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.
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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