Blood and Laughter

Heading back in to the Brisbane Arts Theatre for the second season of Prognosis: Death! was like being reunited with a long-lost love, and finding everything that was exciting and wonderful and fulfilling the first time around is still just as it was.

We played with a slightly different opening for our first show, "St Love and the Visitors", because we wanted to add in some extra soap opera-style plot twists. The plot - about brain-eating aliens possessing St Love Hospital's resident priest, Reverend Jeremy Thistlewaite - took slightly longer to build, but the return of Dr Burton Mangold (the Best Damn Doctor in St Love), and the revelation of the invading aliens as rather camp showgirls made for a great second half. Plus we had GREEN blood:

Friday saw us hit absolute top stride with "St Love and the Phantom", which became a medical-comedy-musical-parody of Andrew Lloyd-Webber's famous production, with a one-time Best Damn Doctor rising up from his rat-infested lair in the hospital basement to seduce Dr Melody Carmichael with the piano accordion. It was wonderful.

Finally, our wonderful musician Kris took these shots of me before and after my blood encounter on Friday night - I couldn't believe I'd made it to the interval with my uniform still clean:

But I made up for it at the end of Act Two, with The Wah (Director & Chief Blood Dispersal Operator) shooting three large syringes full of our sugary blood mix straight at me:

I can honestly repeat my assertion that making an audience laugh - and on occasion, cheer - is the best feeling in the world. I adore this show, I adore everyone in it - and I love the fact our audiences seem to adore it too. I can't wait for tonight.

Prognosis: Death! RELAPSE
Brisbane Arts Theatre, 210 Petrie Terrace
8pm (Sat 4, Thu 9, Fri 10, Sat 11 July)
Book on 3369 2344 (or just rock up)