Two down...

There was a horrible burning smell at Highgate tube this morning. I have no idea what it was, but it royally gave me the collywobbles. I think all Londoners have the right to feel a little jumpy at the moment. We've not had a good run of it of late.

...So we are two shows down now with four to go. I can't think what I'll do with myself when it's all over. I think last night was was fairy typical second night show. Nothing awful happened, but the cast were a tiny bit under-energised after the adrenaline injection of the first night which followed a day of rehearsals. An actor has to sort of psych his or her way back into performance mode when he's effectively had a day off.

There were some wonderful moments. In some cases the cast are literally ripping themselves apart for the pleasure of the audience. Because they're often less than a metre away from audience members, this can be a hugely exciting experience.

The response from the crowd was great. I had a lot of people in. Jake and Pippa, Michael and his crew, Matt Lucas, Anthony, Little Michelle and her dad, Julie, Sam, Nathan... the large numbers of friends abs colleague who are attending this show has made me feel very loved. I'm a little disappointed more producers and artistic directors haven't come, however. I hear time and time again from industry stalwarts that no one is putting on good, or innovative musical theatre, but they entirely base their remarks on the lamentable trash that's presently happening in the West End. It's incredibly depressing. I'm not trying to claim that Em is the greatest new musical of the 21st Century (it's the second best, after Brass) but I do feel it at least deserves to be seen! One of the problems with UK producers these days is that it always has to be their idea.

My prediction is that today's matinee will be good and that tonight's show will properly take off as the cast begin to find their feet.

I once worked with a director who believed the optimum performance in a show's run is the 40th. Up until this point everyone is learning the show and discovering what works, and beyond then, things begin to go stale. I think perhaps there's mileage in the idea. There's nothing worse than watching a long running show when it feels like actors are phoning their performances in.

Right. Back to the grindstone.

PrEMiere!

Yesterday marked the world premiere of Em. Hannah spoke to the cast, just after the dress rehearsal, and told them all to enjoy the experience of telling a story for the first time because there would be so few moments in their lives where they'd get that particular opportunity. In the case of Em there haven't even been any workshops, so yesterday night was the first opportunity anyone got to see how an audience would react to the show. Which lines would land? Would people laugh? Cry? Look bored?

Young Josh became my personal first pair of ears and eyes after coming to the dress rehearsal. We met beforehand and sat, drinking tea, outside the venue. "I can't believe how laid back you are" he said. Josh remembers the mayhem surrounding the first production of Brass up in Leeds. I've never known a more stressful couple of days!

By comparison, Em has been a breeze. The creative team has been brilliant to work with but I guess I've also slightly changed the way I deal with these things and am far more of a mind where I think it will be what it is and all I can do is do my best (without actually losing my mind!)

The show went incredibly well. There were some wonderfully friendly faces in the audience. Little Welsh Nathalie, friends from student drama (some of whom had done the reading a few weeks ago), Adam Jay from New York, Jeremy Walker, Ben Mabberley, my agent...

They all made the right noises, as did the audience in general. I tend to run away a bit during an interval as it's actually a little disconcerting to hear audience members discussing your piece without knowing that you're actually the writer. The cast were buzzing at the end of the show. I think they've suddenly realised they have a show which is worth doing well. A show that people love.

The day was, of course, marred by the terrible fire in the housing block in West London, which is probably only a couple of miles from Central School. An acrid smell drifted across the district at one point which I'm pretty sure was attached to the incident. Friends closer to the area say the smell was unbearable.

I watched the news for the first time this morning and was utterly devastated by the stories. I can't imagine how terrified people must have been on the upper floors, literally waiting to die. The stories of people throwing their babies out of windows are utterly soul-destroying. I can't actually bear it. I was intrigued to see pictures of visits to the area by May and Corbyn. May looked aloof and uncomfortable as she talked to emergency services. Jeremy Corbyn was hugging people. He seems so much more natural. He feels like one of us whilst she seems like a ghastly robot. Totally out of touch.

I feel a change within this country. People are rallying around one another. Terrorist attacks are unifying people: making people care more about one another and watch out for each other. I think the days are numbered where the rich get richer and the little people get shat on. People are rallying. A man on the telly today was highly critical of the (highly-wealthy) Kensington council: "they can find 200 extra people for a pointless recount to try to keep a Tory MP in power, but they can't find 200 people to co-ordinate the distribution of the perishable goods which people are dropping off at the help centres."

Hannah pointed out yesterday that we're probably all going to remember the rehearsal period of Em as a period of great unrest. Since rehearsals started we've had two major terrorist attacks, a snap general election and a this dreadful fire. The UK has been almost continually in world news.

