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Urinetown Blog – Week 4

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Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s blog for our upcoming show Urinetown.

I’m Debbie and I play the character of Daisy Doodle, one half of a menacing duo… Want to know what I’m talking about? Get yourselves down to The Millfield Theatre!

This week we sang our little hearts out and strutted our stuff to complete 3 of the most challenging songs I have ever been part of.
On Monday, Mike, our MD extraordinaire, went over all our harmonies making sure that we have everything down!

We also had a visit from our friend Jamie Millard and his cute doggy Arthur!! That was a real treat!! We also had our Little Sally’s birthday where we celebrated with doughnuts!!

On Wednesday we began to move the opening, following instruction from our delectable duo Warren and Jo, something quite simple but boy was it effective!! Our characters are certainly starting to take shape and the movement is tailored to the music!!

Urinetown has become one of my favourite musicals and one of the many reasons why is because it is a genius piece of theatre, yes the title leaves a lot to be desired, but don’t let that fool you. Don’t miss out, come on down to Urinetown!!

Urinetown Blog – Week 3

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This weeks blog comes from one of our new members, François. Who, as the name suggests has joined us all the way from France. Take it away François;

Urineville, c’est parti!

This is not a surprise but I am so utterly excited to have been given the opportunity to play two parts in the show.

First one, Dr Billeaux, is one of the Rich. He is a scientist in charge of the R&D Department at Urine Good Company. He is much of a coward and one the pets of our villain, Caldwell B. Cladwell.

The second is more of a mystery, Victor Khodahad. I haven’t been given the chance yet to rehearse as him so far, so I can’t tell you much. You will have to come to see. But what is certain is that a character with a name of Eastern European origin, being played by a French guy, is certain to bring the unexpected!

This week, we blocked the Act one Finale and as a rich person, I learned some very funny moves implying fingers. I can’t say more today, I am afraid it would sound nasty. Oui, je sais!

We then worked on the music for the scene and as with every musical piece we’ve worked on so far, it is so good to hear us singing it altogether. The harmonies gave me goose bumps many times! Trop bon… I am pretty sure it will be the same for you too when you come to support the show.

Well, for now, it is time de se dire au revoir. But I’ll see you soon, from the stage.

So, don’t forget about your tickets. A bientôt!

 

 

 

 

 

Urinetown Blog – Week 2

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Well hello there, and welcome to Urinetown!

Not the musical (just yet) but the blog… Well this week brought us the first two rehearsals for this magnificent show.

I’m so so excited to have been given the part of Officer Lockstock. He is a character unlike any other I can think of in musical theatre and is an absolute dream to get to play.

He, like the show itself, is dark, satirical and hugely funny and I can’t wait to get stuck in to developing him further!

So this week we started to learn two of the numbers from the show, both the opening titular song and the show stopping Run Freedom, Run!

Both songs have heart stopping harmonies and are some of the best music I have ever sung.

For both rehearsals I’ve floated out at the end and my excitement at being part of this show and this astonishing cast just gets higher and higher! I think we’re all looking forwards to this week where we’ll leave the chairs and start to get to move around!

I think that’s bound to bring another layer to the whole thing and I for one cannot wait!

Hopefully everyone starts getting their tickets to see this show as soon as possible. I’d hate for anyone to miss out on seeing this truly incredible cast put on what must be one of the best shows out there.

Tickets for the show are available here. 

Urinetown – The Blog – Read Through & Auditions

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Hello and welcome to the first post for our Urinetown Show Blog.

My name’s Warren McWilliams and I’m directing the show. In this post I’ll take you through what happened at the read through, auditions and our first rehearsal.

