The Wicked Lady is a hit.
Listening to the audience is more akin to listening to people watching a firework display than a piece of theatre, with laughter and gasps ringing round the theatre and people eager to tell our front of house staff how much they’d enjoyed it.
The critics have, on the whole, been full of praise, which in the case of Lyn Gardner I’m especially pleased about as I have tremendous respect for her. Box office is buzzing. And the actors are clearly enjoying themselves, getting better and better all the time, and enjoying the enthusiasm with which each performance is greeted.
It’s a huge relief, especially as it’s all been such a risk, such an adventure.
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Come tech week and the country’s in the grip of a heatwave. Staggeringly hot weather.
I woke up on Monday morning knowing that not only would we spend 12 hours a day in a darkened auditorium, seeing little daylight, but also that the performers would be layered with costumes – lycra shorts and vests to provide a secure base for harnesses; stockings and wigs and hats; shirts and breeches and coats for the men; huge sack backed frocks with yards of petticoat fabric for the ladies. Both, in the case of the Wicked Lady herself.
But, having expected to be on our knees with heat exhaustion and light deprivation, it has in fact been a curiously pleasant week. I’d reckoned without the air conditioning, which keeps the auditorium at a steady 18 degrees, and keeping out of the sunlight isn’t so bad when it’s a fierce as it’s been.
Every night, though, I look forward to the treat of getting home about 10.30pm to a glass of chilled white wine and a breath of fresh air in a lantern lit garden.
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Getting The Wicked Lady ready for tech week has been touch and go.
About half way through rehearsals I realised I'd been over-ambitious. Five weeks should be enough to do a new play, and perhaps just enough to incorporate aerial techniques which were new both to the actors and to the building; but to do both I've begun to fear will be impossible in the time we have. Too late to do anything about it now: with tickets sold and opening night bearing down on us all we can do is work hard and keep our nerve.
The actors bear the brunt of this. Every day is a tough one for them, with several hours of hard physical work every morning before they even start rehearsing the scenes, not to mention the anxiety as the thought of an audience looms.
One thing's for certain though. Although we may not be ready for tech week, the run through this afternoon convinces me that we have a production that works very well indeed in the safety of the rehearsal room.
Now I'll hold my breath and see whether it can fly in the auditorium.
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Today we moved The Wicked Lady into the auditorium. Normally this happens only for the final week of rehearsals, but the complexity of the aerial work involved in this production means that we’ve freed up the space for the best part of two whole weeks. Yesterday the set was fitted up, and today we can start working on it, getting used to the various levels and to the size of each of the five platforms. The entrances and exits at the Vic are peculiar, being a considerable journey from the stage, so it’s an opportunity for us to get used to this, too. Most of all, it’s a chance to incorporate the flying sequences into the scenes rather than treating them in isolation as we’ve done until now.
Photo by Andrew Billington
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An enjoyable day working on the final fight. Four actors hoisted in mid-air, and three directors down on stage all dressed in directorial black – lithe fight director Kate Waters; Amazonian aerial choreographer Vicki Amedume and yours truly, who’s equipped with no physical skills whatsoever. I can’t even drive, swim or dance.
It’s entirely new ground for all of us, but it’s impressive how quickly we develop a method of working together, speedily grasping an understanding of what each has to offer and how we can each enhance and develop moments set up by another.
Having other directors in the room is always a joy, mainly because it means I’m not leading the rehearsal constantly – I get time to stand back and think. On this occasion I could see that we needed a solution to the problem of the The Wicked Lady’s gun. Holstered it’s a heavy object that impedes punches and body grabs; set aside it becomes a potential hazard when people are thrown of tumble. The problem is that’s all the options exhausted, bar keeping it off stage which wouldn’t work as the fight is about the gun. If we were making a film, the gun would be very present in close ups and in the foreground of mid shots. Can we achieve this on stage, I wonder? First I muse on the idea of a follow spot for the gun, but that still doesn’t get round the safety issue of it being a potential hazard on stage. Then it comes to me: throughout the play we’re creating close-ups through the actor’s focus; and ‘Matrix’ moments where the stage picture goes into bullet time. This can be another of those moments, with the fighters slipping into slow motion whilst another actor manipulates the gun through the air.
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