Heading for the summit
February 6, 2012
The pressure is building a bit now. We have about eight days on each play now before we go to Stratford.
The difficulty, as we expected, is keeping what we are doing in one play hot and on the boil when we are focused on either of the other two.
Yesterday we ran the first half of Twelfth Night, before returning to tackle the difficult end of Comedy when the entire cast is on stage and there are serial revelations to which each character has a different reaction.
I'm still not completely on top of all the text in Twelfth Night, but I'm beginning to get a more reliable understanding of what I'm doing moment to moment to clarify the overall story. David (Farr - the director) is frighteningly perceptive and spots, with chastening accuracy, anything I do that is not precise, in line with, and contributing to, the narrative we need to present.
Every now and then I approach a scene with some confidence of my journey through it, but it's a bit like hill walking - you think can see the summit but when you get there a further rise comes into view and you realise that this illusion could well go on all day. In this game, you can never be sure you're at the top. So often, on a last night, I've realised a trick I've missed.
We're all very tired, but spirits are high. As well as rehearsing six days a week now, there will be evening calls for understudy rehearsals. There just is no other time to fit them in. So you can appreciate that some of the cast are looking forward to the move to Bardsville where we will just have the job to concentrate on, without having to juggle it with the demands of normal life!
Photo: Lunch at the Clapham GBK where the air conditioning seems to be always set on 'Arctic'.
by Nick Day
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