I’m so pleased that SMP have decided to do this show, firstly it’s a huge favourite of mine but it’s a bit of a risky one with the title and all. Thankfully it’s such a fantastic show that we think it’s a risk worth taking. I guarantee it’s the best show you’ve never heard of! Hopefully with our blog posts we’ll convince you how good it is. The music is brilliant and the script is dark, funny and witty. I’ve been trying to liken it to other shows and always fail. It is the most unique musical and you should take a chance and come to see it, you won’t regret it. We’ve also got a fantastic production team that I’m really happy to be a part of. We’re all fans of the show too and will do everything we can to make it the best show possible.

We started our journey to Urinetown with our read through. It was great to see old faces return for this show but also to see so many new faces turn up. The show has many fans and plenty of them had turned up for our read through.

On the night, the production team and I talked through the show and what we’d like to do with it. Then we set about reading the script and watching videos of some of the great numbers in the show.

We held a workshop for the auditions a couple of nights later to help people prepare for their auditions. We went through the audition songs, taught our new members a quick dance audition and I was on hand to answer any questions about characters that people were going for.

So the auditions came and they were brilliant. The standard of auditions were the highest I’ve seen for our group and I’ve directed plenty of shows now. People had really put in the effort and we as a production team were very thankful for it. We had people turn up with costumes, props and it was clear to see people had really put some time and effort into preparing for their auditions.

After 2 blocks of great auditions the time came to cast the show. It really wasn’t easy. We were spoilt for choice and could have cast the show in a number of ways. Sadly, space limits our cast size, so not everyone made it into the show but, after much deliberation, we made our choices and we’re really very happy to have such a strong cast.

Wednesday saw us meet for our first rehearsal and it was a cracker! We decided to start at the beginning (apparently it’s a very good place to start) with the opening number. It’s a bit like diving in straight at the deep end, the opener is a five minute number with probably the toughest parts of harmony in the whole show. But our MD Mike, along with a little help from his wife Laura, was able to teach everything so that we finished the whole song in an evening with only polishing left to do. It’s surprising how much you can get done with 2 MD’s!

I’m really pleased with the cast we’ve got for this show, there’s a whole bunch of talent to make this show come alive and if the first rehearsal is anything to go by it’s going to sound fantastic.

Our tickets are on sale now and available through the Millfield box office. You can call them on 020 8807 6680 or book through their website here.

WFFoT 2016 Line Up Announced

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The Waltham Forest Festival of Theatre line up for 2016 has been announced.

This year our entry ‘Career Day’ written by Paul Levy opens the Thursday evening of plays. Career Day tells the story of  four North London boys sharing their future ambitions with each other as they await guidance from the school’s careers counselor.

On the night we’ll be joined by the Wadham Players with ‘Time Flies’ and the Blitzed Theatre Company’s play, ‘Untitled’

We would heartily recommend the whole week to catch a good range of plays. Full details of the festival and the schedule can be found here:

Here’s our cast for the play!

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The full line up is here: 12705635_906753776109523_5896164801837598521_n

The festival also has a new facebook page you can like head to it here: https://www.facebook.com/walthamforestfestivaloftheatre/

Sleeping Beauty Blog – The Final Post.

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And so it seems Panto is over for another year (oh no it isn’t….!), as we bid a fond farewell to Sleeping Beauty 2016!

The end of show week is always a little bittersweet, as no one really wants it to be over, especially after all the hard work – but the truth is (for my creaking joints at least) that you are more than a little cream-crackered by the end of Sunday’s matinee and would happily hibernate like a bear for a couple of weeks!

We also have the job of the theatre ‘get out’ to look forward to on the Sunday evening, so work looming large on the Monday morning (or Tuesday if you were sensible enough to book an extra day’s holiday) can almost seem like a rest!

However once you’ve had a bit of a break (24 hours usually does it!) and finally get around to tidying all your dressing room bits away at home, the post show blues can really set in. How are you suppose to fill your time without all those innuendos and panto traditions?! Thankfully, we are traditionally the last group in the area to perform their panto, which means we never have to wait long before we get going with the Summer show auditions. This year it was a particularly short break, as it’s only been one week!

