Mary Poppins

     In the slack times last winter, one Saturday night, I watched nearly all of Mary Poppins.  The television show was hosted by an old Dick Van Dyke, starred a young Dick Van Dyke.

     When Dick, the baritone of our barbershop quartet, invited us and our wives to attend Mary Poppins at the local dinner theater, I had some misgivings.  How could live theater come close to the special effects of the movie, or the perfected musical numbers coming through the television speakers?

      No worry.  The live performance, somewhat different than the movie version, was far superior to the movie.  The small orchestra in the pit (which we were privileged to see up close at hand), the live singers, left the canned version in the dust

    Mary flew all over the stage and even floated across the auditorium to light in the balcony near where we sat.  Bert walked horizontally up the brick chimney and did a few back flips over the London chimneys of the backdrop.

     Two major sets rolled on and off, the family front room and the kids’ bedroom.  A tree which Bert reproduced in paint on canvas (I didn’t remember Bert being an artist as well as a chimney sweep) took us to the park.  Pillars suggested street scenes and the bank.

     The statuary in the park got my attention.  The three-person figure rolled on and sat there during a couple of songs and dances.  I was half-asleep when one of the figures leapt off the sculpture and joined the song and dance.  What! That was a live person?  Soon the other two brass figures leapt off their perch.  I woke up.  How could they have remained motionless for so long?

      The evening didn’t start so auspiciously for the acting company.  We arrived, were seated and enjoying a libation by 6:30 or so.  About fifteen minutes before show time, the lights suddenly dimmed.  Time for the show?  No, the background music stopped with the lights.

     I took a little trip out the balcony, through the door, down the narrow hallway to the stairs down to the main lobby to the men’s room.  Two guys were trying to contact an electrician who would come help them find the faulty breaker causing the problem.  They couldn’t find it.

     On my return to our tables in the balcony, the four of us stood next to each other.  One of the wives looked at us and said, “If you guys sing, I’ll hide.”  To demonstrate, she lay down on two chairs below table level.

     The show wasn’t starting, so we headed for the narrow hallway, closing the door to the balcony so as not to disturb other patrons.  We sang ”Hi Neighbor”, softly, a song we are trying to learn.

     About half through the song, this young lady in gown, obviously one of the acting company joined us.  When we finished, she said, “Time for Lida Rose isn’t it?”

     “Do you know the descant?” Rex asked. 

     “Well, maybe.  I’ll try it.”  We sang Lida Rose, she sang the descant, but when we sang together with her it didn’t go too well.  While we were singing together, four or five more members of the acting company came around the corner leading to the stairway into the narrow hallway to observe.  They roundly applauded us even though our efforts ended not with a bang but a whimper.

     We had been gone long enough, better get back to the ladies.  One of the ladies informed us that there had been an accident on a nearby street corner.  A transformer box or some such electrical device was a casualty, causing the theater’s brownout.  Nothing to do but wait until the power returned when lights and sound could function.

     Meanwhile, Marsha reversed her field.  “People are bored.  Go down.  Sing for them.  Go on, get down on stage and sing,” she ordered.

     I tucked my shy bones in the middle of the quartet as we filed down the walkway.  The two outgoing members struck up conversations with patrons sitting at the tables along the walkway, softening them up against our audacity in taking over the stage of our own volition.

     Up the steps and onto the stage, we were surprised to see musicians sitting patiently and invisible to the audience in the small orchestra pit.  Rex announced we were a barbershop quartet and we were going to sing a number or two while we waited for the power to come back on. 

     The orchestra guys smiled and teased us a little and offered to give us a pitch, but Dick pulled out his pitch pipe and said we were probably better off using it.  We sang happy birthday to honor the birthdays.  One of the birthday gang was Mary Lou, so we sang “Hello, Mary Lou” to her. 

      Not wanting to overstay our so far nice welcome, we prepared to leave.  A few people said sing one more.  As Dick was trying to blow the pitch for “When I’m 64”, the PA system suddenly came on.  The power was back.  Somebody somewhere shut the speakers down, we did “64” and left to good cheers.      

       As we filed back up the pathway towards our place in the balcony, we got lots of high fives and “Good Jobs” and “Way to go’s.”  We missed the emcee’s thank you to us as we were mounting the stairway and filing down the narrow hallway to our seats.  During the intermission when the actor-waiters delivered the dessert, our guy informed us that the manager had “comped” our dessert as a thank you for helping entertain his audience during the power outage.

      After the show, as we worked our way through the lobby, some folks complimented us and thanked us.  One gal wanted our contact information to hire us for some program she was doing.  Wouldn’t you know it, none of us had a business cards with us.  Not very good boy scouts, not being prepared always, were we.

       We have had a phenomenal run of good luck in performing for appreciative audiences lately.  Now to avoid swollen egos.  If enough people tell you how good you are, it’s easy to believe it.  I can see how performers and musicians get such big egos.

      All four of us agreed it was a good thing the power outage occurred before the show.  We would never have had the nerve to follow  the real performers.  In the end, we flew our kite for a brief moment, and it was fun.