Today, hallelujah, oh happy day, mirabile dictu, we did our first full run of the show. The crew were in attendance to see just what the hell we've been doing with ourselves these last few weeks, as were Andrea Brooks (our acting tutor at East 15) and Colin Sell (musical supervisor for the show). It's always a formidable challenge, this type of run. The temptation is to suddenly try push too hard because suddenly there's an audience, or alternatively the nerves kick in and hamper the freedom which had previously existed. But never fear, Mike Bradwell was on hand to give us a wee pep talk before we began and helping us take a couple of minutes to find the character. And before we had time to really think too hard, we were off and running.
There were, of course, a couple of hiccups - an odd dropped line, the occasional song in the wrong key - but we got from beginning to end fully intact and the general feedback was very positive from both audience and actors. It was nice to finally experience the whole thing, to discover the thread that runs through the piece both as a whole and individually. One notable comment came as Colin suggested that Andrea didn't actually need a guitar strap for her guitar. Now, as Mike says, "The ongoing saga of the guitar strap is by now running longer than the collected works of Ibsen" - it's been a topic of debate for sometime, and so it seems we will be getting a strap, testing it and then probably not using it!
We took an early lunch and settled in for notes afterwards. Mike, in a red shirt to match the red socks poking out under his trousers, felt the show is where it needs to be right now and a lot of bits and pieces won't fully fall into place until we finally get to the Cockpit itself. The double-entendres were in full flow as he asked at one point "Ryan, what gets you off?"But that wasn't the only excitement, as Claire (Rossignol) had to leave us for an appointment with, would you believe it, an AGENT! No doubt they will sign her instantly and she'll be given her own dressing room and PA for the show next week. Fabulous. In her absence, we ran over the National Assembly scene, which is threatening to become a full-blown Spitting Image sketch, and good God it's getting harder and harder not to corpse as my colleagues become more and more adventurous and outrageous with their ad libs. Respond to what you're given, not what you expect, as we were advised. Be prepared. Dib Dib Dib!
QUOTE OF THE DAY: "You've got out of being in Oasis and you're now in The Beatles - but you're Paul McCartney and I want you to be John Lennon" - Mike Bradwell encourages Nico to push it as Sade, to which Nico responded "Yeah, and I'll leave the Ringo behind".
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