Luckily for some of us there is always the performance at St Elizabeth’s Centre in Much Hadham to look forward to. This is where we take an abridged version of the panto and a trimmed down cast and perform it to the most wonderful audience on the following Sunday. I don’t think they realise that we get as much, if not more, enjoyment out of it as they do – with the sheer joy of having one last chance to perform it!

We rehearsed the abbreviated version on the Wednesday after show week and due to prior commitments we had a couple of casting changes to work through – the Gediking sisters really came up trumps for us and took on the role of the Prince and the Queen (even if they were covering one of their own in the case of one role!). Much fun was had by all at the rehearsal and lots of show week silliness was relived.

When Sunday’s performance rolled around we suddenly found ourselves ‘one sparkle short of a twinkle’ literally; as we had a fairy who’d been struck down by Malevolent, to reduce the power of three! Heroically, and rather passionately Carla offered to step in (and was amazing!). A full spare fairy costume appeared from somewhere (everyone has this sort of thing laying around at home – just in case – don’t they?!) and the deal was sealed, we rustled up a fairy spell book and everything! This left us in a bit of a quandary about the queen’s role, which Carla was originally covering, but the gorgeously radiant Jo (and bump) filled the void and did an outstanding job at such short notice (we took good care of her on stage); it was a beautiful sight to see Jo stood with the baby Aurora and crib in the opening scene, as it really won’t be long until Warren and Jo are recreating that magic for real!

Huge thanks to Becky, Carla and Jo for being such superstars and making sure the show really did go on; and to Mike ‘Keys of Steel’ Benyon and Jivin’ John Fossey for rocking out the tunes! The lovely Fay also came to make sure we looked decent, knew the choreography changes and then turned her hand to the technical operation of the lighting and sound board, such a multi tasker – she also took some cheeky ‘wing side’ pictures!

Tired, but elated, we gathered for tea, sandwiches and cake afterwards – kindly provided by the lovely team at St Elizabeth and celebrated the end of a wonderful run!

Now you would be forgiven for thinking that we would all take some time off now, but no! We were back on it Monday evening, as we met to read through the script for our next show ‘Urinetown’! Don’t be put off by the title, it really is a corker of a script with dark, comedy twists and a cracking score.

So as we prepare to audition for our next show I will say goodbye and thank you for reading all of the blogs we have written during Sleeping Beauty. If you are wondering how you will cope without our regular updates, never fear, I’m sure we won’t be able to contain ourselves and we’ll keep you updated on our journey through the next lot of rehearsals! So watch this space!

Hail Malthus!

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Thomas Robert Malthus

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born, 13 February 1766, Westcott, Surrey, Great Britain

Died, 29 December 1834 (aged 68), Bath, Somerset, United Kingdom
The Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus was an English cleric and scholar, influential in the fields of political economy and demography. Malthus himself used only his middle name Robert.malthus

His An Essay on the Principle of Population observed that sooner or later population will be checked by famine and disease, leading to what is known as a Malthusian catastrophe. He wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe that saw society as improving and in principle as perfectible.

He thought that the dangers of population growth precluded progress towards a utopian society: “The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man”. As an Anglican cleric, Malthus saw this situation as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behaviour. Malthus wrote:

That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence,
That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and,
That the superior power of population is repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice.

Malthus placed the longer-term stability of the economy above short-term expediency. He criticized the Poor Laws, and (alone among important contemporary economists) supported the Corn Laws, which introduced a system of taxes on British imports of wheat. His views became influential, and controversial, across economic, political, social and scientific thought. Pioneers of evolutionary biology read him, notably Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. He remains a much-debated writer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_Mw0WEbqrI

Production Photos

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Here’s a selection of pictures from productions of Urinetown.

