Sunday 8 May 2011

The Boneshaker Medicine Show





The best part of writing music for theatre is seeing the show for the first time with my sound fulfilling its intended purpose. I haven't made it to a performance of Luminous Tales by Ripstop Theatre, which opened last month (although was involved in the development). But yesterday I caught the first outing of Bob Percy's new act, The Boneshaker Medicine Show, which he performs as his alter ego, The Great Whydini. For this show I worked purely from a brief and didn't see any rehearsals so it was all a delightful surprise. It's a wonderful mix of magic and off-the-cuff humour with a Victorian showman sensibility which had the audience laughing and gasping by turns.

This was part of the opening weekend of the annual Norfolk and Norwich Festival. So far, in spite of promises of (much needed) rain the sun has shone on the many outdoor events.

2 comments:

  1. This looks a lot of fun. We at the Harmonie are learning some music for a play. It sounds a bit wierd but I hope it will make sense in context.

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  2. I'm sure it will sound better when it's joined to the visuals. I once played flute for incidental music specially written for a staging of Votaire's Candide. The music was recorded in a studio before hand and I rashly took along my new (to me, anyway) flute. Try as I might I couldn't get top G# without belting it out and only later discovered the left hand keys hadn't been regulated properly. It caused me great embarrassment but I needn't have worried. The sound system in the theatre was dreadful and the musicians all sounded equally bad.

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