Tally's Blood 5

"I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of the imagination. What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth - whether it existed before or not - for I have the same idea of all our passions as of love: they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential beauty ... O for a life of sensations rather than thoughts." John Keats

A fortnight to go before we open. Eek! And it’s all come around so quickly. Christina and her army of set builders along with the cast and other crew will be coming in for the get-in on Sunday lunchtime, hammering, screwing, bracing and gluing. Ursula- a reformed character apparently- will be hanging our lights; Alan will operate sound (and although this is likely to make our cue-to-cue tech run drag on twice as long as it should, he’s solid and reliable fella and I know we’ll be able to trust him). Lighting desk duties will have to be shared between Karen Barclay and Francesca (at last a genuine Tally is a part of this production!!). Sandra, now back from her holiday in New York, and Lorraine, now finished with working for Susan’s White House Murders, will be rummaging in the Ramshorn store and various second hand shops over the next ten days ferreting out 40’s and 50’s hats, bags and costumes. It’ll be thrilling to see it all come together. Debbie has managed to source gas masks and old ginger boxes. Karen’s sister had two or three cornettis to choose from for the Bridget character. Debs and Linzi are doing a fabulous job as the stage management team too. And I cannot tell you how wonderful it was to learn Robert has a contact that can run up a set of Pedreschi logo white aprons for the cast. Dee is being a very patient jive choreographer- great to see her at work with Hughie and Lucia on the Blue Suede Shoes jive sequence. And of course India, my ‘glam assistant’, - although she is busy rehearsing Bruce’s radio dramas this week and won’t be with us again until Sunday- has been real pillar of strength, managing all the rehearsal scheduling, emailing and phoning round and all the general spade work I have neither the time nor inclination for. But in the end it will be the actors who will make this piece really fly. Yesterday the hair and make-up lady, Sharon, came into rehearsal to see a run-through of Act 1 for the first time. She hadn’t read the play and actually knew nothing about it at all. By the end of the first half she was sobbing her little heart out! God knows what she’ll be like when she sees what happens in Act 2! She didn’t strike me as the soppy type, but this is a very sentimental, heart-warming play, and it’s a great relief to know that it is not just India, the stage management team or myself it has this effect on. You’d have to be an extremely hard-hearted bastard not to be moved to tears by it I think.

I'm really looking forward to seeing it with the audiences. Everyone who has worked on this deserves it to be a really wonderful success.

:-)