New Adventures |



"Well somehow we’ve got to this point. We are in our final week of London 
rehearsals and a week and two days until opening night, how has the time 
‘ticked’ by!
My name is Tom and I play the character of Monty in Cinderella, also being one 
of three newbies to the company. Probably due to this freshness I have been 
given the task of keeping a regular blog in these coming weeks. So I shall do my 
best to keep you up to date with the progress and journey that I and the rest of 
the Company are having... and what an eventful and jam packed 3 weeks it has 
been so far!

It all started with a 'meet and greet' session on the Saturday before rehearsals 
started. Where funnily enough, the company met and ‘gret’ (hmm) each other over 
coffee and discussed how much or how little (the latter on my behalf) WW2 Blitz 
research we’d done! It also gave Matthew the opportunity to introduce us to the 
work, talk about characters and plot and really delve in to what ‘his’ 
Cinderella is all about and from that moment you could tell it was going to be 
exciting, full of his fresh and innovative imagination.

The show is made up of 3 acts and on entering the rehearsal room on the first 
day we dived straight into learning a sequence from smack bang in the middle of 
the show, the ball scene in Act 2. I am partnered with the delightful character 
of Mable (love the alliteration) - aka Ashley Shaw/Dena Lague - who ends up 
being Monty’s right hand woman for the whole show and it is indeed nice to share 
the experience with this one partner... or two! We have already developed a 
great relationship between our characters.

We then have continued to devour more and more of acts one and two, learning 
material, staging scenes, developing characters until our brains and our bodies 
have felt like complete mush.  So far I have played a Londoner, an Airman, a 
dog, a Soldier, a Rent boy and a Sailor to name but a few, so there’s certainly 
a lot to do! But it has grown, and yesterday we completed a whole run of acts 1 
and 2. It is such a beautiful story and even for me - watching from the sides 
waiting to come on - it is so easy to get absorbed in how real the characters' 
lives are, and how magically they are portrayed. I'm sure audiences will be 
enthralled by it as much as I am.
We are now doing that last push this week to finish the final act and do points 
yet to be covered. The tension is building but we know we will get it completed 
before the first show and I really cannot wait to see how that evening will be!

One other thing to mention is the wide range of people in this show, all with 
different backgrounds, styles and individual traits. There is so much to learn 
from each other and a lot to be inspired by - what more can you ask for from a 
first job ey? So despite the pain, the numbness of our brains and the amount 
still left to remember ... I am really loving it!  I'll update you again once we get 
to Plymouth on how everything's looking then!

Ciao for now"

TOM