Rehearsal 17, Tuesday 18th June 2002 - Act Five

Rehearsal 18, Thursday 20th June 2002 - Act Four

Rehearsal 19, Tuesday 2nd July 2002 - Act Three

Rehearsal 20, Thursday 4th July 2002 - Act One

Rehearsal 21, Tuesday 9th July 2002 - Act Two

These five rehearsals concentrate on one each of the five acts of the play- so I don't need to attend those for Acts Two and Three. There isn't a lot to say about the rehearsals individually, so I'll deal with them all at once. Obviously, I may miss an exciting development at one of the two that I miss, but that is just the way of these things.

They each start with everyone sitting down with scripts and pencils as David takes us through the new cuts - and there are a lot of these. Among my own lines, I lose "Oh! Cicero, really! …" and "Fancy that!" - both of which I was really fond of. Everybody is getting their lines hacked now, though, except perhaps those who had very few lines to start with. Many lines that I enjoyed from other characters are being lost. It is all very depressing and a test of my 'thespianic character'.

Altogether, the cuts should get us down to the hour and a half that the average English audience would be just about willing to put up with before demanding an interval or, worse still, free drinks. Without the cuts, we would probably approach the three hours that a much more resilient and vodka-fortified Russian audience would accept.

While we're on the subject of depressing facts, it is during this period that Debbie shrugs off my thanks for coming to see my open-air performance by letting on that she actually came to see Shelley. Hmmm…

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