks ago when a snippet of it was posted to Facebook.  It was one that involved Van Gogh and I went back through 5-6 years of Netflix files and managed to find it.  So at least I knew that Dr. Who travels through time and space in a "tardis," which looks like a London police call box.  But that's pretty much all I retained.

Tonight we went to the 49th annual Lamplighters Gala, those delightful originally written scripts based very loosely on Gilbert & Sullivan plots, using Sullivan's music and new lyrics.  This year's show was called Sherlock Who? and the plot is entirely too convoluted to try to explain, but the first act revolves around Sherlock Holmes and Watson (having seen the current TV series Elementary would also have helped, I suspect, since this Watson was female too) trying to help a damsel in distress and stop a marriage from taking place, which would have resulted in the destruction of a small country.

It turns out that the only way to really save the day is for Holmes to be whisked away in the Tardis by Dr. Who (in this script "Dr. Hugh Dunnit") to 2014 by where the younger Sherlock (looking like Benedict Cumberbatch, who played the role in the short-lived TV series Sherlock) uncovers the clue that will prevent the marriage and save the country.

And then everybody drinks champagne.

As usual,, the lyrics were delightful and included my very favorite Three Little Maids variation--ever...and I've written my share of parodies of that song over the years.  In this version, written by one of my favorite Lamplighters, Jonathan Spencer (if he looks familiar, it's because he was once a contestant on Jeopardy for at least 2, maybe 3 days), had the ladies as ardent fans of Sherlock holmes

Three little Sherlock fans are we,
Odd and obsessed as we can be
Filled to the brim with geek esprit
Three little Sherlock fans

It included delicious lines like "Manic depressives turn me on," and "I plan to stalk you at Comic-Con."

There was a corporation called "Facepalm," whose story started out funny

Though we do not enlist
In their frat boy psychology
How can we resist
Their addictive technology

and got more and more funny as the song by Cary Ann Rosko went on and on having fans of Facebook in stitches at many of the inside jokes.

I wouldn't say this was my favorite Gala ever, but it certainly had its moments and we were glad to be there, which we would not have been had we gone to France.

When it was over, of course, there was champagne and snacks and visiting.  My friend Jen Kiernan, whom I know much better through Facebook, took a selfie of us (and taught me about using the "+" symbol on the side of the phone to snap the picture, which I never knew you could do before!)

Later, her daughter saw us standing with other women and decided she wanted an "old timers" picture.  It was nice to be called an "old timer" even though there is no question about whether or not I am an old timer in this group.

Our friend Bob Cortez, who performed with the Lamplighters for some 10-15 years, had asked me if we could give him a ride to a BART station, since he knew it would be impossible to get a cab that late at night in our somewhat isolated location.   I told him of course we could and we sat to wait for Walt to say his goodbyes and be ready to go.

No.  Those are not our champagne glasses!

Walt and I had planned to have dinner at a cafe in Sausalito that we discovered a year ago after last year's Gala, but we ended up taking Bob all the way to where he parked his car in the East Bay, so we ended up with hamburgers at Jack in the Box for dinner.  But we had a delightful chat with Bob, so I'm glad we did that.

When I got home there was a message from Peach telling me it is cold in Iowa and reminding me to bring a heavy coat (which I don't own) and asked if I had boots.  I guess I may have to buy something other than Birkenstocks before Sunday....

What a Joy to be Here

I will always remember the feeling of awe that my friend Alison and I had the first time we walked into a Lamplighters rehearsal in the late 1970s.  We quickly lost that sense of awe over the coming months, of course. as we (or maybe just I) attended rehearsals frequently and the magic of seeing the world behind the theatrical productions we had watched for years quickly dissolved.  But that first night was magic, as if we were trodding on hallowed ground that only those privileged few involved with the company should be allowed to see.

It was a rehearsal for a production of Die Fledermaus and as we crept quietly through the dark to seats where we could watch things, the chorus was singing the opening number for the second act.  What a joy to be here, on this wonderful occasion...  We watched them rehearse it many times.  To this day, I can't hear that part of Die Fledermaus without remembering that magical evening.

Today we drove to Yountville, near Napa, to watch The Lamplighters bring its latest production to a theater there.  They haven't performed the show in nearly 25 years and we will not be able to attend the San Francisco performances, so we decided to catch it in Yountville.

We're not around the company much any more, so I knew very few people in the production, but it was fun to hear the old songs again.  This is a new translation.  The one I know pretty much inside and out was done by Ruth and Thomas Martin.  This is a new one by David Scott Marley.  I met him after the show and told him he'd done a great job.  In truth, I don't know whether he did a great job or not.  As I said, I know the Martin version backward and forward.  Marley left out some scenes, rearranged some scenes, and of course the lyrics are different and I miss the old lyrics.  I also missed my favorite lines of dialogue ("How long have you been an actress?" "About as long as you've been a Marquis, Marquis.")   But that's not to say it wasn't great.  It probably was.  One reviewer says it's better than the version that's currently at the Met, so it must be very good.   I just don't do change well.

