Week 3 - Wednesday

A dancey day. We gave the opening song a much-needed polish, and finished setting the mountain that is the Privates on Parade number. A little look too at the shower scene (don't get excited - it's not how it sounds!) and the funeral. Everyone's quite tired, it seems.

Week 3 - Tuesday

After the Bank Holiday Monday off, we're back to the grindstone. Bits and bobs of music and dancing in the morning, including the setting of the Flanagan and Allen song, which hopefully should be quite charming. The moves are simple and economical, which I think is sometimes harder to carry off well than complex choreography. You can't hide behind the steps - each one has to be executed with precision, and hopefully a little style and grace.

Much of the afternoon and evening was spent going through the play, looking at scene changes and finding ways of making sure that instruments are where they need to be for each song. It's slow work, but with a piece like this, all of that mechanical, technical stuff really needs to be done before you can start running scenes together.

Rehearsal photo album

Week 2 - Friday

The end of week two. We're roughly half way through our time in the rehearsal room, so it's time to take stock. At the moment it's very hard to get any perspective on where we are with the play as a whole. There are so many different technical elements to the piece, with so much music and dancing and so on, that it takes a long time until things are ready to be run together. Nevertheless, some individual sections feel well on the way, and I feel fairly confident about getting all the music learned in time - we'll largely be playing without sheet music. I think when we do start stringing the material together, we'll be pleasantly surprised by just how much we have under our belts already.

I had my first costume fitting this morning. It's always a real privilege having clothes made for you, and fascinating to see the garments in various stages of development, being refined slightly according to their fit or to the designer's taste. Some of the clothes are hired or bought, but look out for my pin-stripe jacket, South American frills and Cinderella ball-gown... Tailor-made, darling, tailor made!

Week 2 - Thursday

Most days, I come in a bit before rehearsal to warm up and do some violin exercises. This morning I was working on my bowing and repeating the same sequence of notes over and over when a lady came in to clean the room. By the time she was finished I was still looping the same few bars, and she stood in the doorway and looked at me, clearly of the opinion that I was one fiddle short of a string section. She's probably right.

We made a start on the staging of the title number this morning, which so far isn't quite as complex for me as the opening, partly because I don't play and sing at the same time too much, and also because (to start with, at least) we're marching in formation rather than doing complicated steps. It's a great song, and will be a lot of fun to perform.

Also had our first proper look at the little Flanagan-and-Allen-style duet that I have with Matt Woodyatt. It's my job to give a hint of how Allen performed in their songs, which was mostly just speaking, leaving Flanagan to carry the melody. I've listened to a few of their recordings already, but now that I know which of the two I'll be 'giving', I'll need to do some research in a bit more detail.

Week 2 - Wednesday

Today we were revisiting scenes from the first half for the first time. Second rehearsals tend to be so much easier than the first, because by then you're much more familiar with the lines, your fellow actors, the director, the rehearsal room and the rest of the play. I felt a lot more grounded when returning to the first scene, which is moving in the right direction. It needs to find its rhythm a bit, which it will do I'm sure.

We set the rest of the dance for the opening number, which I almost certainly will have forgotten by tomorrow. David and Joe also rehearsed their number, and I was pleased to find I was able to do the violin part without music... So that's one down, umpteen to go...

Week 2 - Tuesday

More music in the morning. There's a great piece which runs into the scene on the railway carriage, where parts of the opening number are heard again, but this time broken up by bits of underscoring that give a sense of the accelerating train and the squad's journey in to the unknown. It's very atmospheric, but quite complex with various shifts in pace etc. so we spent a fair while getting a sense of the shape of it.

In the afternoon we started setting the dance for the opening number. It's going to be great fun when we've got it, but for now it's a bit of a brain squeezer for me because I'm dancing, singing and playing all at the same time. Crikey. We also watched a documentary together about the 'emergency' in post-war Malaya which is the context for our play. Fascinating stuff, and it was good to have a reminder of just what it was like for people to be living with their lives constantly in danger.

Week 2 - Monday

A latish start for me today, which meant that I could wave my wife and daughter off at the station before heading to rehearsals - these things make all the difference.

We had a brief look at a scene involving a military funeral, which will require a fair amount of practice to make it precise enough to be credible rather than mildly humorous! Other than that it's not too complex a scene.

The afternoon was mainly spent setting one of the dances, which I help provide the music for. This meant going over each section of the music many times, so it was a useful way of getting some violin practice in. Not overly taxing for the other band members and me, but you might hear a different story from the dancers...

Day Five

The end of our first week, and it's amazing how much we've covered. Many of the songs are very familiar to us now, and are rattling round my head for most of the day and night. We've come less far in terms of the actual scenes, but it's really important that the music and dances are looked at early on to get them well bedded-in. There's plenty of time for the scenes to come alive in the coming weeks.

The company depart for a well-earned weekend break, although I'm sure many of us will spend a good whack of it getting some words and dots memorised. ('Dots' meaning musical notes.) Some people disappear off to their loved ones back home, and others will stick around to see a bit of Leeds - our first opportunity to hit the arcades!

Day Four

A first stab at some scenes today. The first time you put a scene 'on its feet' is always a little awkward and stumbling, but it's good to have a preliminary sketch of the scene's physical shape.

One of our company is ex-army and he put us through our paces with a few drills of standing to attention, at ease, and a little marching and halting. Obviously to real soldiers these actions are so well-practiced as to become totally automatic, and it's important that we work towards that ourselves. So the more we're drilled by our honorary Sergeant-Major the better, as far as I'm concerned. I hope I don't regret that thought...

Day Three

We've now at least touched upon all the music for act one, which is great progress. The music is really fun to play, and Sarah seems to think we're playing well together, which is encouraging.

The big event of the day for me was getting my hair cut! For every show I've done for the last couple of years, the designer has always asked me to let my hair grow, and it was getting a little too long for my taste - right down to my shoulders... This is not a good look for a man of progressively depleting follicles! So quite a relief to get a soldier's short-back-and-sides. I don't think they had hippies in the army in 1948.

Day Two

We worked through the whole text again, this time stopping to check the meanings or pronunciations of any Hindi or other non-English words with Peter Nichols, as well as military slang and various references etc. Peter also gave us a fascinating talk about some of the real characters he'd been writing about, and told some great stories about his time in Singapore on which the play is based.

The afternoon was given over totally to music. I play the violin, which means that in theory I ought to be able to sing one line of music and play another, unlike the woodwind or brass. This is always a struggle, but it's very rewarding to be able to do once you've put the work in. Lots to be learned!

Day One

First days are always slightly nerve-wracking for all concerned. Many a new name to learn, and the dreaded read-through - the latter made an even more daunting task than usual by the presence of the playwright. Still, a great privilege to have Peter Nichols around for the first few days to answer our many questions, and he put everyone at their ease by singing along heartily to the play's songs as they were played by the composer Denis King.

The exciting compensation for the day's nerves comes with the showing of the set model, which looks fantastic. Mark Bailey went through the key scenes of the play, showing us roughly how the stage would be set out for each one. It's great to be able to picture clearly where we're all heading.

Finally, the musical director Sarah Travis lead us through our first bash at some of the music, which will all be played by the acting company in this show. It's sounding great right from the off, and Denis King seems particularly pleased - and perhaps a little relieved!

I'm already really impressed by how efficiently all the theatre's staff seem to be running things. They had us all measured up for our costumes in about 10 minutes, and the rehearsal room looks brilliantly organised and ready to go.

A good start!