Our first night
I spent the morning working myself into a state of panic, so I was relieved when by the afternoon I had lots of little things to sort: buying cards and flowers for my colleagues, sorting out tickets for family and friends, warming up and making sure I had everything that would reassure, or feed me during the show.
It is a Godsend to have a dresser, Jean, and Eddie doing hair and make-up. The last thing you want to be worrying about is getting your hair just right or smudging your eye-liner 3 minutes before you go on. The professionals do it so there is no stress involved. Eddie distracts me with opera gossip from over the last 30 years whilst doing my make-up and Jean makes sure I have a cup of tea.
It is not a complicated show with corsets and wigs, but I do have a change of hair, make-up and costume every time I come off stage. I think I know what I am doing, but with adrenalin, I have no idea! Jean is there just to check I do basic things like have the right skin-coloured Granny pants on when I'm in my nightie. It sounds simple but it's the sort of thing in a quick change that I could easily forget, until Dwayne lifts me to reveal black lacy ones to 3000 people! The team around us has already done 8 shows so they work like clockwork. We don't have to worry about nuts and bolts, just do our jobs. Even between Acts 1 an 2 when we are off stage for only a minute, Eddie is there to tidy my hair and Jean with a cup of water.
When things are going well on stage time slows down, and there is space for every thought. There are the thoughts that Mimi needs to take her journey ("Gosh, he's nice"), the 'singer' thoughts that need to check in every now and then ("Ok, the orchestra's loud here - don't push!"), the technical thoughts that need to check in too ("Oops, you're not in your light, back a bit... bit more") as well as just trying to be the character. The trick is on opening night not to let the "OH MY GOD THERE ARE 3000 PEOPLE OUT THERE!!" thought get in the way, or let the mind wander onto anything else but the job in hand.
On the whole, I think we all did a good job. I set out literally on the wrong foot by tripping up on the doorway as I walked in singing "I'm sorry (wobble as I trip!) could you light my candle", luckily I was still behind the curtain at the time but it threw me for a second.
It is just wonderful to sing this fantasic show with the orchestra and a packed house. The energy from the audience really makes a difference. There were places in Mimi's emotional journey in Act 3 that I had previously never been happy with that just slotted into place and made sense in a performance situation. So many new things come with performance that the only regret I have is that we don't have more!
Stage rehearsals
Opening night is tomorrow, Wednesday. Our one and only stage and orchestral rehearsal was last Thursday. In between has felt like an eternity.
We had one stage and piano rehearsal, just to get used to the stage, and do technical things like find the light in certain places, for me to try singing with the "real" pillows as I die and for poor Dwayne to try lifting me in my night-gown for the first time - without showing my bum to 2000 people!
The next day was our stage and orchestra. Not as final, or formal as a dress rehearsal, we worked in chunks, stopping and starting when bits needed fixing with the orchestra. They need to get used to us, and to Martin Fitzpatrick, the conductor, as well as us to them. We had the actors, but no chorus, children, or uni-cyclist! We will act with them for the first time tomorrow, on our first night. I'm telling myself that this will make everything super-fresh and real. It won't be acting when Dwayne as Rodolfo stops me being run over by the uni-cyclist!
I think both rehearsals went well; the only problem is that they were such a long time ago that my singers' paranoia has been able to go full-circle. Usually we would have a day off and then the show, not a week. Dwayne and I have had long conversations every day comparing our various paranoid ailments: mucous, sore necks, sore shoulders, asthma, period...but of course the only problem is nerves. In fact so much time has passed now, that actually we know we are just fine, and that tomorrow will be fine. I am now at the stage when I can't wait to get up there. I have never been so keen just to get my feet on the stage, open my mouth and sing.
Second Cast Rehearsals
I feel like we have come a long way in just 5 days. We have been engaging in the rather back-to-front process of looking at the reasoning and motivation for the blocking that we had covered in previous weeks. There is a lot of give and take in this. Although there is a production template that we have to stick to, we have to bring something of ourselves to the show.
