I'm too Spexy
Yeehah!
It's time for Buffalo Bill's Cabaret to hit town - we had the premiere of the Spex for 2006 last Sat, and Buffalo Bill was the theme.
The spex is basically the uni musical review. The origins go back a couple of hundred years, and has a couple of unique features that you don't find in uni reviews back home- the humour is above the belt, the whole show is in rhyme, and there can be an encore called at any moment.
The encores (or 'restarts' in Svenglish, or 'omstart' in Swedish) are cool, and very different to those that I'm used to. An omstart is a sign of appreciation of a song, or a joke, or a mistake, anything really. By applauding, and then chanting "omstart, omstart", the audience basically demands another. But this is not just a repeat of a joke - it's a totally new joke. There's one guy who plays Sitting Bull who is a master of coming up with new, rhyming, lines. When he does a few Dirty Harry send ups, he often gets called on to keep going, or he does a few 'indian' chants, and is usually asked to make up at least one more on the spot. After the main musical numbers we have up to 4 omstarts prepared, the first of which is usually a totally new and different song, with lyrics fitting the character and scene. So some of the omstarts are planned, but some are improvised.
But omstarts can demand the actors will do the scene in German ("på tyska, på tyska!"), or Finnish or whatever. After an angry outburst they can be demanded to do it again, but angrier, or a love scene can be asked to be done with more soppiness, or a fast bit of alliteration can be asked to be done even faster. It's cool, especially when the comebacks are well done.
The music for the show is pretty good overall, some of the songs we play include Son of a Preacherman, a Dolly Parton medly, some Ennio Morricone, Hot Fudge, Sing Sing Sing. Some arrangements are better than others, and the neverending chorus of Fame is particularly hard to take. There are of course the usual cliches - the Mission Impossible and Pink Panther themes get a run, Monty Python's dead parrot sketch gets a run and the Jack Nicholson "truth handling" speech, and there are some good sight gags and good puns that even I get (or are they just the dumb ones?).
Good pics were hard to get, but here's a couple taken from the dress rehearsal
Jack Daniel McCall and Calamity Jane
The official uniform of Lulea spex is the Kilt. Why? Because it stands out, especially in Lulea when it gets to well below 0 in winter. It's suprisingly comfy to wear.
Marco from Italy and I did a sketch at the post-premiere banquet that was very well received (standing ovation, no less!), probably more for effort than actual execution. We did a short parody of the spex, using the opening few lines (which included the line: Your grammar is totally absurd, you can't distinguish between a subject or verb) , which gave us the opening to sing about Sweden from the foreigner's point of view (in swedish of course). To the tune of All of Me we sang about Volvo's (I got a Ferrari F40 when what I really wanted was a volvo 240), and shopping at Ikea (I can't believe there isn't one in Lulea), which morphed into the Proclaimers 500 miles song ("I would åker 50 mil and I would åker 50 more just to be the man who åkers 100 mil to shop at Sundsvalls Ikea Store"). I think the expectations were just rather low when we started - our playing of All of Me was a little underrehearsed.
So did we get an omstart? Yup, actually after the first half, so we continued on with the 2nd half. Which meant we never got to do the Swedish chef song we'd also worked out...
It's time for Buffalo Bill's Cabaret to hit town - we had the premiere of the Spex for 2006 last Sat, and Buffalo Bill was the theme.
The spex is basically the uni musical review. The origins go back a couple of hundred years, and has a couple of unique features that you don't find in uni reviews back home- the humour is above the belt, the whole show is in rhyme, and there can be an encore called at any moment.
The encores (or 'restarts' in Svenglish, or 'omstart' in Swedish) are cool, and very different to those that I'm used to. An omstart is a sign of appreciation of a song, or a joke, or a mistake, anything really. By applauding, and then chanting "omstart, omstart", the audience basically demands another. But this is not just a repeat of a joke - it's a totally new joke. There's one guy who plays Sitting Bull who is a master of coming up with new, rhyming, lines. When he does a few Dirty Harry send ups, he often gets called on to keep going, or he does a few 'indian' chants, and is usually asked to make up at least one more on the spot. After the main musical numbers we have up to 4 omstarts prepared, the first of which is usually a totally new and different song, with lyrics fitting the character and scene. So some of the omstarts are planned, but some are improvised.
But omstarts can demand the actors will do the scene in German ("på tyska, på tyska!"), or Finnish or whatever. After an angry outburst they can be demanded to do it again, but angrier, or a love scene can be asked to be done with more soppiness, or a fast bit of alliteration can be asked to be done even faster. It's cool, especially when the comebacks are well done.
The music for the show is pretty good overall, some of the songs we play include Son of a Preacherman, a Dolly Parton medly, some Ennio Morricone, Hot Fudge, Sing Sing Sing. Some arrangements are better than others, and the neverending chorus of Fame is particularly hard to take. There are of course the usual cliches - the Mission Impossible and Pink Panther themes get a run, Monty Python's dead parrot sketch gets a run and the Jack Nicholson "truth handling" speech, and there are some good sight gags and good puns that even I get (or are they just the dumb ones?).
Good pics were hard to get, but here's a couple taken from the dress rehearsal
Buffalo Bill and General Custer
Jack Daniel McCall and Calamity Jane
The Ensemble
Me and Marco in Kilts
The official uniform of Lulea spex is the Kilt. Why? Because it stands out, especially in Lulea when it gets to well below 0 in winter. It's suprisingly comfy to wear.Marco from Italy and I did a sketch at the post-premiere banquet that was very well received (standing ovation, no less!), probably more for effort than actual execution. We did a short parody of the spex, using the opening few lines (which included the line: Your grammar is totally absurd, you can't distinguish between a subject or verb) , which gave us the opening to sing about Sweden from the foreigner's point of view (in swedish of course). To the tune of All of Me we sang about Volvo's (I got a Ferrari F40 when what I really wanted was a volvo 240), and shopping at Ikea (I can't believe there isn't one in Lulea), which morphed into the Proclaimers 500 miles song ("I would åker 50 mil and I would åker 50 more just to be the man who åkers 100 mil to shop at Sundsvalls Ikea Store"). I think the expectations were just rather low when we started - our playing of All of Me was a little underrehearsed.
So did we get an omstart? Yup, actually after the first half, so we continued on with the 2nd half. Which meant we never got to do the Swedish chef song we'd also worked out...
posted by Mark Terner at
11:35 PM
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