Friday 9am (GMT +3) At sea en route to Mombasa, Kenya
When youngsters ask me about going into the profession, I tell them three things:
- Be good at your craft
- Be nice to other people
- Do all your studying now, because once you’re in the heart of the biz you might occasionally have to deliver on autopilot
I was about to put all three tips to the test. My phone rings and wakes me from my blissful slumber. It’s the CD. My boss.
(American twang): ‘Hey Fiona, it’s Brad, your Cruise Director. I didn’t catch you at showtime last night!’
(Me, waking up, and clearing my throat to get the focus in the voice so he thinks he’s talking to a singer): ‘No, I’m really sorry, I’d had quite a long journey so got an early night.’
‘Oh, OK! Well, I just wanted to tell you that your rehearsal has been brought forward to 10am, due to other activities in the show lounge all day.’
‘Erm, rehearsal? Today? But my show isn’t until tomorrow night, surely?’
‘No, it’s been brought forward to today. We can’t get into Mombasa as planned, so today we’re at sea and need headline entertainment to lift the guests’ mood. I told everyone at showtime last night.’
‘Oh, no problem,’ I manage to say, even with a smile and a (very) nervous laugh. ‘I’ll just give the music to the band at the start of the rehearsal. See you tonight!’
‘Have a great show!’
Help. It’s 9am. I have an hour to get showered, locate my music, pull my crumpled dress out of my rucksack, send it down to the laundry for pressing, find my voice and talk to the sound and lighting directors about requirements to make me look and sound better than I feel. At least I have a head start on the band’s capabilities. The night before I flew out, I got in touch with a good friend of mine who is a flautist by trade and who has a highly entertaining show mixing music with comedy and plenty of other wind instruments. He has just disembarked this ship. ‘Band is quite average,’ he messaged me on Facebook, ‘but the band leader, Serge, holds it all together. Just rely on him.’
I arrive at the rehearsal to be told that Serge has been signed off sick this morning and won’t be attending either the rehearsal or the show. I have neither a band leader nor a bass player. Added to this, the rehearsal has been cut short due to a last-minute, sea-day entertainment schedule crammed to the brim with lectures in the lounge. No time to panic. I take a quick peek at my 5 remaining musicians and appoint Dennis as leader, a handsome sax player who looks the least terrified, and we start the rehearsal.
‘Raz, dva, tree, chetiirii…’, I count in appalling Russian, making a fool of myself and showing them that not all sopranos are precious divas. They all titter at my accent, connect with their instruments, watch my beat like hawks and off we go. All that mental rehearsing of my opening medley in the Bole International Departure Lounge 24 hours ago is paying off. I give the musicians time to get comfortable with these five songs which are so familiar to most Brits and Americans, but which are absolute gobbledygook to this Russian band (I mean, honestly, how do you explain ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ when you’re pushed for time?), and I do my best to build rapport with these strangers who can make or break my show. Even though I’m constantly clock-watching and the pre-performance ‘just get it right!!!’ pressure is prompting my heart to beat faster than it would during a 10K sprint finish, I remain outwardly calm and respectful.
‘Just don’t turn into one of those bloody singers,’ is the phrase that comes to mind in these moments, words which my father would often trot out at the dinner table, referring to the types he would sometimes have to record at the BBC – the type who swanned in half an hour late, sang out of tune, smelt of hairspray, couldn’t read music and dressed in ridiculous outfits. ‘If you’re going to make this your profession, remember you’re first and foremost a musician. A musician who sings.’ I’ve no idea if ‘the musician’ accompanied me on the plane to Zanzibar, nor if I have any right to call myself one now that I ‘mess around’ with the classics and score dramatic arias for dance bands with a rock beat, but I do know that to get the best out of my new friends, I must have patience.
There is one big advantage to all of this ‘help-I-need-to-get-a-show-together-in-60-minutes’ stress: the voice takes a back seat. Meaning, I don’t think about it at all! And it turns out, not thinking about the voice at all is the best way possible for it to function at its peak. As my mind is focused on counting, conducting, listening, rehearsing and diplomacy, the vocal mechanism looks after itself and all those years spent alone in the spare bedroom practising breathing, leaps, legato, phrasing, trigeminal nerve activation and vowel positioning, pays off! Effortlessly, the notes work their way through the gunk and phlegm accumulated from a big travel day, and with each gulp of the ship’s reconstituted air I find the heart of my instrument and gradually get back to ‘normal’. My voice and I are together again and it feels really, really good!
I spend well over 25 minutes rehearsing this Julie Andrews Tribute Medley, knowing that a) if the band and I mess this up right at the top of the show then I’m stuffed, and the audience may well become disillusioned and walk out and b) the rest of the show is pretty much sight-readable and not as complicated to piece together.
As the clock hits 11am, I still have my Closer to rehearse, but the lounge starts to fill with passengers expecting a lecture on snorkelling or creative writing or political theory or whatever, so I resort to just talking the musicians through O Sole Mio which they reassure me they have played hundreds of times before for violinists, banjo players, even comedians. I’m going to have to trust they’ll get it right tonight. I offer a quick thank you to the sound and lighting booth who seem confident they’ve got to grips with the basic geography of my show, and I skulk away without looking the diva-like lecturer in the eye who is giving the stage manager a hard time for not having his presentation slides ready.
