So. We have just completed our final week of rehearsals before moving to the Questors Studio for a week of tech before hitting Edinburgh town. The cast have been utterly brilliant-it has been a tough ol week, and exhausting, but they have remained lively, focused and good humoured throughout. New things have been introduced into the rehearsal room on a daily basis, as things are tried, tested and experimented with, before tech. Highlights have included seeing some animation for the first time (beautiful), the emergence of Bessie the puppet dog (gorgeous!), more stuffed animals (we cant get enough of them), a spot of publicity with The Stage (Harry went and had a photo shoot and interview-we eagerly await the results) and a visit from a real life magician who helped us with how to make an explosion. (the answer involves flash cotton wool, pyro caps and a bit of slow motion acting!) The biggest joy this week for me though was the arrival of the costumes. We spent a couple of hours on Friday afternoon going through every character’s costume. They are on the whole pretty wonderful, and with all their detail do the job of locating us immediately in the 19th century. There is many a cravat, hat, wig, pair of glasses for all the quick changes, and it was just so exciting to see each character visually emerge as actors tried on their various costumes.

The work in the room this week has been all about detail, specificity, accuracy, and timing, focusing on every scene, but also the scene changes, which are proving to be as important as the scenes themselves. New locations are introduced in virtually every scene, and creating each environment needs to be in the spirit of the play, and part of the performance, and have to be painstakingly choreographed in order to get them slick and smooth. Its like the game tetras (is that spelt right?!), the challenge is to work out what fits in where and who needs what next and how many people it takes to move this table there and that blackboard here and can he leave then to make a quick change backstage…..?! The challenge once these complicated moves have been worked out, with everyone knowing exactly who is moving what and when, is to complete these moves with finesse and with a sense of pleasure, as opposed to it being ‘just another scene change’. And the key to this is just to run it. We did a run on Friday morning, and it was clear that the actors were all visibly working hard to remember everything, with the technical aspects of the show dominating the story. Understandable, considering just how much they have to remember. Orla decided that instead of working on little bits, the afternoon would be best spent on another run, and this proved to be best thing that could have happened before the weekend. Having just run it, the moves were fresh in everyone’s minds, and as a result, the second run was an utter transformation. Scenes flowed into each other as the actors very quickly established a rhythm together, which kept the pace whipping along. There was suddenly a tangible sense of the actors enjoying themselves, and as they felt more secure in the geography of the play, the characters and their relationships were really able to come to the fore and the story began to fly for the first time. It was so thrilling to watch, and to feel the difference from the morning’s run. Such a fantastic way to end the week and a great stage to be at before entering tech. Which is in no way going to be easy. I think everyone is bracing themselves for a hard slog, just because there are so many elements yet to be worked in (costume changes, chemistry sets, explosion, sound and lights, animation…) but we all know that it will be worth it.