…I’ll get to sing a few lines on my own.  And lo and behold, there I was on stage actually singing a solo.  Okay, so I may be exaggerating a little, I mean, it’s not as if I sang an 8 minute rendition of ‘Once I had a secret love’ all on my lonesome, and my ‘solos’ may have only really consisted of a line or 2, but still, singing on my own is singing on my own.  The audience may not have appreciated my vocal prowess, nor indeed may they have even realised I was singing, if my microphone wasn’t turned up in time for my fleeting appearance (blink, and you’ll miss me!) but at least I feel like I’m making progress in the competitive world of musical theatre.

My so-called solos consisted of me playing one of the merry murderesses in Chicago, a Stepford wife in The Witches of Eastwick and any one of a number of cheesy schoolgirls in Glee.  Fabulous.  The murderess roles in Cell Block Tango were highly contested, and although I didn’t have the opportunity to exhibit my well-rehearsed American twang, I did manage to ‘buy’ myself the part of the Hungarian jailbird by auditioning in Spanish.  Hungarian, Spanish, hey, it’s all foreign to the audience.

The other 5 murderesses and I did our best to play the feisty, angry, injustice-fuelled maidens accused of killing our lovers / husbands as we stomped about the stage desperately trying to remember the moves we’d been taught, whilst also trying to recall if it was ‘he had it coming’ or ‘they had it coming’.  We all defiantly claimed that we weren’t guilty of our alleged crimes, because clearly the men in question deserved their respective violent fates.  Surely infidelity, mistreatment and gum popping were all capital crimes!

I was also lucky enough to be cast in Don’t Stop Believin’ in the Glee section, which turned out to be a show-stealing number (mainly thanks to the original music, the cheesy choreography by Faye and the vocal percussionists, Merenghise, Angela, Matt and Rob).  The rest of us swanned about the stage singing intermittent lines, clapping and grinning and generally lapping up the love exuding from the audience.  We know this one, they thought.

Finally, a few lines in Dirty Laundry, a song which I didn’t know prior to starting this show, but which I grew to love.  The whole cast joined in with a tea-towel-shaking, lively number which involved us marching around the stage bemoaning the moral decline of our society and neighbourhood.  Classic.

Of course, Maybe This Time contained 27 other fabulous numbers and allowed far more talented singers than I to show off their vocal gymnastics and twinkle toes.  This show will be remembered for the Pushme-Pullyu, the ‘masked’ animals that couldn’t copy their neighbours’ dance moves, the sign language in True Colours and the colourful Bombay Dreams section, not forgetting of course the tambourines in Be Italian.  From roller-skaters, to tappers, to dancers to singers, Gloc really does know how to put on a great show.