End of Part One

A mammoth sharing of the week's work this morning which seems to have both excited and alarmed. Lots of enthusiasm for the richness and depth of the actors' performances as they whirled from capoeira to string playing to mime to singing to acting the words on the scripts bravely clutched in their overworked hands. As well as various speaking parts they ended up being schoolgirls, dockers, boat passengers, market traders, Xanti villagers, masked waltzers, rubber tappers and forest creatures...

It wasn't brief, however, in part because certain sections were still improvised. So there's some concern about how long the show is going to be. It's interesting that one of the comments when we first read through the script pages on Monday was how fast the play goes compared to the book. Too fast? Too slow? When Ros, Tony and I met Suzanne Osten of Unga Klara, she said theatre was all about rhythm. Well, we've got about six months now to try and get that rhythm right.