Nearly there

Yesterday started with a charming breakfast with Jem who's over from New York where he's been living for four years. He looks extraordinary; he's lost a load of weight and is radiating happiness and confidence. New York agrees with him. We spoke for some time about the musical theatre industry over there. The fact that it just works. There are countless opportunities for performers and a huge amount of investment in new musical theatre writing. There are scores of professional theatres in every State who only want to put on musicals. People genuinely care about the art form. It makes me weep when I think about what's going on over here by comparison. The Equity minimum for a performer on Broadway is $1900 a week (probably about £1300.) Over here it's about £500.

Nevertheless Jem says that the moment he touched down in London he realised how much he's missed living here. He mentioned how happy the accents make him feel, and how he'd forgotten how lovely it is to sit in a quiet train compartment. Not sure that's quite my own experience of British train travel, but I'll take any compliment about this country right now.

Anyway, aside from making me feel almost sick with envy, seeing Jem was an absolute buzz. I've missed him.

The last session of the technical rehearsal took place in the late morning and afternoon, and everything went slowly, but surely. I'm beginning to get a sense that we're sitting on something rather special and am excited to see how the cast respond to the energy of an audience. It feels rather odd to think that we're almost done now.

In the late morning I had an offer to attend the Jerusalem film festival next month, which feels like an incredibly good idea in the light of the fact that I'm presently working with Michael to try to pitch a film about Tel Aviv to Israeli producers. An hour later I'd impetuously booked a flight to Israel, knowing that you sometimes have to do these things straight away before the sensible part of your brain tells you what a silly idea it is because you're poor! I've obviously made the right decision as a series of meetings have already been fixed. Also: how exciting to go to Israel!

In the evening we were meant to have a dress rehearsal, but Hannah felt time would much better be spent running all of the numbers for sound. We have another dress this afternoon, and she rightly felt that it could be really demoralising if we had to keep ploughing on regardless, knowing that huge mistakes were happening that it would be almost impossible to fix without stopping and starting again. Her instincts were absolutely right and I left the rehearsal feeling much more upbeat about things. So much, in fact, that my legs started to feel a bit fizzy and I decided to walk all the way home. Across the Heath! It took an hour and a half. Nathan forced me to have a bath when I got home. I think I smelt a bit!

Pulling together?

I find myself incredibly moved by the large-scale political mobilisation of young people which is taking place at the moment. Finally, a vociferous and powerful collective voice to rise up against pointless austerity measures and the complacency and "I'm-alright-Jackness" of many of the Baby Boomers, whose total disregard for anyone but themselves is tasteless in the extreme. 

For the record, it is NOT okay to have a really decent pension deal for yourself and then block the younger generation from having the same privilege. It is NOT okay to buy your council house and then stand by, tutting at poor people and calling them lazy, when the government says it can't afford more social housing. And it is certainly not okay to vote Brexit when your children and grandchildren urge you not to because they are the ones who have to live with the fall out. Being old does not inherently make you wise, it simply makes you more. The older I get, the more I realise this. So, frankly, if older people aren't prepared to take responsibility for the young, then young people need to take it for themselves. And these Baby Boomers would only have themselves to blame if young people got into power and immediately cut pensioner benefits, arguing that this particular generation has done well enough out of benefits. Of course they won't do that, because young people appear to have a better grasp of social responsibility... and that makes me happy.

Of course it's not all Baby Boomers. Of course it's not. I feel incredibly proud of my parents, for example, who displayed a Labour poster in their window despite the impossibility of a Labour MP ever representing constituency. And there are many other people of their generation who care just as much, and my thanks go to anyone reading this blog aged over 70 who has given thought to how hard it is to be young at the moment. You are the people with nothing to gain out of being generous. And that, in my view, is true altruism.

Frankly, anyone who is still supporting the Tories as they climb into bed with nutters of the DUP and dangerously undermine the Good Friday agreement, needs to have their head examined. If there's a sudden surge of Irish-related violence, then you will all have blood on your hands. If you genuinely have more interest in ripping us away from Europe then you do the peace of our own union then please delete me from your lives. I have nothing to say to you without getting into an argument.

We went to a coffee shop today where two newspapers, The Mirror and The Express were sitting at the same table. Obviously both of these comics have very different political outlooks, and the way that both were dealing with the recent election told me as much as I needed to know about the reason why the country is so polarised. The (left-leaning) Mirror showed a photograph of Corbyn looking presidential with the headline "we will evict Number 10 squatters" whilst the right-wing Express opined, "we need to calm down and pull together, says Boris."

What hope do we ever have of pulling together if newspapers aren't responsible enough to state fact without hyperbole?

Best songs and singing

Nathan and I headed down to central London this afternoon to attend the Stephen Sondheim Society's Student Performer of the Year competition at the Noel Coward Theatre. The competition is run in conjunction with the Stiles and Drewe Prize for best new song, for which Brass had been shortlisted.

