After what seems like months of hard rehearsing the first Wassail is upon us! First show tonight at Highbury Hall in Kings Heath..but are we ready? H*ll yes!
Traffic pile ups, and the Kings of Leon conspired and failed to keep the cast away from the theatre last night for the second dress rehearsal. Everyone eventually negotiated the Broad Street car park and settled in for what we had been warned might be a ‘long night’.
Despite a scarily significant minority of the cast looking rather red nosed and sounding a wee bit snuffly there was full attendance. Everyone in the whole world seems to have cold at the moment and so Gary requested that we all stay well. Sue Lowe, one of the doctors in the cast has helpfully circulated a guide to staying well that acknowledges that avoiding all infected and potentially infected people is difficult when several of them sit within sneezing distance of you in the choir. Its just one of the many bonus’ of the Crescent that in any disaster there is always someone to call upon to sort it out – and another bonus of being in a choir of 32 sitting closely together is that there is always someone nearby who has the cold virus you missed the first time round.
Gary, Gerry and Craig gave us a little pep talk about what the Wassail looks and sounds like from the audience perspective if we don’t toe the party line . Its good to be reminded of what people have paid to see. We pondered how easy no shuffling, snuffling, rifling and scratching (!) was going to be and then suddenly, before we could complete one final fidget we were off into a run through
This programme is fantastic. We have poignant, funny, tragic, hilarious – and that is just Gary’s conducting. No, really, the programme is fantastic. Gerry (one of the directors) has been unwell unfortunately and has had to drop out from the cast. Consequently last night was the first time he has seen the show in its entirety and he was suitably impressed. We also had Pat Dixon in our select audience, who was the previous Wassail director. No pressure then. Right from the start I felt Christmassy. The cast have a great energy about them, a sense of really enjoying the music and readings. The energy of a dress can only improve with a real live audience in front of us and so I know we are in for a good year. The pace is great, it wasn’t a long night after all.
- Its not ALL about mince pies – we do readings and singing too
I am thrilled to be part of the cast. I think we have raised our game yet again. I wont spoil the programme for you but I urge you if you have no ticket to get one (there are still a few left for the matinee on Sunday 21 December at the Crescent Theatre). You will emerge slightly fuller in the mulled wine and mince pies department and a whole lot fuller in Christmas spirit department. Ah go on, you wont regret it.
The Crescent’s Christmas Wassail always sells out and so gets very little spent on it in terms of marketing. Whether at the theatre or at the many touring venues around the region, no posters, no flyers and no big PR push are necessary as Wassail’s proud reputation combines with word-of-mouth to send tickets flying out of the Box Office as soon as dates are announced.
Because of this, many people assume that by the time December comes, there’s no point trying for tickets to the theatre’s annual gala of festive music and wit. But with a recently announced extra date, there remain a handful of tickets for the 4pm show on Sunday 21st December.
If you’ve never had the chance to see Wassail before, now’s your chance. Become part of a packed house where an incredible array of talent will create a wonderful atmosphere and form something really special at Christmas.
Oh, and if that’s not enough, there’s free mince pies and mulled wine too!
HIghbury Wassail
It’s way past the time of year when the first adverts for Christmas Parties at your friendly local personality-free pubs start appearing. You drive past the signs in August (or earlier) and think venomously of dry turkey and too much cheap red wine, prompting you to feel more like Victor Meldrew than Bing Crosby. The money grabbers are touting for your business while the summer snow and rain are still lashing down. Come September and you can’t move in shops that fill their seasonal sections with tinsel and tat that they couldn’t shift last year. Bemoaning the commercialism of Christmas and its earlier arrival each year is one of the few things that unites us as a community. How many of us have thought that soon we will be preparing for next Christmas before we have eaten this year’s dinner?
Well, even before you have started ruminating on the way that your local fun pub has misinterpreted the true Christmas spirit a small band of Crescent members are beginning to plan the content of the annual Crescent Theatre Wassail. The musical director (Gary Spruce) and his two co-directors (Gerry Lucas and Craig Deeley) have spent months scouring the planet for material that will make up the show. There is no limit to the amount of Christmas-related verbiage available but the good stuff is hard to find.
Gerry
The Wassail is essentially a mixture of music and readings about Christmas but like any good recipe, the combination of ingredients and manner of presentation make it so much more. The music and readings are eclectic in the best sense. This year for example we are singing a full choral piece by Gerald Finzi, a 20th century English composer and Merry Christmas Darling, music by Richard Carpenter; released by the Carpenters in 1970 as well as a host of other music including a beautiful arrangement of Ivy and Holly by Mr Spruce himself! The audience get to sing too, a traditional carol and a lesser known humourous song that expose them to the teaching methods of the maestro. The readings are as eclectic as the music. They evoke feelings of warmth and happiness as well as provoke thoughts of the true meaning of the holiday period. The Wassail is usually laugh out loud funny as well as poignantly reflective. All this in one show and you get mulled wine and mince pies at half-time!
We are currently coming towards the end of the rehearsal period and that is a very scary thought. Some of 
the music is very challenging this year and we are not a cast of professional singers. When we hit the final chord of the Finzi on Sunday’s rehearsal my heart skipped a beat – it was fantastic. It was one of the times when you sustain your own note and just listen to the sound of the full choir – brilliant. And then you just want to do it again. Of course, we can produce some real car crash moments too but these get less frequent the closer we get to performance, the choir begins to gel properly and we become more musical and more aware of the meaning of what we are singing as the notes become more and more familiar. Rehearsals are a roller coaster ride of highs and lows. We have days when it all seems to be going wrong and then the light breaks through the cloud its great again. I have times when I wish I had never joined up and times when I couldn’t imagine a better way to spend my time. The talent within the cast is fantastic (as you would expect from the Crescent casting pool) and we have a wonderful ensemble with enough time to spotlight a lucky few.
Dress rehearsal looms and for most of us it will be the first time we have any idea of the full content of the programme. We will listen to the readings performed for the first time and usually react exactly the way the audience will – a good test for the directors. In times of yore things have been cut or added at this stage so that the show works as well as it can as a whole, not just a string of unconnected material.
We will perform at the theatre, Highbury Hall, Harvington Hall and Coughton Court. At every venue there will be a mahhoooosive Christmas tree and twinkling lights. If you have never seen the Wassail I really would recommend it. There may be a few tickets left if you’re lucky although it is usually a sell-out. I’d love to see it myself, but that would mean not being in it – what a choice.
Highbury Wassail
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