A double episode from Mike Maran's rehearsal blog

Things are hotting up in Tbilisi where the company are in rehearsals for Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Things are also hotting up in Colchester where bookings have now passsed the 35% mark. The show opens in Colchester on 27 October and runs through until 12 November so make sure of your tickets by calling the box office on 01206 573948 or book online at the Mercury Theatre website by clicking here. Performances in Tbilisi will be on 5 and 6 October as part of the Tbilisi International Festival of Theatre. Full details are on the festival website here

Today we have two instalments of Mike Maran's rehearsal blog:

Woke up this morning…da da da da dum!

It rained during the night.  This is day ten and last night’s rain was the first to fall since we arrived.  All the wonderful fruit and vegetables growing in the market gardens around Tblisi drank well last night.  So did I.

Our team is growing.  We began with 6 puppeteers and now we are ten.  It’s a labour intensive project.  Six puppeteers manipulate two puppets and I had written scenes that required three. To be perfectly honest, I never had an upper limit in my mind and would have been ready to go back to the drawing board and remove the goat or the pine martin from a scene although it would have broken my heart to fire the pine martin.  Anyway the pine martin had nothing to worry about because, manipulated by one puppeteer, it was good value. 

Levan, our director, wanted crowd scenes, but crowds of individuals.  So when Corelli arrives the Cephalonians line the street to give the Italians an inhospitable and sullen welcome.  Corelli, an actor played by Tony, asks Limone (puppet) the way to the town hall.  She hides behind Velisarios (another puppet).  Corelli crosses the road and asks Father Arsenios (puppet) where he can buy a map of the island and the priest gives him a cold shoulder.  The communist (puppet) lays down a Greek flag, the royalist is there too, other villagers, and a jeep full of Italian soldiers, - all of them reacting to what’s going on.  Ten puppeteers handle this.  And so we are ten - not six.  Nino (puppetmaker) has more costumes to make and Roger (producer) has gone back to the UK to rewrite the budget.



Birthday girl Anna with Director, Levan Tsuladze



One of the new puppeteers celebrated her birthday so rehearsals finished early to party in her honour. The Mercury Theatre actors bought her a birthday cake and so, of course, did all the other puppeteers so there were two enormous cakes. We sang Happy Birthday to Anna in Georgian and in English and then we drank toasts to her.  The whisky flowed.  When Tony had to leave to get back to the flat for a Skype conversation with his children another bottle of whisky was opened for a toast to his children, and when Jill got up to leave another was opened to toast stage managers.  And when another bottle of whisky was opened there were only five of us left and we toasted each other until it was done.  And they weren’t just bottles – they were litres. 



Irina, who's helping with puppet costumes and Crinkie,
puppeteer,  celebrating Anna's birthday.
Clearly neither of them alcoholics



Levan’s (director) definition of an alcoholoic is someone who stops after two or three drinks.  That person is thinking of himself and the acholol – so he’s an alcoholic, unlike those who stay till it’s all gone, caring nothing for the alcohol, they drink for each other.  They are not alcoholics.  I rolled home well after midnight feeling no pain.

Then it rained.  Roger (actor) who shares the flat says the night lit up with sheet lightning and thunder.  I missed it all.

Today’s rehearsal was long – we ploughed through pages of script and the goat stole the show.  First of all Roger, playing the Italian quartermaster, eyes up the goat for dinner.  Then when Corelli arrives the goat nips his finger.  The goat has the same puppeteer as the pine martin and this man has a genius for bringing animals to life.  Then the puppeteers take over the story completely as Velisarios and Carlo smoke together, the Italian jeep is sabotaged, and then blows up killing the young Italian soldier.  Corelli (actor) has to write to the young boy’s mother and weeps as the goat looks over his shoulder.  It is heartbreaking.  There won’t be a dry eye in the house.  Dr Iannis’s (that’s me) special friend today is Father Arsenios (puppet) but when he come knocking on my door with gossip about my daughter and the mandolin playing Italian captain I have a right go at him and send him and his tittle tattle packing.  But, of course, Father Arsenios is only saying what everybody is saying and, however cross Dr Iannis is with the priest, it’s blindingly obvious to him too.  And so the die have been cast.  Mandras has gone off to the mountains to fight for Greece and the enemy is living in his fiance’s house.  Things are going to get worse, a lot worse, better they get better.