 

Critical Responses for the Original Production

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“A declaration of the power of theatre…a sensational piece of performance art, one that acknowledges theater tradition and pushes it forward as well…. Simply the most gripping and galvanizing theater experience in town. And did I mention that Urinetown is hilarious?”
Bruce Weber, New York Times

“Elevated silliness of the highest order that makes a gratifying case for the restorative return to knowing foolishness and the smartly absurd.”
Linda Winer, Newsday

“Irreverent and nimble…Takes every Broadway banality and subverts [it] with refreshing cynicism.”
Amy Gamerman, The Wall Street Journal

“Pure gold!… Urinetown is a wild and happy mix of biting satire and loving parody. What is wonderful is the energized spirit that flashes through the show like lightning. You’ll get your money’s worth in sheer fun.”
Clive Barnes, New York Post

“Inspired, fresh, exuberant, even moving. You’ve got to go!”
Entertainment Weekly

“Adventurous and groundbreaking musicals can provoke us, engage us in fresh ways, push the boundaries of the form, make a real emotional connection with the people on stage. Musicals like Urinetown, the sell-out hit that aims for comic heights and keeps the audience soaring”
Richard Zoglin, TIME

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reviews

Urinetown Read Through & Auditions Next Week!

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Our Read through for Urinetown will be Monday 1st February at Cannon House, St Monica’s Social Club Cannon House 6 Cannon Hill London N14 7HG at 8pm

On the night our production team Director, Warren McWilliams, Choreographer, Jo Bakhurst and Musical Director, Mike Benyon, will talk you through their plans for Urinetown.

We’ll also read throught he script and talk through auditon pieces.

There will be an audition workshop on Wednesday 3rd Feb for anyone wishing to ask for help and auditions will be held at the same venue on the 7th and 8th of Feb.

Please share these details and sign up to our facebook event for updates; https://www.facebook.com/events/443680229152808/

We hope to see you at the read through!

read through poster

Sleeping Beauty Blog – The Get Out

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IT’S A WRAP!… As our brilliant last audience cheerfully exited the theatre, singing our finale song as they went, and the curtains came down on another super show week in SMP land, so began our “Get out”

While cast were busy folding cloths, our FOH team were dismantling displays and taking down “Urinetown” posters. Back stage more cast folded away their costumes and cleared out the dressing rooms, while our props team filled their cars to the brim, and our incredible crew were shifting set and lighting bars, oooh and sweeping our confetti filled pit too.

During all the hard work, our lovely Fairy Merriweather and “thank you’s” mistress, Marian Lynch, kindly presented a very long list of super special people with chocolates, flowers and thank you cards. People without whom we couldn’t do what we do.

As fate would have it, in came our review from “Sardines” the Am-Dram magazine, and it was full to the brim of lovely comments and positive feedback, yay, which only encouraged the already high emotions of the cast, production team, committee and crew. As they all hugged goodbye and patted each other firmly on the back, a feeling of pride filled the room.

Six performances later, to nearly 1500 people this week, ending on a sell-out, we are all ready for our beds…but one things for sure, we’ll be heading off the land of nod with HUGE smiles on our faces.

To everyone who came to see the show we offer you a massive heartfelt thank you, without you we couldn’t continue to do what we love doing. THANK YOU!

