You're Rockin' the Boat!

Last night was rehearsal time again. Hessle Theatre Company are now in our Summer concert season and rehearsals are in full swing.
We have our main production that we put on in March at Hull New Theatre, a smaller production in the autumn, and in between times we put on a number of concerts in the area; one of which will be to raise funds for the following year's show, and the others we donate our time to local charities who sell tickets to raise funds for their own causes.
Having finished out production of Titanic the Musical at Hull New Theatre a few weeks ago, rehearsals for the concerts started in earnest. And it has to be said, a few weeks in some of the numbers are proving to be rather stressful and challenging.
The areas that seem to require a lot of work are a medley of songs from Mamma Mia (or a selection of Abba songs, to my mind) proving that you may think you know a song, but really you don't; and a Guys and Dolls medley. This in particular is driving me INSANE! I do not know Guys and Dolls, I have never seen it and have never had any contact with the music before; apart from "Luck Be a Lady", which I didn't know was from the musical, I just thought Frank Sinatra sang it! So this particular selection is new to me, and some of the harmony lines are HORRIBLE! Don't get me wrong, when you put all the harmonies together they sound great (or will do when we get the hang of it!), but the tenor line alone is horrendous, littered with flats and sharps all over the place. But the worst part is the finale with a myriad of voice parts singing "Sit Down You're Rockin' the Boat" or variations of that sentence. It all has to be very precise and no-one seems to be able to agree on the correct beat, we have attempted the same part twice now and have ended in the same argument both times, "that's one beat there!", "No, it's two!". Being a novice at these things I'm keeping myself out of it and doing as I'm told, or trying at least!
I'm sure we'll get there in the end, but it just goes to show that these things require a lot of work.
If you want to see the fruits of our labours you can see our efforts on the following dates;

Friday 29th June - Guildhall, Hull
Saturday 7th July - St Barnabas Church, Swanland - in aid of Swanland School, Nairobi
Saturday 14th July - Toll Gavel Church, Beverley - in aid of Hull & East Yorkshire Alzheimer's Association