When I realized we would be only about 10 minutes from Napa, I contacted our Brasilian daughter, Sonia, whom we have not seen in about 10 years.   Which is ridiculous, since we live about an hour apart!  But somehow we just don't make the time.  I told her we would be in the neighborhood and would she and husband Charlie like to go out to dinner.  She was thrilled.

I later got a note saying we should just stay for dinner at their house.  Even better.  It gave us time to really get caught up, not only with Sonia but with kids Daniel and Denise.  I remember when both of them were born and we haven't seen either of them in nearly 15 years.  They've grown up in the interim!

Charlie, a vintner, poured wine for a toast while Daniel and Denise helped get dinner ready.

Over dinner, we had a good chance to talk about lots of things, and I was deighted to discover how much Denise and I have in common in the area of animal rights.  I happened to mention Temple Grandin's work and she lit up, as she has read several of Grandin's books.  It was just so much fun.  I loved all the table conversation on animals, politics, and everything else.

And at a certain point, there was a tira misu cake which was fabulous.

We celebrated all of our birthdays -- Paul's (last week), David's (this week), which he shares with Sonia, our friend Nelson in Brasil, me and Walt (Nelson didn't get any cake, of course--nor did Paul and Dave!).

Eventually we had to say goodbye, but not before making friends with Dan's bird, Mel.

Sonia is, among other things, an artist and works in clay and watercolor.  She wants to give me one of her paintings for a birthday present, but it's difficult to see them in the dark of the living room, so I suggested we get together for lunch sometime in the next month and I can choose.  I'm thrilled with an excuse to get together again.

 What a joy to be there, on that wonderful occasion!

Something's Afoot

First off, I have great readers! Thanks to Kume, I know that the "cat lady" was really the "bubble lady," in real life Julia Vinograd, profiled in this 2004 article. Thanks, Kume! Apparently she was still sitting around in the Caffe Mediterraneum on Telegraph Avenue, at least in 2004.

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Tonight we went to the Woodland Opera House to review Something's Afoot, a musical parody of Agatha Christi's "Ten Little Indians."  It has been 30 years since I last saw that show...and yet I remembered everything as if it had only been yesterday.

The Lamplighters produced this little gem of a show in 1985 and it stands out as one the highlights of my years working with the company. Gilbert was the director, as well as the musical director for this show. My friend David was in charge of props--there were were a ton of them in this show. 

The show also had one of the most beautiful sets in Lamplighter history.  It was a shame that nobody took a photo that did it justice.   For what is essentially a community theatre, the set designer/builder (Stephen McCandless) produced a 2-story English manor house that was so elegant we all wanted to move into it. 

The premise is that five people are invited to spend the night in a mansion on an island. Each of them, of course, has his or her secret, and unbeknownst to each other, they all have paths that cross. Of course, after all have arrived, a terrible storm comes up, which washes out the road and the bridge and they are stuck there. The master of the house (whom we never see) is found dead by the butler, who is blown up as he stands on the stairs and delivers the news to the invited guests.

The rest of the show consists of each of the guests, and the house staff, being killed in various bizarre ways: one is hit over the head by a newell post, one is "eaten" by a Ming vase, one is choked by a bunch of spears hanging on the wall, one is blown up in a kitchen explosion, two are poisoned and one is killed by a poisoned dart fired from a shrunken head hidden inside a "pouf." (a "pouf" is a round couch-like affair)

For the dart effect to work, Gilbert needed someone small to fit inside the pouf to manipulate the shrunken head, so he asked Paul if he'd like to do it. It involved Paul coming out on stage in the dark before the lights went up for Act 2 (while the pit band was creating a diversion) and then after he killed the colonel at the start of the act, he had to lie there for the rest of the show.

I was Gilbert's assistant on the show, so attended almost every rehearsal and for the final week, Paul and I moved down to stay with my mother because there were tech rehearsals every night. 

Because I was always around I got to be part of the "orchestra." Uh....sort of. In the first musical number, the music is interrupted periodically by the arrival of a new guest, each of whom rings the doorbell. Gilbert had it in his head that each "ring" would have a different tone to it (though they were all the same bell). He planned to ring the bell himself, while he was conducting the band. I convinced him to let me be the bell ringer. Talk about being a nervous wreck opening night. I only had to ring the bell five times but I was so afraid I'd do it "wrong." But once I got over opening night jitters, it was fun to attend each performance and to feel like I was a part of it all.

