Leak at the Flagler Auditorium Pushes
Ten Tenors’ Gigs to Wednesday and Thursday

The heaviest rain of the winter coupled with winds led to a leak on the Flagler Auditorium stage, forcing tonight’s performance of the Ten Tenors to be postponed to Thursday evening at 7:30 p.m., auditorium Director Lisa McDevitt said.

Wednesday evening’s performance of the Ten Tenors will go on as planned, at 7:30 p.m.

Some 872 of the auditorium’s 1,000 seats were sold for Wednesday’s performance. Many people showed up and were given the option either of returning Thursday or of taking a credit, good through January 2012, for any other show of their choice at the auditorium. (By policy, no cash refunds are provided). But many people didn’t show up as tornado watches and warnings were still whipping around in a wide arc from central to northeast Florida. McDevitt and the tenors agreed to call off the show at 6:30 p.m., an hour before curtain time.

The leaks at the auditorium were not severe: one faint drip in center stage, toward the back, and a similar leak stage right. Rubber garbage cans were positioned beneath them, still collecting drops past 8 p.m. While the leaks weren’t severe, they would have posed a hazard for the performers, whose slip-sliding all over the stage is usually on their terms, not those of what McDevitt called an “act of god.”

Auditorium crew members Jack Neiberlien and Bruce Brady said the leaks were caused by seals on fire hatches on the roof that take water when buffeted by heavy winds and rains.

“It’ll be fixed in the morning, they’ve already assured me of that,” McDevitt said. “I don’t know if we need a new roof, but we do need some roof work done.”

Just before 9 p.m. the tenors were gathering up in the lobby of the Hilton on State Road 100, where they’re staying during their stop in Flagler County. They were getting ready for a private party for auditorium sponsors at Auditorium Board Chairman Richard Hamilton’s house.

Among them: Jordan Pollard and Keane Fletcher, who look not much older than older middle school students (and not just because Pollard wore a classic Mikey Mouse shirt), but the kind of students who could command a cover of GQ. They’re the two latest members of the Ten Tenors, joining the group last January (just after the tenors’ last stop at the auditorium). “I don’t feel like a rookie anymore. The boys are great. They helped me into it,” Pollard, a former winner of Australia’s Youth of the Year award and a veteran of the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (as Joseph) said. “Everything’s an adventure. We do some amazing venues, see some amazing sights and amazing people.”

And experience a few freakish events: “This,” Fletcher said, “is our first tornado warning. We get cyclones but not tornadoes” in Australia, he said.

Their latest experience of local flavors? Tacos of sorts at the Golden Lion in Flagler Beach. At a meeting earlier in the day, entirely unrelated, County Commissioner Barbara Revels had referred to Flagler Beach as the county’s restaurant mecca. She’s right. The tenors could perhaps use a guide for the pilgrimage.

See Also:

• Ten Tenors, Two Nights, One Flagler Auditorium
• Flagler Auditorium
• Call the Flagler Auditorium Box Office at 386/437-7547