Breaking up with Anne

As I type there are perhaps 45 minutes left in this season’s run of Anne & Gilbert, the musical theatre extraganza that’s been running since June 18 across a paper-thin wall from our headquarters here in the Reiventorium.

One hundred and thirty-four performances.

One hundred and thirty-four renditions of “Seesaw Girl” and “May I Offer My Umbrella?” and “Forever In My Life.

I’d hazard a guess that, outside of the cast and crew, nobody but me has heard the show more this summer; not all 134 performances, of course. But certainly good sections of 70 or 80.

At times it’s felt like it was never going to end: no matter how wonderful a musical is, having it on an endless loop playing in the loop next door seems like a subplot from LOST.

Many days I would leave for lunch as the show was getting started and marvel at the fact that when I returned an hour or so later it was still running.

But I made it. I even grew to – sort of – love it. Certainly I foung myself whistling the theme from the finale more than I thought I’d ever be whistling, well, anything. Here’s a little taste of what my workday has been punctuated by since, well, forever:

Congratulations to all concerned for what appears, at least through the walls, to have been a banner season.