There was something special about Something's Afoot. Everyone involved in the show has such a special place in their heart for it. Maybe it was because it was such a small show--no chorus, no large orchestra. There was genuine affection among all of the people, on stage and off stage, who were involved.

At the last performance, Peggy Ray Roberts, the actress who played Miss Tweed (the "Miss Marple"-type character) even called Paul out from under the pouf to take a bow. There were tears all around.

That was a golden time in my period of participation with The Lamplighters. It was 1984 and we couldn't possibly have predicted that in two years, 55 year old Gilbert would be dead of a heart attack and Arthur Conrad, who was the butler in the show, would be dead of AIDS.

The Woodland Show was very good -- not on a level with the Lamplighter show, but good (except that there are no doorbells in this production! Harumph!). I mentally followed along with all the songs, remembering all the lyrics.  The actors made the roles their own, of course, and they were each quite good in those roles...

...but I'm afraid all productions of this show (even the one the Lamplighters did after Gilbert died) pale in comparison of that first Something's Afoot.  How lucky I was to be a part of it all! 

The Lass Who Loved a Chauffeur

What a full day it has been.

It started with a frantic call from my mother.  She needed to go to the store NOW.  She had lots of things she had to buy.  When I got to her house, she actually had a list (be still my heart!!).  The emergency stuff she needed to get was nail polish, lipstick, nail polish remover, and Kleenex.  We went off to the nearest CVS and it was, I'll tell ya, a trip.  I won't even bother to describe it.  It was just more of the same, but it turned out to be a real ordeal, but we did eventually not only get everything, but remember everything, including the wallet she lost, which was sitting right in front of her on the counter.

I couldn't stay and visit, though, because Walt and I were en route to San Francisco for the Lamplighters Gala.  We drove down through Marin county and over the Golden Gate Bridge and it was the kind of day I love in the City, where the air is sparkling clear, there is no fog, and everything looks like it is posing for a postcard picture.

The show was being held at the Palace of Fine Arts, my favorite building in San Francisco.  Everyone knows the iconic photo of the rounded top and the little lagoon in front of it, but I liked this photo I took from the side, where the rounded top is barely visible and you get a feel for the massive columns.

In the lobby of the theater was a huge silent auction going on.   Whatever committee had worked to get donations for the event had worked overtime.   The selections were staggering.  If only we could have afforded >$2,000, we could have bought a wonderful framed memory of "the catch" with autographed photos of Joe Montana and Dwight Clark.  Would have been wonderful for Tom, but alas waaaay too rich for our blood.

The show, with book by Jonathan Spencer and story and lyrics by a host of incredibly talented Lamplighters was, as expected, wonderful.  Called "Upside-Downton Abbey, or The Lass that Loved a Chauffeur," it was the story of the "Grandhome" family and their servants.  

 The story followed Downton Abbey's first season with lyrics to familiar Gilbert & Sullivan tunes rewritten into hilarious versions, such as this classic by Barbara Heroux, to the tune of the "matter trio" from Ruddygore, sung by heir apparent Matthew plotting to give a love potion to the Lady Mary to convince her to marry him...

I want to marry Mary,
But she looks upon me coldly,
So I thought I might address the case
A teeny bit more boldly.
Here's a potion for emotion
We could slip into her flagon
And convince the icy maiden
To hop on my bandwagon,...

Make the merry Mary marry, marry, marry, marry marry.

There was, of course, a surprising topsy turvy plot twist at the end which saves Downton from financial ruin and leads to the singing of the annual champagne song, leading to exit by the audience and the pouring of champagne in the lobby, where we had a chance to visit with Lamplighters friends whom we see only once a year, at this event. 

Such a feel good event, one to which we look forward each year.

It was after 9 when we left the theater, looking for food.  We drove across the Golden Gate bridge and into Sausalito, my favorite artist colony in the area.  We drove almost to the end of downtown before we spied a pizza parlor and decided to have dinner there.  Actually there were 3 choices of eateries, Mexican, Chinese and Pizza and pizza is never my first choice, but Walt was driving and it was his, so we went to Dario's pizza and what a delightful surprise it was.  We decided not to with pizza, but ordered pasta with pesto and clams and were served a little mountain of green pasta covered with chunks of clam.

It was preceded by (for me) squash soup, which was different from what I'd expected and a huge serving.  I took home half of it, and we both took home half of our pasta, but everything was just delicious and the waitress was attentive and delightful.  I was very happy for our choice.