#smprock

Sleeping Beauty Blog – Show Week

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So a little about me, I first joined smp for zombie prom back in 2010, and haven’t looked back since. We are more than an amateur dramatics company, we are a family and I think that’s why we manage to retain the same talent show after show!
I’m delighted to be a member of the chorus and an evil minion in Sleeping Beauty. So here I am at our after show party writing a blog!
As you have already read blogs about our fabulous opening night I thought I would cover show week socials. So on Thursday night a few of us went to a karaoke bar and partied after opening night, the attendance of this is generally a lot higher but a few of us have been hit by the much dreaded man flu (yes it is that bad!) so decided an early night was needed in order to be at our best for our lovely audiences.
Friday night is traditionally curry night so after the show we all head down to Aladdin’s who look after us so marvelously twice a year. After lots of chat and lovely food we head home and rest, ready for 2 shows on Saturday.
Between shows there is also a lot of food (ok you might spot a theme here, we like to eat) and general chit chat and chill time for the cast before our evening performance. A special mention must go out to our crew who provide us with some entertaining calls…. There was some very questionable accents through the tannoy this afternoon.
So on to the main event…. The after show party! We all like to let our hair down and enjoy a good boogie and a few Bevvies after the shows. There is also the small matter of ‘the awards’, these celebrate little mess ups that the cast have made throughout show week including costume malfunctions and script adaptions, and the notorious “Cow and pig” award for the company member who hammed it up the most (on or off stage)
As we have a show on Sunday we pack up at a reasonable time and rest up for our Sunday matinée. Emotions are running high after spending a week with the ‘SMP fam’ and the finale of the Sunday matinee is always full of tears that all of our hard work is over. But fear not, read through for our summer show Urinetown is only a matter of days away! Hurrah 🙂

Sleeping Beauty Blog – Opening Night!

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Oh how joyous! It’s my turn to write for the Sleeping Beauty Blog – and this time, it’s Opening Night!! After spending far too long sticking sparkles and glitter on my face, it was time to take to the stage as Fairy Fauna – the ditsy, blonde, ‘one sparkle short of a twinkle’ fairy…and well, I’m finding this character an absolute delight to play!

I am incredibly lucky to have the support of such a wonderful cast that has helped me to quickly step in to this role. I would like to personally thank the wonderful Flora (Lynzey) and magical Merriweather (Marian) for helping me through the past couple of weeks… and our brilliant director Christopher O’Shea (18 years later and we are still performing together Chris!)… Oh, and of course, our very own SMP fairy Jo McWilliams, who has been a fabulous support. After finding out the great news that Jo is expecting her first little ‘cherub’ I was absolutely delighted to be asked to take on her role of Fairy Fauna. Jo has really helped me to bring so much life, love and laughter to this character and I hope she is pleased with the result.

Anyway, back to last night…The fairies certainly have their work cut out trying to protect Princess Aurora, making sure her and Prince Rupert meet (and fall totes in-love), fighting the mystical malevolent, saving Prince Rupert from Boggers and Sniffle, keeping the peace between Presto and Sampson, defeating Malevolent, making sure our Sleeping Beauty wakes up and ensuring everyone lives happily every after… and of course remaining fabulous the whole way through… Oh my Disney! Thankfully we have magic wands to help us through… and after last night, I am certain they have real power… the speed that Rupert’s chains flew off was quite astonishing – thankfully, no band members were hurt in the process, although, our BSL interpreter did have to duck! Oops!

This show is jam packed full of fun, energy and lots of fairy sparkle –  Get booking those tickets… otherwise, Merriweather will be round to give you a good shake! x

*Some of our cast decided to celebrate after the show last night with a few drinks and a spot of karaoke, see the pictures.

We’ve had some great feed back so far too:

Sleeping Beauty Blog – Community Night

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Guten Tag from me, Rebecca Gediking – the Little German! (this is a well known character in the original ‘Sleeping Beauty’ fairytale so I’m told… Yah!)

Tonight was SMP’s opening night of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ by Warren Mc Williams for charity and community groups and what a great night it was!
It was so much fun performing and bringing the show to life with a fantastic audience, a fab band and a wonderful group of people!
Tonight we really experienced the fear, joy and exhilaration of performing live. Cast and crew members were helping each other with quick costume changes, hairstyles, make up, set changes and microphones! There were times when we were running up and down stairs and around the theatre to make it on time for scenes and musical numbers…We loved every minute!
As we hung up our costumes and packed away our make up, hairspray and millions of hair grips, we all had huge grins on our faces and we can’t wait to be back in the theatre to perform again tomorrow!
Thank you to our audience members for being good fun and participating in the pantomime jokes, cheering and of course booing our baddies Malevolent, Boggers and Sniffles! We hope all of our audience members will be as good as you were tonight!
If you haven’t booked your tickets yet… I can only assume you’ve been asleep for a loooong time, we understand that this can happen – but     you wouldn’t want to miss this show… Oh no you wouldn’t!
Auf Wiedersehen for now! Xx 

Sleeping Beauty Blog – Tech Run & Dress

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We’ve reached the end of our rehearsals and Wednesday night will be our first performance in front of an audience.