Ian, the revival director, is great at this. He is being really true to the original concept of the production, which I really respect. It is easy to find revival directors who don't understand or disparage the production, and therefore allow everyone to dilute the original by changing too much. There is a fine line. Ian is letting us bring enough of ourselves to the show to feel comfortable, whilst there are a few places where we have to just do what we're told for the greater good!
The whole rehearsal process has been really fun. Bohème is such an ensemble piece and so full of pranks that this has been reflected all along in the cast. The boys' fooling around doesn't stop when the music does. I thought this might change when we exchanged our cover Colline and Marcello for the first cast ones, but they are just as mischievous. I'm really looking forward to getting on stage this week, with the chorus there too.
Keeping healthy
We have had a funny lull this week. Cover rehearsals have finished and 2nd cast rehearsals don't start until Monday, so we've had a week off in the middle of the rehearsal period, which is unusual. I had decided that it was a great chance to catch up with myself: do some more character research and just mulling things over, have some singing lessons and most importantly, dose up on vitamins and get some exercise so that I would be absolutely in top form for the rehearsal period and performances. I only have three performances so a nasty bug could knock them all out. Instead, rehearsals finished on Friday, and by Saturday I was sick. So I have been able to do absolutely no singing. It's really frustrating, but better now than during my shows.
Taking the stage
I went in to rehearsals on Monday morning to be told "You do know you are going on this afternoon, don't you?"
Monday afternoon was the orchestral run, the last chance to go end to end and sort any problems out on stage or in the pit before the dress the next day. Both the Mimi and the Marcello were sick so there were two of us being thrown in at the deep end. The main problem was that although we had rehearsed acts 1 and 2, we hadn't touched 3 and 4; and we had been rehearsing in a space about an eighth of the size of the stage with a piano rather than an orchestra!
Having watched the show several times, we both felt we could get by. Watching a show at the Coliseum, framed by the huge proscenium arch is like watching a huge, live movie. So, stepping onto the stage and suddenly finding yourself in the picture and in 3d is like stepping into the chalk pictures in Mary Poppins. It is the same experience with the sound world that you become a part of, with voices coming from all directions and sometimes very far away.
I have been in several shows on that stage before, but never one in which the set was so open, and therefore the space such an expanse. It was great to have the opportunity feel that, and how far away the conductor was. As second cast we have one stage rehearsal with piano and one with orchestra, but as covers, if we were to get the call to go on, our first chance on the set would be on the day.
Acts 1 and 2 were fine. I'd almost go as far as saying I enjoyed myself. The rest of the cast were terrific and really guided myself and the Marcello cover (Douglas Rice-Bowen) through. I won't quickly forget the surreal feeling of being dragged along by Peter Auty, Rodolfo, at the end of Act I. I was ready to stop as soon as we got off stage and sing the final off-stage phrases of the love duet just by the stage; but as we were singing he was pulling me by the arm pushing through the hoards of choristers waiting to go on for act 2 until we sang the final top C just about in the dressing room!
Acts III and IV were less successful. Act III was passable, although when Doug and I were singing our big duet together the phrase "the blind leading the blind" does spring to mind. In Act IV, supposedly dying with Rodolfo whispering sweet nothings in my ear, I was actually receiving detailed instructions from Peter as to what my next moves were to be and when. Thank God for good colleagues!
I made a lot of mistakes; mostly due to being with the orchestra. I found it very hard especially in Act IV, to hear what the orchestra were doing. The way Puccini's string chords shimmer is so different to the more percussive sound of the piano, where you have a sense of where the beat is. However, that is what a Conductor is for, and I now know where it is really important for me to connect with her or him. I learnt a lot from doing the run and it should stand me in good stead. What was most valuable, I feel, was just getting over the fear element. If I can step onto the stage really under-rehearsed, and get by, with still another 2 weeks' rehearsals to do, next time can only be much, much better.
