Mouse traps and showtunes and pianos, oh my!

Being humane requires more effort than I thought. Every time you catch a mouse in a trap, the trap’s useless until it’s empty again. So you have to take it for a walk far away from the house and let it out, bring the trap home, wash it out, stick some more peanut butter in it and set it again. Given there’s a foot of snow outside and there may be an untold number of mice in the house, this could go on forever. So I called the council and today the rat catcher paid me a visit.

He was not unlike the child catcher from Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang and of course knew all about mice and rats and other pests, but was resolute in telling me all I could want to know about them too. I suppose, if that’s your vocation. He seemed friendly enough, but as he laid the little cardboard traps in all the likely places, I could swear a glint of world-domination malevolence crossed his withered face. Anyway, him and his halitosis will be back in three weeks to examine the results. I just hope I don’t start finding dead mice everywhere, I’ve grown quite attached to the little things.

Anyway, back in music world, I did a piano gig at a hotel in London last week, where usually I’m playing to a small bar full of American tourists or bored looking business folk on some boring conference jolly. But this gig was different: the entire staff of Delfont-Mackintosh were having their late New Year party around my piano, all 130 of them. Now if, like me, you’re a musical theatre boy/girl you’ll understand my excitement. If you don’t know who Sir Cameron Mackintosh is, then look away now and close this browser tab immediately.

The company owns, amongst other things, seven West End theatres and their current slew includes shows like Billy Elliot, The Sound Of Music, Oliver!, Phantom, all the biggies. At the time of evening I was playing, the party consisted of all front of house, directors, producers, box office, accounts, management folk. All the cast members and backstage people from the shows hadn’t finished work yet. As their entertainment for this part of the evening, I was suddenly faced with something of a musical dilemma: What do I play? Should I play it cool and stick to jazz, swing and pop songs, blatantly avoiding the musicals altogether? Would they notice that? Would they appreciate it? Would they understand I’m trying not to stereotype them and I’m not trying to get into their hearts using the music of their trade? Would they get that I was just playing it cool?

Or should I just abandon all decorum and self-consciousness and roll out the Barbra-Streisand-sings-songs-from-the-shows routine, with bonus chorus number medleys of everything Cameron Mackintosh has ever produced? Well, put a few theatricals in a bar with free drink and you can imagine what inevitably happens. By the end of my gig, I had the front of house staff from the Prince Of Wales and the producer of the Chinese run of Mama Mia belting out everything from Abba to The Little Mermaid around the piano. It was great fun! To be honest, I’ve never been that loud-voiced, piano-man, all-round entertainer type, but once you’re rolling along, you just have to go with the crowd. I find it a bit destroying, but it does make me wonder how I’d feel if I ever saw people gathered around a piano belting their way through songs that I had written. Would I be proud? Would I be appalled? I’m hoping I get to find out one day.