Plenty of drama….and dumplings

Time is flying and we are over half way through our rehearsal period now. The second act can be tricky and we are finding new details and having to solve new problems each time we work on it. It does require a lot of repetition to master what the actors call the ‘100 miles per hour’ dialogue.

This week we had our ‘press call’, which was held at The Yang Sin Chinese Restaurant in central Manchester. Chris Honer introduced the play and the themes that it explores, followed by a showing of sections of the first three scenes, which were filmed by Channel M. The actors were interviewed by various journalists and we all got a chance to have Chinese food for breakfast!…an interesting morning and nice break from the rehearsal room!This week our photographer Gerry came in to take rehearsal room pictures. They look really great, with some great action shots, particularly of Richard Dormer who plays Roma, attacking the furniture!
Our dialect coach Sally Hague has just been in to check how the Chicago accents are developing. Sally watches a run through of a section of the play and then reports back to the actors about particular words or phrases where they are slipping out of the accent. We have reached the point now where we are starting to run long sections of the play in full and we will be doing more full runs of the play next week, our final week in the rehearsal room!