Starting rehearsals
Those of us in the second cast are also covering the first cast should any of them go off sick during their run. We started cover rehearsals this week, which is a different process from the second cast rehearsals which will take place in a few weeks' time. Opening night is next Thursday, so what we are really doing is a crash course in the blocking so that we could go on from next week if required.
We started by sitting in on the first cast's siztprobe and stage rehearsals. I have sat through the ending now three times and every time it still brings a tear to my eye. I was a bit anxious about seeing the production - working on a production that I hated, and not being in position to change anything would have been horrible; but actually I really like it. I know it is an old production, but it seems fresh and vital. I am also relieved to see that there is nothing outrageous in the characterization of Mimi. She can so easily be portrayed as a drip, but can also be played as a manipulative man-eater. I feel the three-dimensional character lies in the middle and happily, that is what Mary Plazas is playing.
It really sank in that I am actually going on as Mimi in La Bohème when I walked past the notice-board with the dressing room allocation list on it to see my name next to dressing room 1. What a kick!
Getting into character
I'm pretty much off copy now. Which is as it should be, because although we won't start rehearsing for another couple of weeks, we are covering the first cast's rehearsals. This means that in theory I could get a call at 9am tomorrow morning telling me that Mary Plazas is sick and that I need to sing in for her rehearsal at 10.30am.
I'm thinking a lot about character at the moment. As it is an old production and we are the second cast we won't have a huge input into the production, or blocking, but within that we have to find something that is really true to ourselves and our own reading of the character. It might be really subtle but if we don't believe in it the audience won't. Because we are covering too and will spend a lot of time in the theatre watching the 1st cast, I feel it is even more important to have a strong sense of my reading of the character before I see Mary's.
Some of the research I have been doing is really helpful. Apparently the machine that Mimi would have used to make flowers would have involved pressing down hard on a bobbin with her chest, which would have been incredibly painful with tuberculosis. This gives another colour to her saying she will go back to that life in her Act 3 aria when she and Rodolfo are separating "Now it's time to return to the life I had forgotten, my sewing and my flowers". She is reassuring Rodolfo that she will be fine, but behind that she knows that the life she is going back to is bleak. Luckily for my sanity, I am finding that Mimi is not the coy drip that I thought she was; she is fun, warm, generous and sensitive.
La bohème is roughly based on the book and play "Scenes de la Vie de Boheme" by Henri Murger, with recognisable characters from Murger's life. Mimi was a composite of two of his lovers, and one fictional ideal. Murger was so desperately in love with his first love, Mimi, that he called all subsequent girlfriends worthy of the name "Mimi" too, including one called Lucile. It makes horrible sense of the lines in the opera "I'm always called 'Mimi', but my real name's Lucia", and later "I'm always called 'Mimi', though I can't say why". Poor girl.
Starting on La bohème
Jenůfa out of the way, it's time to start on La bohème properly. I have a few other projects on but I need to get this started to get it 'into' my voice. I have set myself the target of learning it in Italian first and then switching to English.
Just singing it through, it's surprising that it seems like quite a short role. Maybe I won't feel like that in March. I hope repetition never makes me sick of the wonderful music.
The last night of Jenůfa.
I get stuck on the tube coming into the theatre and just make it on time for curtain up. This throws my routine for the show. I play 'Karolka' who only appears in the 3rd Act, but my hair and make-up call is at curtain up so that my heated rollers have time to set. It is extra hassle to have my own hair dressed, but it looks better on stage and it means I won't be picking wig glue off the side of my face for weeks to come!
As soon as I have my rollers in I sneak off to warm up, which I usually prefer to get out of the way before the show starts. Then I go to the wings to catch the last 10 minutes if Act 1. I have been covering the title role as well as singing Karolka, so I try to watch as much of each show as I can to remind myself of the trickier moments, like the stabbing. But as tonight is the end of the run, there is no danger of me having to go on and I can relax and enjoy the performance without analyzing everything. It has been a wonderful show to work on, with a real company spirit. It still gives me shivers to watch the magic of Jenůfa and Laca coming together at the end of the night.
