Mad George

I didn't take any photos at all during the technical rehearsals of George, the readiness of the costumes suffered a bit from being a, the 3rd show, and b, the most decorated. All that gold trim and frogging is immensely fiddly and time-consuming to apply. Endless bodily fluid notes for the poor King's 'small clothes' didn't help either.
The big 18th century wigs are a nightmare as well, they look wonderful or ghastly, seems there is no middle way! Molly O'Connor has done wonders.
But the results are spectacular, I could have done costume drawings till my shoulders seized up, but all would have been for nothing had they not been so brilliantly executed by Stacy Sutton's extraordinary team. I really think the Old Globe has one of the best costume shops in the world - truly world class.

More Shrew Pics

This is a somewhat random selection, I had trouble up-loading the last entry - and it's lost in the ether.
This includes Petruchio's wonderful horse - Neither of the horses got the reception I was expecting from the audience last night.
Maybe everyone's got too used to Avatar style computer graphics to appreciate what is in essence a hobby horse toy and a puppet. We shall see!

Shrew 2 + Dress Rehearsal.

We had a run through with a small invited audience last night which was much enjoyed. I'm very pleased with my stuff, its all been so beautifully made by the costume shop here. You can't fail to be cheered up by it all.

I can just about cope with the [in]famous “submission speech” because Emily does it so brilliantly, and with such a shining quality of wondering love that it brings a lump to the throat. You just know that the two of them are going to have an amazing marriage, not because her spirit is broken, [it isn't] but because these 2 equally impossible people have worked through all the crap, both social and personal that they were carrying at the beginning of the play, and learnt the big lessons - about themselves, about each other and about love itself. Wonderful!

I still get a bit of a sense of humour failure about the song that ends Part 1, though. About 'commanding wives' and crowing hens - etc. It's a bit like some of the ghastlier hymns we had to sing at school, were the words were dreadful, but we just sang them without bothering with the meaning. - Can't really do that any more!

The Taming of the Shrew-Tech 1

It was a great relief to leave the gloomy world of Lear with its death,madness and eye-goo, that everyone was quite riotously happy to be in Shrew-land! The tech went at a terrific rate, and we actually got to the 1st scene after the interval by midnight. We are borrowing the Lear storm for the said scene, and it's just as effective here.
They will definitely finish it tonight.