A drum, a drum! Dunsinane doth come.
Wednesday 3rd February
Hello again! It’s the last week of rehearsals (opening night’s a week today!) and only the 6th day for the ensemble/soldier chorus, so we’ve really been chucked in the deep end. Over the past few days we’ve had to grapple with swordfights, physical tussles, being shot by arrows, playing Scottish lords, and some of us have even had to learn a little Gaelic and Ceilidh dancing. But perhaps the most exciting part about this week has been getting to watch the play as we start running the acts in full. And I find myself constantly suppressing laughs (I have a bit of a cackle which I know to be decidedly distracting) and today I visibly squirmed, letting out a most macho of man-squeals whilst watching the fate of Poor Tom, the injured soldier. And just you wait until your turn, you’ll be man-squealing all over the place - even if you are a woman… work that one out!
Talking of women (seamless segue), I was speaking with Siobhan Redmond (who plays Gruach – the historical Lady Macbeth) and she was saying that Dunsinane has the largest cast of any production she’s been a part of in her entire career. And it’s discovering facts like that which make me realise what a unique play Dunsinane is and the significant role that the soldier chorus play in helping it to achieve those epic proportions. In the big fight sequence, that we spent the whole of Saturday choreographing, there are 24 bodies on stage either hurling weapons at one another, trying to escape or generally being beaten around and I was standing there (I’m on the “hill” part of the stage so I get to survey the scene) and just thought – well I’m pretty sure the Hampstead Theatre won’t have seen this before!
The four acts of Dunsinane each represent a season of the year, but despite the action spanning over a year, the pace of it is mind-boggling. That being said, I am a little concerned about the likely prospect (it hasn’t been 100% confirmed) of remaining as a dead body throughout the first act (Spring). As much as I enjoy the stage time, I’m quite a talker and a wriggler, so being dead might actually be my greatest acting challenge to date. If you work it out, including dress rehearsals, previews and performances it’s roughly 32 shows, that’s a total of 32 times half an hour of dead which is a whole 16hrs of being completely silent and still. I think it’s more than likely that you’ll start to notice the knock-on effects in this very blog and I’ll start writing about really irrelevant things like growing my facial hair. Oh no, hold on a minute…
OK, so while you’re asking: Day 22 on Beard Watch and I supposedly have to make an official amendment to last week’s blog as, according to a number of so-called “friends”, I do not look “a decade older” as previously stated but do actually retain my youthful face whilst having the beard of a middle-aged man. This then resulted in the nickname of “man-child”. I believe the creature comes from the same family as the centaur, liger and mermaid, defined as: one with the face of a child but the beard of a man. Thank you to all my “friends”. And the nicknames do not stop there. As for the cast, there are a few who have decided that I look like the actor playing Egham (Alex Mann) on account of our similar facial hair (which I should perhaps see as an achievement as his beard has had a good few weeks on mine), and this is how the endearing term of “mini-egg” was born. And so, in a final plea to the rest of the soldier chorus, stop with your secret shaves and baby-faces and come be a “mini-egg”/“man-child” with me!
More blogging from your very own Benjamin Button soon…
Tom