And now I wait.
For ten hours.
With pre-performance paranoia as my companion.
There’s no producer or director travelling with me; no manager or agent; no human resources team or project co-ordinator. My voice and I are alone.
I finally make it outside onto the open decks and a wall of heavenly warm air engulfs me. I breathe it in deeply, smiling as the moisture from the Indian Ocean fills my lungs. My shoulders start to go down and I place my mind into Performance Zone from which it is not allowed to depart until the show is done tonight.
Over a green tea and a homemade cookie, I mentally go through all the spoken links to my show. I go over and over and over them like a mad person repeating a mantra. I’ve worked so hard over the years to make my show slick and seamless and to take the audience on a musical journey, and that means launching straight into speaking once the applause has died down between numbers. The best compliment I can wish for is ‘the time just flew by!’ and my mission is to keep the passengers satisfied, interested, engaged, moved, transported, and wanting more, more, more. It’s as important what I say to set up the piece, as it is how I sing the music itself, and now that I’m confident the voice is going to behave itself tonight and the musicians will hopefully play the right notes, it is up to me to make sure the linking words, stories and anecdotes trip off my tongue with the right energy, inflection, pacing and articulation.
A couple of hours out here in the sunshine is enough and I’m starting to feel the fatigue set in, so after a big bowl of pasta, I surreptitiously sneak an apple, a few jars of honey and some oat crackers from the buffet into my handbag – how anyone sings without an apple, honey and oat crackers beats me – and go back to the comfort of my stateroom. The bed has been made, my toiletries have been dusted and arranged on the bathroom shelf, my red, Ben de Lisi evening gown is back from the laundry and hanging up in the wardrobe and my pyjamas have been neatly folded and placed back under the pillow.
I continue to wait.
And wait.
Every hour ticks by, each minute of which is occupied with some mental reference to my show: Will the band remember the repeat in “I Could’ve Danced All Night’?/ What’s the link between Queen of the Night and You Raise Me Up again?/ Have I brought enough tape to strap myself into the dress?/ What if they hate me?…
The time eventually comes to change. Many female entertainers love this bit. Oo – make-up! Great – hair time! Fabulous – dressing up! But for me, standing in front of the mirror and trying to make myself into the version of ‘soprano’ they’re all expecting to see is pure hell. I try to convince myself that it’s the voice that counts, although we all know an opinion of me and my entire existence and worth on this planet will be formed the minute my Manolos hit the stage.
Once that torture has been endured, I sit and calm my breathing. I take myself through a buddhist chant – Nam Myoho Renge Kyo – whilst imagining the reaction I’m hoping for tonight. I fill the imaginary space with positive energy – sparks, light, fireworks, pink clouds, heavenly bliss – and after a good ten minutes, open my eyes, gather my belongings (apple, honey, oat cakes, water), glide out of the stateroom, slowly walk down to the backstage area trying not to trip over my dress, greet the tuxed-up, über-handsome Russians, test the voice, go over a few of the tempo changes with Dennis, continue to breathe, remind myself that this is my life purpose and I’m putting myself through this out of choice, keep breathing, watch the lights go down, hear the off-stage introduction, walk out there and I’m on.
That’s it. I’m on. I do it. I just get up and sing.
The 45 minutes comes and goes. In a flash.
I gather my belongings, head to the sound booth and hand my microphone back to the technical team, drinking in compliments from passengers along the way. Utterly satisfied. This is the moment in life where you forget all your worries: the flat hunt, the single status, the best friend’s hen night I have to plan from across an ocean. Everything sort of fades into insignificance and the most important thing in the world reigns supreme: using the voice to entertain and move an audience. The drug is in full flow.
I meet Brad, our Cruise Director for the first time and he takes me to one side.
“Fiona, I didn’t like your show.”
Suddenly the wash of confidence and happiness disappears, and I go back to thinking I’m an idiot who can’t sing or entertain or do anything right. I think back to the long journey, lying on that bench in Addis Ababa airport with my head on a Sainsbury’s bag stuffed with jacket, hoodie, socks and scarf, and wonder whether it’s all worth it. Had I accepted that marriage proposal at the age of 22 I’d now be living in a glamorous townhouse in Islington with three teenage sons. Doing the school run. Getting good haircuts. Bossing the cleaner around. Having sophisticated dinner parties on a Saturday night and going to church with the family on Sunday. Instead, I am a total loser: single, 40 and rootless.
‘I didn’t like your show,’ he repeats. ‘I loved it!!!’
‘Oh,’ I say. Not quite knowing how to react.
‘That always gets people!!!’ he says, mid guffaw.
And that’s it. I head back to my stateroom. Order room service. Down a Diet Coke. Watch Sky News. Have a bath. Go to bed. Job done.
Photo Credit: Richard Dutkowski