The idea is that twelve students cherry-picked from drama schools across the country compete for the award of performer of the year, by singing a Sondheim song and a song by a new British writer. I was lucky enough to have a young lad called Rob Peacock singing Brass, and he did a stunning job of it. In the end it didn't win. I think perhaps my song came close as it was singled out for a shedload of praise from George Stiles who said "it was a really beautiful song with such reach and melodic power." The team from Rogers and Hammerstein were there. They publish Brass and came bounding up to me afterwards to say how beautiful the song had sounded. I think a fair number of people were surprised that the piece worked so well with just a piano.

Bizarrely, I knew all the judges, who included Dan Gillespie Sells, lead singer from The Feeling who, of course, sang us up the aisle.

In the end the contest was won by a very charming song called Gerry and Me, which was beautifully written, despite perhaps owing quite a lot to Jason Robert Brown.

The performer prize was won by Izuka Hoyle, who is plainly destined for great things. She's stunningly beautiful, and has one of the best sets of pipes I've heard in ages.

There was an after show in the penthouse in a swanky hotel on Leicester Square where two cokes cost an outrageous £7.70! The views over London were, however, stunning.

The DUP?!

So it would appear that Theresa May has got into bed with the ghastly DUP in a last-ditched attempt to stop her house of cards from tumbling down. It beggars belief to learn what that dreadful person will do simply to remain in power. Who else will she screw over in this increasingly bizarre one-woman mission to gain a "hard Brexit"? What even is hard Brexit? She claims it's the will of the people and yet she refuses to tell us what it is. One assumes that's because she knows it's something the people won't want. What the hell is that nut job planning?

Now I don't pretend to be an expert in the DUP. Rumour has it they're anti-abortion and that some of them are creationists, which is just the sort of lunacy you need in politics particularly to prop up a prime minister who, by her own admission regularly asks for God's assistance when making decisions. What's certainly not in doubt is the DUP's utterly backward views on gay marriage. Because of them, Northern Ireland remains the last corner of the British Isles where LGBT people are not equal. In my mind you would have to be a fairly unpleasant person to continue to back a prime minister who would be prepared to cynically form an alliance with people like that, particularly in the light of the fact that May is only in Parliament right now because of the surge in support for her party in Scotland, a phenomenon largely attributed to Ruth Davidson, a gay woman, who is about to get married to her long term partner!

Insanity.

I'm finally at the stage with Em where I've done all the work I need to do as writer and can leave a rehearsal at the end of a day without worrying about what I need to do when I get home. It's been a long time coming! Of course, I get home at night far too tired to do anything other than sleep, but it's a relief to know somehow that, if I went into a coma tomorrow, the show would still go on. It's floating. I've done my bit. And, furthermore, the creative team is so strong that I don't need to do anything in rehearsals now except sit at the back of the theatre drinking tea and trying to keep everyone chipper through the long tech.

The show has suddenly started to feel coherent and exciting. I realise I've spent much of the rehearsal period feeling a little distanced from the material I've written. I'm not quite sure why that is. I had the crap kicked out of me on Beyond the Fence, so there's probably an element of self-preservation in play. It's possible too that my subconscious, knowing how close I am to the material, has forced me to remain a little more detached and aloof. It may simply be that I've become old and jaded. It's probably quite healthy for a writer to stay on the outside of his work, however, and not to be as profoundly engulfed by it as I was with Brass. The most peculiar thing about Brass is that I actually ended up feeling like I was dealing with my own memories to the extent that it never even occurred to me to wonder, for example, whether the language I was using was authentic. It was probably something to do with my life long obsession with the First World War. All kinds of little stories and accounts that I'd read over the years had become so lodged in my mind that it sometimes ended up feeling like I was telling my own story! That, or that, in a previous life, I was some sort of Tommy!

Clarity

I went to bed last night daring to hope that there'd be a hung parliament this morning and woke up to the news that we'd got one. Theresa May has had that ghastly, smug, somewhat insane smirk wiped off her face. And that'll do for me. Of course she's telling us all that the country now needs a period of stability. But the country ain't listening, babe, because we all know that you divided us and made us miserable all over again by calling this general election purely for your own political gain and to prove how popular you are. Spectacular own goal! And now, to make matters worse for her, she's going to have to start kissing Scotland's arse, because if it wasn't for the Conservative gains in Scotland (in a heartening display of a Scottish desire to remain in the union) she would be entirely incapable of forming a government.

On and on the Brexiteers went about Remainers needing to shut up and accept the will of the people. And I say one thing. Last night has proved that the will of the people is an ever-moving and complicated thing. No one should ever feel forced to lie down and give in.

I woke up with clarity this morning about one thing. If the Brexit vote and this subsequent election have taught us nothing else it's that the British people are rebels. It's part of our spirit. We don't want anyone telling us what to do and will go to almost any length to prove this fact. And that actually makes me feel rather proud.