Monday started off early as our lighting designer Matt arrived at 10 am to start plotting the show ready for the tech run later that evening.

Alex our stage manager wasn’t far behind and with help from cast and crew sorted through all the problems ready for the tech run that evening.

Props, front of house displays all got worked on so that they were ready to go and our box office lady, Kate, was busy sorting out those last minute ticket orders.

A huge THANK YOU has to go to all of our tech team and crew who manage to sort out our lighting sound and set all whilst still doing their day jobs. They don’t get much time to see the show and only a few rehearsals to get it right but they come through for us every time.

Our tech run on Monday night went nice and smoothly, no major problems along the way apart from a slight wardrobe malfunction on Haydns part which saw his trousers fall down during a dance number and Andy brake his finger as a result!

Tuesday was our dress run and we arrived at the theatre in the afternoon to start finishing off those bits that needed sorting on stage and with the lighting.

In the evening we were joined once again by our brilliant band and started our dress rehearsal. Despite a couple of missing people in some scenes and some dropped and restarted lines, the run went pretty well and we’re in good shape for our audience on Wednesday night. Thanks to Dave for taking some pictures or us too.

The show’s in good shape and we’ve had great feedback from those who’ve seen our rehearsals, so we really hope you come along to see us this week. There are still some tickets available so please book if you’re coming especially for matinees as there is limited availability for those shows.

 

Sleeping Beauty Blog – Get in and Band Call

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Hi, Carl here, playing the King. A lovely crisp winter’s morning is a beautiful start to a great day. First of all, band call; when the band and the cast come together for the first time.

OMG it sounds amazing thanks to the talented Mike B., Chris W., Tim H., Steve R. and John F. They all rock!

Then off to the Intimate we go for tech rehearsal and, more importantly, the inevitable pizza party. A ridunculous amount of food ordered and while stuffing pizza in our gobs it’s truly the quietest SMP have ever been. Pizza rocks!

The back stage guys have worked tirelessly getting the fabulous set and lighting all sorted. They all rock!

The Intimate theatre is a great venue but as the name suggests the stage isn’t as big as the rehearsal space we’re used to. But with the guidance of our fabulous choreographer, Fay, and brilliant director, Chris, it’s all looking awesome. Fay and Chris, you rock!

I am so happy that I get to share this incredible time with my partner, Andy, who is joining SMP for the first time. Looking forward to tomorrow when the set, lighting and costumes all come together; it’s gonna be spectacular.

This is my sixth show with SMP and I am lucky to be involved with such a loveable group of talented people who I am proud to call my friends. SMP rock!

Sleeping Beauty Blog – Final Week 17

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Hi Guys, Prince Rupert here looking forward to seeing you all next week in the wonderful world of SMP Pantoland!

After directing Bugsy Malone in the Summer I enjoyed working with this talented, super fun unbelievably nice group of people I thought I would join the dark side and become a cast member.

Monday we were in the very capable hands of Fay our amazingly creative Choreographer and Mike our very talented master of the keys Musical Director. We spent the night ‘fine tuning’ the musical numbers (which are not be missed) so they are in the best shape they can be for show week. Wednesday we were back with our visionary Director Chris for our last run before we get into the theatre so excitement is starting to show throughout the cast. However we are missing one cast member…… YOU.

Please don’t miss out on this wonderful show which will have you cheering, booing, hissing and dancing in the aisles.

See you next week Haydn