We had our first read-through with the full cast today. It was rainy and gross going to rehearsal. It read just under 2 hours. Still 10 to 15 minutes long for my taste but it should pick up a bit and lose 5 minutes in each act. They say that’s how it usually goes. 2 new additions to the cast, Chris Critelli as Clay and Douglas Sorenson as Barry and Bonnefoi. Very solid in their choices, chops and seemingly as people. It doesn’t seem like there will be any problems interpersonally in this cast. That would be a first. For the world.

Since I’ll be in the bed most of the show, I decided to play around with my voice and settled at a deeper pitch than my normal speaking voice. It gives me more places to go both silly and serious. They say you either pull the character to you or travel to it. In this, I feel I’m doing both. There’s so much in this play I can’t imagine doing, if I simply play myself it would never get off the ground.

We had to look at our schedules. As always there are conflicts that come up for people. The rehearsals are going to happen days, nights and weekends at various times and I have to be there for all of them. Juggling the Clark Kent job with this won’t leave much time to run lines outside rehearsal, except on the subway and in my sleep. But it’ll come together. I have less to learn than any of my solo shows and more than double the rehearsal time.

I feel ahead of the game having worked on the adaptation. I know the order of events. The play is divided into French scenes (short scenes with the entrance or exit of a character). A lot of plays are written like this today but the trend is to make the scenes more cinematic with shifting scenes so you wind up with longer transitions as sets go on and off dragged by a character or an unlucky boyfriend or girlfriend of the director dressed in all black. We have one set. The script will have very little changed at this point. The director has worked on 2 versions of this so far this year. More than 1/2 the cast are returning or really familiar with the script. What if this works fine and the show is great and we have a good time and the audience loves it?

For some reason, my spider-sense is tingling.