First Night Nerves

I'm sitting here, just back from the pub, very pleased that the first night was exceedingly well received by a small, but select, audience (luckily many more are booked in for the last 3 nights...)

I hate this aspect of directing. I sit there watching all the tiny mistakes/missed cues/late sound cues, etc, etc, that the audience don't notice. Cringeing at the errors and wondering how that fantastic cast will get themselves out of the impossible position that they've put themselves in....

Our 'butler' has a scene where he asks the Dean of Paddington for his umbrella at a crucial stage of the action. Tonight he got confused and took the chap's brolly a page earlier than he should have done... What a to-do! Will he recover...? He did - and with a stroke of improvisational genius!

Watching them do it for an audience is both gut-wrenching and exhilarating. But overall, the fact that we held the audience, gripped, for 2.5 hours and made them laugh is everything that we could have wished for.

The audience's reaction is the reward for 3 months of hard work for the actors (plus another 2 months, or more, for the director and designers). This is the night that it all becomes "worth it".

Daniel Kitson

Just a short post to let you know that MLYW and I went to see marvellous stand-up comic, and beardy genius, Daniel Kitson at the West End Centre in Aldershot last night. I'd never seen him before, but I'd heard he was well-respected in the stand-up world, so we went along to see why.

Wow! Nearly 2 hours of solid, inspired, storytelling and meandering opinions about why the world is in its current state, what we can do to help, why we don't do enough and other deep philosophical musings, wrapped up in a hilarious package of hairy, grinning, stuttering word-smithery.

I'm no expert, but if he's not the funniest and most profound comedian working in Britain (or the world) today, then the world's even more broken than Daniel thinks it is.

See him as soon as you can.

Beware though - his website's broken, so it's difficult to find his tour dates!