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It was the dress rehearsal of Rita tonight, after a day of teching. We had gathered a small audience to give us a sense of where the laughs might be (and not be), so it felt very much like the first performance.
But we were working properly with the costumes for the first time (more of an issue for Anna than for me, as I am just occasionally changing a jacket in between scenes). The dress is there as a learning experience and one had to hope that the people who'd come to see it would realise there would be some hiccups.
I felt like we were pretty on top of the lines beforehand, but suddenly being thrust out on to stage, with the lighting cue coming up at slightly the wrong time and realising that we had to do this 70 minute first half with no breaks for looking at the script... I felt a bit like I was trapped underwater and needing to push myself up to breathe.
My first error was to call my partner on the phone Rita. It was under my breath and just popped up out of nowhere, but was annoying. Especially as I had not yet met Rita. I hadn't felt nervous beforehand (which isn't always a good sign) but nerves were showing now. I wasn't quite able to immerse myself in the performance as I was constantly trying to remember what came next.
We largely weathered the storm though and we got some good laughs (Anna especially) and didn't make tonnes of mistakes, though it was weird how even lines I knew really well were suddenly coming out a bit rewritten or garbled. Like the play was running slightly ahead of us and we had to try and catch up.
My main problem, which I hadn't anticipated, was that I almost immediately had a dry mouth. I'd sort of assumed that all the "whisky" I had to drink would quench my thirst, but it turned out I don't drink loads of it in the first half and I am barely off stage at all (and have to make a quick change when I am). There wasn't much I could do.
It became more of a problem when I had to take a bite of sandwich. I probably took a bigger bite than I should have, even though I intended it to be small, and then with no saliva I had to try and work a clump of white bread and cheese down my throat in time to deliver my next line. It seemed impossible. The chunk broke into two big bits, but any attempt to swallow either felt quite dangerous. My first swallow felt more like a snake slowly consuming a gerbil than a man innocently eating a sandwich.
Luckily for me, Anna was stuck with another costume change that was trickier than she'd anticipated and I had what felt like minutes to move the largely dry chunks of food around and try and make them small enough to fall down my throat.
Even so, I was still struggling with the bread/cheese clump.
Also in the time it had taken for Anna to come on, the radio clip I was listening to had come to an end. I was supposed to turn off the radio when she arrived, but would it look weird if I went to turn off a radio that wasn't making any sound. I elected not to and hoped that the audience would assume that Radio 4 had just inexplicably shut down.
I had to ask for one prompt, which was annoying. When the ant trail of a script suddenly but otherwise we burbled our way through.
In the second half I skipped a little bit, but it should mean that I never do that again. There were some charming errors when one or other of the actors (I won't name them to save them embarrassment, but it wasn't me) had jumped to positions for the wrong scene. But actually just having to fess up about that got laughter and sympathy and probably helped.
And the last couple of scenes were electric and my stupid character had to fight back his tears more than ever.
So a few technical bits to sort out and some nerves to quell and a glass of water on stage (though not sure Frank would touch the stuff so maybe just for between scenes) and another look at the script and I think we'll be there.
I expect a couple of bumps on the first night proper, but it's probably a very good thing that the dress was not perfect and we don't want to be complacent on the first night proper. We'll save that for the second night proper.
The audience seemed to enjoy it and overlooked our slip-ups. We were both a bit frazzled by trying to make all the prop and costume bits work, but given the limitations of us all having to work proper jobs (ventriloquism is proper) throughout the rehearsal time and not having a huge number of rehearsals, it's almost unbelievable that we've got the thing this close in time.
