Goodbye to 'Oliver!'

So Saturday was the last day, a matinee and an evening show, followed by the get-out! I decided to work from the studio, as there were only two jobs to do before the first show started - the matinee show was for the understudies of Oliver and Dodger to have their chance and the Dodger coat for the understudy needed a pocket added to the inside, and another set of trousers needed to be patched, and had the standard assisting one of the ladies into her costume (corset training coming into play again) so it was a fairly relaxed run up to the show.! During the shows the standard issues and quick changes arose but nothing that couldn't be quickly fixed. The cast were all revved up and excited, and the audience reception was fantastic.

Between the two shows there were actually no repairs that needed to be done, but I had one job in preparation for the get out - costume designer Lisa had assembled the wardrobe and knew what belonged to where, but getting everything collected for cleaning/returning with such a large cast could have proven very time consuming at the end, so Lisa devised the idea of setting out bin liners on chairs in the studio (backstage) with signs for the type of garment for each bag, so I set about laying out the chairs, bags, and signs. With the costume changes that many of the cast had they finished with certain costumes and costume pieces at various points through the show and could then place them in the bin liners without taking extra time. This worked really well, and as there were several points during the show where I was without repairs or quick changes I spent the rest of the show folding the costume pieces in the bags to make sure they would pack down more neatly and smaller so that they could be transported more easily!

At the end of the show things got really busy for myself and Lisa, with the cast out of their finishing costumes, they were delivered to myself and Lisa, with the exception of the childrens costumes which one of the chaperones very kindly folded and sorted into piles and left them for us outside the dressing rooms (thank you again so much for that!). The adults dresses and coats were not put in bags, instead I asked the cast to lay them over the back of one of the chairs and they needed to go on coat hangers to be transported flat.
The get out for costume was relatively short due to the organisation - only just over an hour - but I stayed to try and help out with the get out of the set and equipment though there wasn't very much I could do the crew had it very much in hand!  

We managed the whole of the get out before midnight and all of us were pretty much ready to collapse by then but it was a really fantastic day, and a fantastic week with a wonderful show and cast and the songs are still stuck in my head! Bournemouth Musical Theatre are a brilliant company and definitely one to watch, if you're in the area when they're doing a show they are worth coming to see!