I had The Women in tonight.

With the exception of Antony's fleeting wife and our favourite girl soldier.

After torrential rain yesterday and a residually gloomy day today, the skies courteously cleared (a tribute perhaps to all the poor ill-served NoTW staff) and a bit of a pale blue sheet of a sky spread itself out over the city.

I do love rehearsing a show in the summer.

I sat - and they all strutted about with various degrees of hand-wringing - and of course I paid full attention to them. But was happily alert to the sun starting to think about setting as Alexas fretted about watering her garden, Iras flicked her wrists in irritation as she staggered over her (cunning tactic) flashcard lines, Cleo attempted to wave her arms explosively and Charmian stooped over one dead girl after another.

In fact, they beautifully directed themselves. There's one tiny scene towards the end of the miserable end of the show that consists of a plump total of 3 speeches. Under half a page, I think. And it hasn't really been working at all, thanks to an incredibly bad steer from me. But tonight, Iras observed that it was too fast so they slowed it all down, reblocked it from scritch scratch and now it's lovely.

Go The Women.