The reading was interesting. Inevitably I didn’t have the right numbers of the right sex / age of people so the allocation of parts was pretty random. But they all rose to the occasion and delivered the dialogue with typical flair.

They read the first scene – the coup, the abandoning of the child, etc. – stumbling over the Russian (Caucasian?) names. And it highlighted how much work will have to be done on allocating the lines for all the little parts. Every scene seems to be littered with them.

Having finished the scene, someone cheerfully pronounced: “well, that was weird”. Great. “Weird in what way?” “Well you know, some of the dialogue. It doesn’t even make sense.” That bodes well then.

However, no-one burst out with a “can’t possibly do that play” – even if they were thinking it. So that’s something. And in fact, seeing a few of them for lunch yesterday, they were muttering almost enthusiastically about it. Hope so, as we’ll need a great deal of enthusiasm to get this off the ground.