Angst at the Dress Rehearsal, ecstasy on Opening Night

After a smash hit of an opening night, for our play ‘The Ghost train,’ I feel it’s only appropriate to offer some idea as to how the dress rehearsal went the evening before. Disaster, is a word to describe it, or at least a word banded about by the cast members after the performance.

I was pretty nervous on Monday night, and we were only performing to a handful of our society members, but at least we could practise before a live audience. On the Sunday afternoon we had our technical rehearsal and there was no time for a complete run through, so Monday was our last time to iron out any snags.

The first Act was pretty good I thought. At least my major scene went well, which is of course most important. The first problem was the lack of a ‘body’ outside the waiting room door; essential to the plot of ‘The Ghost Train.’ Credit here has to go to the men for some genius ad-libbing. Given the fact that the ‘body’ was the Assistant Director’s husband, this didn’t go down very well. Indeed afterwards we all said that we saw smoke coming out of her ears, and could imagine the telling off he got when they got home.

I unfortunately got prompted, which infuriated me; number 1) because she has a reputation of being a much too enthusiastic a prompt and number 2) because had she given me another 30 seconds I would have remembered my line, thank you very much.

At the beginning of Act 2, my character begins by trying to light a cigarette. The props (a cigarette and some matches in an authentic 1920s matchbox) were going to be passed to me through the ticket office hatch by the stage manager. With the eventual arrival of the ‘body’ at the end of Act 1, she was on her way to me with my cigarette and matches during the blackout between acts, when she fell over the ‘body’ and couldn’t get to me on time. When the lights appeared there I was sat on a table wondering how I could fake smoking with no matches and no cigarette.

All in all, maybe it wasn’t as bad as the cast had thought. Certainly the directors were pretty happy with it, leading me to think, which play had they seen?

As everyone says; a bad dress rehearsal means a great performance, and that was certainly true because last night couldn’t have gone better. I received my cigarette and matches on time, because I decided to keep them in my handbag. If you want something done properly, do it yourself. Applause well deserved for our cast members. Bring on tonight people, and let the applause ring out merrily once again.