If we had a curtain, it would be going up for the first time tonight as, after rehearsing since January, The Rivals hits the stage.
It’s been an interesting process with games, balloons, fruit-based vocal exercises and stage combat – alongside the regular rigmarole of line learning and blocking. I even went on a trip to Bath and the cast were doing so well early on we got a two week break(!) But now it’s time to get on there and do it.
Tonight is a £5 Preview, which, with only one Dress Rehearsal (even though “the prejudice has always run in favour of two”), is a tacit admission that there may still be a few rough edges – though none of them are deliberate I assure you!
But for the cast, it is very much our opening night – and so today will be spent with emotions rattling between sheer excitement (“we are going to be ace!”) and utter fear (“are we going to be ace?”) And at the last count it looks like a near full-house tonight, so those feelings are getting exaggerated to even further extremes…! Good sales are a validation of hard work, but make the stakes a lot higher.
But, whether a big or small audience, when it all comes down to it, in a few (long) hours it will be up to us to walk the walk and talk the talk. And if we can manage to do both at the same time, then we really should have a show on our hands…!
Update 16:00 Director Ian Nicholson reports tonight has now sold out. That’s good news by and large, but means he won’t be able to see the debut of his own show…!
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