This afternoon we popped down to the Adelphi to track down a few more members of the Love Never Dies cast for our weekly video blog and in the meantime thought we’d share a few observations from our seats in the Dress Circle – and below is another little video blog of exactly what is going on behind the scenes as rehearsals are now well into their final week…

We arrived as the cast and crew were about to begin the technical rehearsal of Act Two’s ‘Bathing Beauty’ as the track ends and runs into the next scene.  After making our way along a maze of corridors (backstage at the Adelphi, like lots of London theatres, is a bit of a labyrinth) with the smell of varnish hanging in the air as members the finishing touches are put to vital props and costumes, we found our way to auditorium where members of the cast including Summer Strallen (Meg Giry) were running through the scene as the rest of the cast, crew and creative team watched from the seats in the stalls.  As Jack O’Brien and Jerry Mitchell joined the actors onstage to physically walk through and “block”   the scene, the team of swings and understudies (check out our latest rehearsal update for more about them) took notes on the scene from the Dress Circle before sharing their thoughts on the process with us in our latest video blog (which you can see here).

We moved to another vantage point in order to witness Musical Supervisor Simon Lee going through some very unusual limbering-up techniques, which you can see in our video clip below…!

Having watched various stages of the rehearsal process, the show is now really coming together as the cast are now virtually all fully costumed, wigged and made up in order to fully test the effect of the lighting.  The lighting team under the close scrutiny of Paule Constable, the Lighting Designer, were running through some of the astounding and innovative illuminations that will really bring this already fantastic set to life.  The lighting looked so beautiful as it struck the gorgeous colours of the ensemble’s costumes that it prompted Jack to declare that they looked “good enough to eat.”

As we’re less than a week away from the first preview now the excitement is truly building. With an extra day of rehearsal now available to them, the cast and crew are working flat-out to make sure this will be one hell of a show.  And from where we were sitting – it certainly will be.

Our video clip gives you some idea of what’s going on at the theatre offstage as the crew gear up for the show…