Last night, 4 out of five of them at the rehearsal. Out of choice rather than mother of invention necessity. So that was pretty nice.

Even six minutes late Patrick arrived with two minutes to spare.

After the warm up which I'm trying utterly lack-lustrely to stick with, I set them a now becoming familiar exercise. So they're starting to learn not to groan wearily as I assume my Mary Poppins voice and outline the experience to come.

A writing exercise last night. I got them to write a letter to....(no spoiler alert needed) Someone. So we had this blissful moment of just peace. The early evening sun filtered lazily through the window. The trees waved lazily out on the Meadows. Emma drew conscientious but perhaps not anatomically correct pictures of character costumes.

And like a plump and proud mother hen, I watched them tongues hanging out writing and smiled. (And wrestled with my yearning to whip out my phone and snap pictures of them concentrating hard at work but was rendered immobile by an inability to explain, if (inevitably) challenged, why I wanted to snap them so much at this innocuous moment. Well, for the blog of course. But some of them are New. They won't know that.)

Into the scene. First time we'd done That Scene. Mary Poppins made them launch straight in, not a block(ing note) in sight. And man alive, they did it beautifully. Heartfelt-ly. And Mother Hen looked on and thought they wouldn't disgrace me if this, that very night, was 6 August and they were performing to their first audience. As they meant it so much.

(Silly so in love with this play.)

Now luckily, we can still make all sorts of small tweaks and refinements before we get to August 6th. So we won't be entirely idle. But man, they're impressive.

Thank you, god of casting, for doling out such pretty clever ones. It does make things easier.