And so goodbye to Mrs Higgins and My Fair Lady at the Staatstheater Mainz. It was fun! And I shall miss Mrs Higgins - whilst I am artistically fulfilled singing the witches, bitches and generally totally evil women that populate my voice type, it makes a refreshing change to play a thoroughly nice, upright, lovable character from time to time. And normally one never really says goodbye to a role - there is always the chance you might be called to jump in for a colleague who is ill - but in this case, seeing as the director rewrote the part specially for me, in a weird mixture of English and German, I don't see that happening. It was however a thoroughly enjoyable experience - and I doubt there are many productions where the director and the costume designer drive six hours to the last performance of the revival, just for fun!
I am torn between my favourite comments of the night. First candidate was from the wife of a colleague (in other productions). She admitted she had totally failed to recognise me until I spoke - not because of the wig and costume, although they were a bit way out, but because I carried myself completely differently. I am taking that as a compliment to my acting skills!!
Second was a young man who had been to a previous performance and got snaffled by me during the pre-interval audience participation bit. I'd graciously offered him (in character) one of my sandwiches. He had accepted one, evidently thinking, oh great, chicken. Except it was a smoked salmon sandwich. And he absolutely hates fish. Spent the next ten minutes thinking desperately, I must not throw up all over the singers...
Ah, theatre life is fun!
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