Gummy Brass

Back to the grindstone. For the next three days I’ll be back at Mountview School, resurrecting our children’s musical so that Andy Stanton, the writer of the original book, can come and have a look at what we’ve been doing. Apart from being utterly knackered as a result of really caning it on 100 Faces, I’m going to try to make the most of my last ever days in a building where I studied for a year in the mid 1990s. Mountview, the quintessential North London drama school, is moving to Peckham. I never thought I’d ever hear myself saying that! When I next work there, I won’t be able to walk there through the woods.

As I set off this morning, I could see a massive crowd of commuters walking purposely towards the tube. They get off busses in their droves at the top of Muswell Hill Road and swarm down like a sea of glistening angry wasps. I felt a great relief not to be joining them.

On the subject of Mountview, I think now is as good a time as any to announce that I shall be directing a production of Brass there in November. I was keeping the information under my hat until the creative team had been assembled, but I’m pretty sure we’re there now. Obviously I’m very excited, not just to be directing theatre again after an almost two-decade hiatus in TV, but also to breathe life into a new production of my over-sized baby!

Obviously, I have big shoes to follow after Sara Kestelman and Hannah Chissick, but I can’t wait to get inside the material and show the world exactly how I imagined piece. I am something of a slave-driver in a rehearsal room. I’m not sure the cast will be ready for the emotional roller-coaster they’re about to go on!

In the meantime, however, we head from the sublime to the sublimely ridiculous in the shape of Mr Gum, which will keep me busy for the next three days. I believe we have some of the original cast coming back. I’m excited to see who they will be. I can only apologise to the newbies! It’s the baddest maddest piece written since Mad Joe McBaddy adapted Cats for the Macclesfield Amateur Dramatic Society!