Four rehearsals in now and it's been nothing but a delight.

One of my poor cast had to drop out which is a huge shame as she was new, wonderful and could wonderfully do magic. I was hoping to squeeze a magic lesson in amongst the rehearsal schedule, in fact. But I shall have to abandon this wishful dream. She had extremely sensible reasons for not going forward with it and I am pathetically grateful that she decided this now rather than a month down the line.

On the plus side, I have persuaded my equally wonderful stage manager to take her place. So I'm stage manager-less currently but at least, have a full complement of cast.

I'm working with a bunch of young people who are entirely new to me which is an interesting experience. In recent years, I've had at least one whom I knew. But they all seem to be farcically bright, articulate and opinionated (in a thoughtful and excellent way) so I've pretty much lucked out. And the rest of my cast is a mixed bag of people I know delightfully well and total newbies. So the lovely exercise of trying to work out how to work with them to make them as good as they can be, has begun. 

Here they are for your admiration and viewing pleasure. (Most of) the beautiful ones.