Not The Midnight Mass in a command performance rock like… like… Not the Midnight Mass.
Okay, so it wasn’t a command performance but a rehearsal that I was allowed to sit in on, yet still, they rocked a capella style.
In rehearsal for Hot Cross Nuns, their new show – which starts at the Baxter on May 10 – the quintet is led, as always, by Weir siblings Graham and Christine.
He arrives last and hurries over to the piano where Amanda Tiffin is softly playing scales, and all five visibly centre themselves in different ways as they start m-m-m-ing along. It soon becomes minor scales and r-r-r-r-ing and then they’re ready to get started.
While the Weir siblings have stayed constant, the rest of the quartet has changed over the years, growing into a quintet and this time around – for the first time – three gals and two guys.
Tiffin was roped in to help with the musical arrangement at their 2001 production of Live at the Planetarium and she never left, joining the group after Tina Schouw left. Donal Slemon joined soon after and now there’s also Anthea Thomson, who stood in for Christine a while back and also just never left.
“Do you want to see us with our pretend mikes,” Anthea asks as they all scurry to their respective bags and come back with, among others things, two spectacle cases and a deodorant spray can.
Christine explains that they need to get used to having something in one hand, so the choreographer knows which hand they’ll use for their microphones.
“Four legs good, two legs bad,” they start chanting, the beginning of the Beatles’ Piggies, off the White Album.
Their Star Trek salutes make for scary piggy hands as they go through a track which references Animal Farm and will form part of of their next “purely a capella with comedy in between” show.
“The lyrics have no meaning,” says Amanda of Ricky Lee Jones’s Woody and Dutch on the Slow Train to Peking.
“It’s competely nonsensical,” Christine chimes in. “And that’s why we’re singing it,” comes the rejoinder from Amanda.
After running through three numbers, they take a break from rehearsal to answer some questions while sprawled on the carpet of the Baxter rehearsal room.
Everyone (who has ever heard them) has a Not the Midnight Mass story and Anthea recalls the first time she saw the group perform in Grahamstown: “They were like rock gods, strolling down the Grahamstown main street in ruffled shirts and long black capes.”
Since then, performing with them had been an item on her bucket list because watching them perform “blew my mind”.
The first incarnation of Not the Midnight Mass was started 23 years ago at the Black Sun theatre in Yeoville – the site of the gestation of many an alternative show from people like Johannes Kerkorrel and Koos Kombuis to Jennifer Ferguson and even Nataniël.
Co-owner George Milares didn’t have much faith in the quartet of the two Weirs, Jenny de Lenta (now lives in the UK, is married, has a child and teaches yoga) and Terence Reis (yes, the guy who will later this month play with The Straits – Dire Straits minus Mark Knofler – at their first live show in 20 years) so he would only give them the midnight slot, hence their name.
They showed him, though. Graham thinks the reason the show worked back then was because they provided a sharp dose of comic relief at a time when people mostly had access to heavy political theatre.
“It’s the same now,” he says.
“Musically, it’s quite eclectic,” Donal puts in, with Graham quickly agreeing as he notes that in Hot Cross Nuns they’re doing some numbers they haven’t done in 15 years, with new arrangements by Amanda. Specifically, he’s thinking of the first number they started to rehearse, Woody and Dutch on the Slow Train to Peking.
Amanda admits she has to be careful not to get too clever when working on musical arrangements with vocalists who can pretty much do anything she asks of them.
“The essence of Not the Midnight Mass is performance, lyric and story. The music must never get in the way so I have to try and keep a handle on that.”
“Graham has a strong sense of Not the Midnight Mass, a lot of it comes from him,” says Christine, to which he replies: “Christine’s always been the one who puts it together.
“We try to keep what’s gone before, and to do something new. Certain kinds of things work.”
So many years later they’ve got a repertoire of about 200 songs and Amanda’s started working on a sort of “Midnight songbook” to help newbies find their feet.
While each of the singers has to blend in with the others, they also have to be able to take a solo with conviction.
“It’s an energy that works in the ensemble. Though everyone on stage is working hard, you never get the sense that the people on stage are trying too hard and you leave feeling uplifted,” Donal explains.
What’s also interesting is how they appeal to children and adults alike.
“It’s so primal, the human voice without affectation,” says Graham.