We sail for the Isle of Man on Good Friday and the wonderful Easter Festival of Plays. We will be the opening production in the festival on the Saturday evening.
We have our first full dress rehearsal tonight and the cast have worked so hard over the past six weeks to bring the play to life.
It’s always tricky for a new play as so much of it is ‘work in progress’. Actors will pick up things you may have missed as a writer. But this can make the rehearsal process exciting as you all collaborate to create a new piece and make the story as clear as possible for the audience.
There is also the added pressure of presenting a real person who everybody thinks they know. Charles Hawtrey’s personality, physicality and voice is known by millions who loved his ‘Carry On’ performances. But the play doesn’t explore the height of his popularity but rather his early career when he was just another struggling actor working in Rep.
Maxwell Sly, who plays Charles, has created a very sensitive performance that goes behind the ‘bravado’ and ‘campness’ to portray a lost soul very much unsure of himself and his complicated life.
The rest of the characters are fictional but represent the type of people who would have worked in Rep in the 1950’s. You have the leading man and lady, the young apprentice, the backstage worker, the romantic lead etc. All who become embroiled in Charles’ ‘dramas’- on and offstage.
After the Isle of Man, we return to premiere the play in Swindon. Staging it at the STEAM Museum, no more than quarter of a mile from the venue that once housed the Old Swindon Repertory Theatre, makes the production even more poignant to us and hopefully to the local audience.
Snaps of our Isle of Man adventure will be appear in the next blog
Happy Easter!