It’s now just 3 weeks until the opening night of the show. Nervous? Me? Actually, no. I have some lines left to learn and a couple of dances to work on but, otherwise, yeah, I’m confident. My hair, which got a mention in my last diary entry, it getting to new levels of annoyance – it’s knotty, won’t dry, sticks up all over the place and is now getting in my eyes. I’ve remember now why I hate it long – I grew it long for Jesus Christ Superstar and love the photos of me during that time – the one at the top of this site is taken from that time – but had obviously forgotten how much I hated it at the time!

In the last entry I mentioned that I had another part. Okay, now add one more. I now play a Secret Service Agent during the final wedding scene. Now, a black suit and tie I can do. I’ve already got the mirrored shaded and have, fantastically, found someone selling genuine agent-style ear-pieces on Amazon for just a couple of pounds. I don’t need it but, yeah, it will look cool 😉

Most of my costume is now present and correct (one jacket excluded – I’m still looking!). In fact I’ve got so many costumes for this show that I’ve bought a portable clothes rail, as I’ve run out of room for them in my bedroom. After the show has finished the rail will go in the loft along with my costumes¹. This weekend I’m making a special trip to Boots to sort out make-up.

Meantime, rehearsals have moved from twice a week to three times, as we now have a massive 5.5 hour session on Sundays. That’s 10.5 hours a week! They’re being spent just simply running the show end-to-end with breakouts of choreography practice (come and see the show and you’ll find out why we need it!).

Last night’s rehearsal was further lifted by way of a special guest – Chris (the lead man, playing Robbie) bought his girlfriend along. Okay, normally the presence of a partner wouldn’t be that exciting but, then, most partners don’t have IMDB pages. So, a genuine, fully-fledged film and TV actress was in our midst and she even knew me too (by way of my Twitter account – probably the links to these diary entries²). She was impressed by how good it looked considering how many weeks we still have left³.

Recently our two leads (Chris and Claire) have been on the local Hospital Radio being interviewed. However, for this diary entry I want to call someone else out – David Hurt, who is playing George in the show. This is my first show with BMTG for many years and had just assumed that David had been with the cast for a while. He gets on brilliantly with everyone and is really friendly and relaxed in everyone’s presence (when I joined the show he was very welcoming to me too). Yet, this is his first show with BMTG and only the third show that he’s done in total. Come and see the show, though, and you’ll see just how good he is in his role – a complete natural. Not only that but I suspect his rap duet with the Grandma (“Move That Thang”) is going to be the highlight of the show – his break-dancing skills have got to be seen!

If you’re interested in tickets you can head to our event page on Facebook for more details.

1. and keeping my costumes has proved to be handy – some of the wardrobe for this show is from 2002 when I performed Chess with BMTG ↩︎
2. which probably means she’s reading this. I’d better be nice! ↩︎
3. but, then again, she was hardly going to say anything else 😉 And she IS good at acting ↩︎