O Where O Where Did My Finale Go?

It's the end of Tech Night 2, and I'm completely at a loss.

We got to the end of the fight scene and discovered that no one knew the ending.  The final song.  The Finale.  The part where the Police tell the Pirates to "Yield in Queen Victoria's Name", and the Pirates, being dutiful subjects of Her Majest the Queen, "Yield at once, with humble mien - because, with all their faults, they Love Their Queen."  (Followed by Ruth's revelation that they are not really pirates at all, but merely noblemen who have been playing at pirates because the relative dishonesty of politics is not to their liking.)

And when I started the Finale music, nothing happened.  Crickets chirped out in the audience.  The actors stood on stage with blank expressions on their faces.  "We didn't practice this!" someone protested.

Well, actually, we DID practice it, but not on stage, and it was at least a week or two ago.  But I had neglected to take into account the fact that, unless directed specifically to go home and study their entire scripts, the cast would not take the trouble to make sure they knew not only what we had practiced on the stage, but also the parts we had not yet practiced fully.

So we stood there on the night before Dress Rehearsal and realized that we didn't have an ending.

Talk about panic in the streets!!

We still had five or six pages to go through in the script.  Five or six pages which included at least three songs (one "new", two reprises).  Songs which tied all the loose ends and bring the show to a resounding end.

But we had no time.

So what did we do?

In the spirit of true Thespianism, we did what any other self-respecting Company would do: we made up a new, shorter ending.  Taking the gist of the real ending and shortening it into a quick, five-line summation:

Pirate King: "You lied to us about being an orphan, and now you will pay!"
Sergeant: "No! We charge you yield - in Queen Victoria's name!"
Pirate King: "You do?"
Police: "We do - we charge you yield in Queen Victoria's name!"
Pirate King: "We yield at once, because with all our faults, we love our Queen."

{Pirates lay down their swords and are taken away by Police.}

And then went directly into the Curtain Calls.

Hoo, boy.  This is going to be fun.  Tomorrow is Dress Rehearsal in front of a crowd of two hundred restless elementary schoolkids. Most of them aren't going to understand any of the dialogue anyway, so I doubt we'll get much reaction from them - other than, "What are those kids doing up there?"  Unlike last year's play, Beauty and the Beast, Jr., they haven't been watching the Disney cartoon version since they were infants, so they have no idea what's going on.

I don't think I'll sleep very well tonight!