Day 11 and today’s rehearsal was electrifying. 

I have lived with this book for twelve years and more, performing Captain Corelli’s Mandolin up until last year in a storytelling musical way in theatres all over the UK.  Pelagia and Corelli inhabit my world.  I know them.  I went back to the book and read it again before making this new adaptation for the stage.  I wrote episodes that we can show on stage that I left  out of the storytelling adaptation, the beach for example where the Italian soldiers dance with the prostitutes and Limone rides on a mine as it drifts ashore – scenes that are better shown than told – and puppetry is a wonderful medium to bring them alive. 

But when two people fall in love it’s actors we need – not puppets.  I never referred to the pages in the book when Corelli tells Pelagia he loves her.  I know them and although I wrote the lines that Tony and Nato spoke to each other this afternoon nothing prepared me for what I saw.  The actors took Louis de Bernieres’ characters off the page and stood them on their feet.  Tony (Corelli), Nato (Pelagia) and Levan (director)  know these people too.  They know the risks you take when you tell someone that you love them – and for Corelli and Pelagia especially – Corelli, the captain of an enemy occupying force and Pelagia, betrothed to a Greek patriot who is fighting for his country.  Tony and Nato took the risks in both hands and the glowing embers burst into flames.  I could not begin to describe that rehearsal for you – and I won’t.  But there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.  And Levan (director) – the man’s a genius – proposes to begin the next scene in the rain with Dr Iannis holding an umbrella, pleading with his daughter to wait until after the war.  I had very little to do today except watch and admire.

I had lunch with Gus (Mandras).  Mandras left the village to go to the mountains and join the partisans and Gus left the theatre to have the afternoon and evening off.  He cheerfully drank two beers while I sipped a bottle of lemonade and went back to work.  Gus went into town with a copy of Hamlet in his back pocket which is more than Mandras can take with him to the mountains.  Mandras is a good fisherman but cannot read or write and one day soon Gus will land the big part that I guess all young actors go fishing for.

Jill Russell (Mercury Theatre stage manager) and I have landed a nice little job. Vato (our music director) is Chief Concuctor of The Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra,  and he has asked us to record the message to the audience before concerts to remind them to switch off their mobile phones.  He wants good English voices (I’m Scottish!) - a male voice and a female voice.  So Jill and I are going to do it for him in a recording studio tomorrow afternoon.  Eat your heart out Sir Ian McKellen!



Roger, Nino and friend, Zura, cheering on Georgia
against Scotland in Oct 07



I notice that Scotland beat Georgia in the Rugby World Cup.  Well, I’m very pleased about that.  But I suspect our producer, Roger McCann who is an Englishman in love with Georgia feels differently.  There are still fond memories here of an international football match in October 2007 when Georgia beat Scotland in a Euro 2008 qualifying match (Roger was there). 

The Tartan Army descended on Georgia in their hordes and watched their team lose before going out on the town.  The locals were delighted by the Scots capacity for alcohol - the Georgian hosts and their Scottish guests fell into each others arms and drank for each other and sang for each other.  You see, Scots don’t only sing when they are winning, and this is true for Georgians too.  Give us a drink and we start to sing.  The Georgians were mighty impressed with the Tartan Army that night and I walk around Tblisi wearing tartan braces to hold my trousers up.

Tomorrow the British will be blockading Cephalonia and everybody is hungry. Dr Iannis suggests that everyone goes to the forest to collect snails.  We are going to rehearse this on stage tomorrow where Levan has arranged a forest  covered in snails.  I have eaten snails in Italy.  My dinner companion showed me how to flick them out of their shells with a toothpick.  You must flick them towards yourself, not your date, otherwise she will get your snails in her blouse.  I learn something new every day.  Gus showed me how to use Skype and we skyped each other across the table at lunch.  Who says the art of conversation is dead?

Ciao! 

Mike