Patsy’s in Brisbane, at the Playhouse Theatre. We opened last week to more rapturous reviews and packed houses. This is the longest season so far, we’re here for 5 weeks; it seems a bit excessive to me but I guess Queensland is the country music capital of Australia.
I had two weeks off in Melbourne after Adelaide wound up, and plunged back into the real world of bottom, floor and nose wiping, school lunches, school drop-offs, early morning wake-ups, late night wake-ups, later night wake-ups, tidying up (always the same things ad infinitum) and washing on an industrial scale. I’m telling you it’s a shock going from that to the red carpet treatment I’ve been getting since I got up here. Maybe this is the real Cinderella syndrome! Who waved that magic wand that suddenly put me on a business class flight to a sunny warm climate, with a 2 bedroom apartment to myself that someone else tidies up, a complimentary Mercedes, an Olympic pool up the road with no one ever in it, adoring audiences who hang on my every note and as much sleep as I can handle. Thankfully, every Sunday after the show I bundle back on to a plane and fly home to do some washing, bottom wiping, not much sleeping and a bit of hugging. It’s like a decompression chamber to readjust to civilian life when the clock strikes midnight on the 16th of December.
We’ve just done our 50th show and everything’s running so smoothly I barely notice I’m on stage. We have 3 new Jordinaires, local Brisbane boys who fitted into the suits. And the other big news is the poster dress got dropped! Yes folks, the pink sparkly, glittery fitted frock I wore for the finale and that is currently gracing the eastern wall of the Performing Arts Centre in the 2nd biggest photo of me I’ve ever seen, has been booted out in favour of the opening gold number, apparently it’s more flattering, i.e. I don’t look so fat in it.
So that’s it, the world has changed since I last blogged, but the show must go on. The 12th of September was a particularly difficult performance, one woman down the front wept for almost the entire evening; we played our bums off anyway. When we got to Patsy’s plane crash I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house. But we kept it together for the sake of music lovers everywhere. Then we got to go home and weep too.
dc