The dogs were very happy to see us when we rolled into the carport at about 10:30, as they were very hungry.  I tried to finish writing this entry before I passed out, but was just too sleepy, so went to sleep instead.   Sheila, who almost never bothers me until I wake up, licked my hand at 6 a.m., desperate to go outside.

All in all, it was a wonderful day.

The Gala

This morning this video was posted to Facebook.

It is a promo for the upcoming Lamplighters Gala and is, I suppose, a good explanation of what a "gala" is and a taste of what this year's show is going to be.  For me, having been involved with all aspects of galas, from the very first one, through writing them, to now just audience, the tone was a bit too scholarly, but I would hope that the theme of this year's show, Downton Abbey will intrigue some people to maybe wanting to go and see the show.

The Gala was "invented" in the 15th year of the Lamplighters history (the company is now more than 60 years old).  The company needed money and so they decided to take a break from the usual Gilbert & Sullivan productions and do a one-performance "gala," which would feature the actors in funny situations using the music from the shows that had been done that year.  It would be strictly a money maker, would require no new sets of costumes, they could charge a higher price and following the show, there was unlimited champagne, donated by a local winery.

The thing was a huge hit, despite an unplanned special effect when malfunctioning cooling equipment backstage began to pour smoke into the theater.  I remember looking around at that firetrap and wondering if we should leave, but the general manager came out to explain the problem, assure us that there was no danger, and the show went on.

I remember after the show that Walt and I stood with one of the leading tenors drinking gallons of champagne. I went home definitely in my cups.

It was such a big success that a "gala" was factored into the schedule in subsequent years and was usually the final show of the year.  It was almost always a variety show format and it was not until 1982, when Gilbert, David Witmer and I revolutionized the format, that it became a "plot show."  The company was doing Pirates of Penzance that year and the patterman in that show is Major General Stanley.  Gilbert, David and I were walking to lunch one day, thinking about the upcoming Gala when David, who was a soap opera buff, just said "Major General Hospital." It was inspired. Flashbulbs went off over each of our heads. We talked about making that year's gala a "soap operetta" and rapidly started thinking of tunes we could pull from other shows that we not being performed that year.   (I rewrote a song, from Mikado, to be a Tupperware song for a group of women going to a Tupperware party.  I even got Tupperware to donate some free gifts we could use as props.)

It took a lot of convincing to get Gilbert to agree.  He adamantly said that chorus members could not learn music from other operettas for a show, but we finally got him to agree to try. The thing was a riotous success and for many years people still said it was the best show we had ever done and kept wanting to reprise it, but we never did--mostly because it wasn't that great a show.  The greatness of it was in the element of surprise--nobody had ever seen anything like that on the Lamplighters stage.  Even the critics went wild--and in a few outstanding numbers (a cash register in an operating room, with someone adding up every single item as it was used was one of those, the title song was another).  But if you looked at it critically later, the show itself didn't hold up.

But it set the stage.  We had proved that principals and chorus members could learn songs that were not in shows from that year. I have to add also that the whole process was more complicated than I realized for years, until we started to do a gala type show here in Davis.  I hadn't thought of the music part of it, not being a musician.  To do the kind of Gala that the Lamplighters were now doing, you had to own all the orchestral scores for all the Gilbert & Sulllivan operettas, and you had to have someone who could spend weeks putting them in the proper order for each instrument, sometimes writing original instrumentation linking two numbers from two different shows.

Gilbert, David and I only did three Galas before Gilbert died, but his magnum opus was something he'd wanted to do for years, which was to write a Gilbert & Sullivan version of Wagner's Ring.  And he did it.  (That operetta was also titled A Star is Born, which was MY long-held dream!)

Everyone wondered what was going to happen when Gilbert died.  He died in July of 1986 and we hadn't even come up with a theme for that year's show yet.  But the Lamplighters is a company of tremendously talented people and a committee was formed, which worked on the shows for several years and the tradition continued.  I was on the committee for a couple of years.  I can't remember if I was part of the group that created The Phantom of the Operetta, which featured a group of nerds studying bats (they were chiropterologists), but it was an inspired theme and a brilliant opportunity for my friend, the late Will Connolly (the squinty guy in the bow tie below).   One of his more memorable roles.

I eventually left the committee, realizing that, not being around the company all the time, I had become less and less valuable--you really need to know all the in-jokes.  And besides, "star" writers were showing their talent.  I don't know how many contribute to writing these days, but not the large groups that we had in the beginning...and the shows keep getting better and better and better.

This year's is a take off on Downton Abbey and I know it's going to be hilarious, whether you are a Downton Abbey fan or not.  It's the Lamplighters' biggest fund raiser and, sadly, with the slumping economy, it no longer gets sold-out houses, though the quality of the productions is better than ever.

But we'll be there this weekend and I can't wait.