Rain Rain Rain

Alright we get it already... enough with the rain.

All the rain is really starting to dampen my spirits. I think I suffer from seasonal depression, because I can get every down near the end of the winter and gloomy if the weather is like it has been the past week.

The biggest part of the problem is that we have a bunch of projects on the go at home.... all of them outside... so I feel like I'm pushing ropes, nothing's getting done. That's very depressing. It makes me feel very unmotivated, and that doesn't help when I'm working on two big projects at work.

On another subject all together I will be starting back at the gym very soon, to work on flattening the gut I have developed and lowering my blood pressure without medication.

I have been listening to the original Broadway cast of Cabaret in my car, and last weekend Kizzy lent me the 1998 revival cast version. Sometime between the Original cast and the Movie... Cliff lost all his songs which is too bad. Some of the clunckier songs from the original were discarded for the revival and some of the movie songs were worked in, in their place. Unfortunately they replaced the Money song "Sitting Pretty" (From the original) with the Money Song "Money Makes the World go around" (From the Movie). The Movie song was a big hit and is more recognizable, but the original cast song was a better song. As far as strickly singing goes, I prefer the Original cast to the revival cast..pants down. Joel Grey has much purer quality and tonality to his Voice than Allan Cummings, but Allan Cummings has a more gutteral and sinister quality to his performance. I'm going to aim for somewhere in between the two when I go after the part of Emcee next spring. (Oh yeah... that's the part I want). Vocally My Favorites for Sally Bowles are Jill Haworth (Orignal cast), Liza Minelli (movie), Natasha Richardson (Revival)... in that order. Natasha Richardson is entirely too singsong in her performances... no grit like Jill and Liza. All in all I think the songs that were included in the revival are better, since it is basically a mixture of the best from Broadway and the movie, but I wish they hadn't dropped Cliff's songs, since it makes it another one of those shows that plays heavily on only three characters and a chorus. I don't know which version SJTC will ultimately have the right to, but maybe if Stephem is successful in securing the rights to both we could amalgate them and create our own version that could bring back a song or two for Cliff.. so more people on the cast get some singing in.