Putting on Crazy for You

Crazy for You was the 2023 Senior musical: a show full of cowboys, showgirls, and mistaken identities. The story follows Bobby Child, a young banker from New York with a dream to dance, who falls in love with the headstrong, feisty Polly Baker, postmistress and only woman in Deadrock, Nevada. Putting on the show was a fantastic experience - from the hilarious read-through to the stressful dress rehearsals – every moment was eventful.

One of the biggest challenges the cast had to face was the sheer amount of choreography. As we weren’t a cast full of trained dancers, this seemed a bit daunting at first - beginning with the dance audition at the start of the year. Thankfully, after about a thousand rehearsals of I Got Rhythm and Slap that Bass, Michelle – our ever-patient dance coach – managed to whip us into shape.

Set on traverse staging (having the audience facing each other on two sides) we had many blocking rehearsals just trying to figure out where everyone could stand so that none of the audience missed too much. All the time was worth it to see Deadrock come to life on the floor, with New York on the main stage. Given that there were only two of us onstage, it was especially difficult to stage the partner dances so that the whole audience could see something.

One of the cast’s overall favourite moments was the costume call, where we saw our costumes for the first time and inevitably spent about two hours trying them on. There were some complaints of dresses being hideous and unwearable, which were quickly followed by a flood of “Mine’s way worse!” but that moment was when the show finally felt real, and the excitement picked up in rehearsals afterwards.

By the start of our weekend rehearsals in the run up to Show Week, we had already spent hours painstakingly notebashing harmonies with Mrs Foinette but had never practised with the band, so we were stunned when we heard the band (consisting of mostly visiting music teachers but featuring a few students) play the lively, entertaining Gershwin music for the first time. We then got to practice with them properly in the sitzprobe, where we could listen properly and appreciate the sound, while testing out our own microphones.

My favourite part of any production is the stressful two hours before curtain up when all you can taste is hairspray, discover that someone’s managed to burn something with a curling iron and hear the incomparable camaraderie of frantic cast members shouting to ask “has anyone’s seen the bobby pins?”

My personal routine is to blast indie pop through noise cancelling headphones while doing my stage makeup and then trying to get my nerves out (unsuccessfully) by dancing horribly in the makeup room, before joining everyone for vocal warm up. By then, the adrenaline is running high, and the anticipatory tension is almost tangible and it doesn’t dissipate until the moment you step onstage.

Our fantastic director, Ms Middleton, had the entire vision for every single aspect of the production, from casting to ordering last-minute costumes to introducing us all to a brilliant musical that none of us had even heard of before. We’re all incredibly grateful for the sheer number of hours she tirelessly put into this production to make it so amazing.

Even though the cast spanned four year groups, everyone got on really well so rehearsals were always something I looked forward, to despite being long and often tiring. Even with certain mishaps in Show Week (a stool being taken off at the wrong time leading to an entire improvised dance) and some risky quick changes (ending up with me wearing no shoes for the finale one night) everyone loved performing what we’d been rehearsing for months and the show was a huge success.