Man alive.

As it goes, we could scarcely have had a more troublesome pre-first-night-day.

After a frantic morning rushing around sorting all the associated nonsense that goes with a show, we arrived at the rehearsal rooms bright eyed and bushy of tail, to discover -

- how can this be? -

- a party in full swing.

People people people all over the place.

Drink.

Children.

People.

It was intensely surreal and intensely horrifying, in more or less equal measure.

So we beat a hasty retreat.

I pleaded like an idiot with the Assembly staff currently occupying the building for a spare room.

Bless the girl in charge, taking in my bulging eyes and offering up a small meeting room replete with furniture.

But more greater blessings upon Mr Security Man who instead (and O bless the rain for not) let us use a tiny morsel of the shelter of the George Square Theatre.

So yes, our dress rehearsal was downgraded from a dress and took place in a gutter.

Perfect.

(Poor two photographers.)

Overlaid with all sorts of drilling, sirens, cars on cobbles, thumping seductive jazz from the Assembly George Square Gardens. (I did wonder fleetingly about replacing all of the music with a swinging sultry jazz like accompaniment...)

They did remarkably well. (Though don't think I didn't notice you ones that came on late...)

So then we had to negotiate the luckily thinning down party goers to extract all of our costumes all of our props from the rehearsal rooms while they looked on disapprovingly.

And then a hop and a skip and a dash to see Enobarbus playing the flute in Mahler's Ninth at the church with the dog.

Before, like an ill-mannered heathen, I slipped out of the door before it had even finished to set sail for my tech.

The tech. Well, it might have been better if the lighting desk hadn't crashed three times. And the sound hadn't given up at one point.

But what was remarkable is that the set fits. Nay, looks good. The major set movers - well, I'm very proud of how much they've subliminally (or by my nagging?) absorbed from whisking their A4 pieces of paper about the place.

And by and large, the scraps of action that we got to recreate within the scraps of time that we had - looked - lurvely.

So. If the old maxim about the worse the dress still stands, we'll have a storming performance tomorrow. (In denial - today, really.)

I cannot wait.