Hello and welcome to the first post for our Urinetown Show Blog.
My name’s Warren McWilliams and I’m directing the show. In this post I’ll take you through what happened at the read through, auditions and our first rehearsal.
I’m so pleased that SMP have decided to do this show, firstly it’s a huge favourite of mine but it’s a bit of a risky one with the title and all. Thankfully it’s such a fantastic show that we think it’s a risk worth taking. I guarantee it’s the best show you’ve never heard of! Hopefully with our blog posts we’ll convince you how good it is. The music is brilliant and the script is dark, funny and witty. I’ve been trying to liken it to other shows and always fail. It is the most unique musical and you should take a chance and come to see it, you won’t regret it. We’ve also got a fantastic production team that I’m really happy to be a part of. We’re all fans of the show too and will do everything we can to make it the best show possible.
We started our journey to Urinetown with our read through. It was great to see old faces return for this show but also to see so many new faces turn up. The show has many fans and plenty of them had turned up for our read through.
On the night, the production team and I talked through the show and what we’d like to do with it. Then we set about reading the script and watching videos of some of the great numbers in the show.
We held a workshop for the auditions a couple of nights later to help people prepare for their auditions. We went through the audition songs, taught our new members a quick dance audition and I was on hand to answer any questions about characters that people were going for.
So the auditions came and they were brilliant. The standard of auditions were the highest I’ve seen for our group and I’ve directed plenty of shows now. People had really put in the effort and we as a production team were very thankful for it. We had people turn up with costumes, props and it was clear to see people had really put some time and effort into preparing for their auditions.
After 2 blocks of great auditions the time came to cast the show. It really wasn’t easy. We were spoilt for choice and could have cast the show in a number of ways. Sadly, space limits our cast size, so not everyone made it into the show but, after much deliberation, we made our choices and we’re really very happy to have such a strong cast.
Wednesday saw us meet for our first rehearsal and it was a cracker! We decided to start at the beginning (apparently it’s a very good place to start) with the opening number. It’s a bit like diving in straight at the deep end, the opener is a five minute number with probably the toughest parts of harmony in the whole show. But our MD Mike, along with a little help from his wife Laura, was able to teach everything so that we finished the whole song in an evening with only polishing left to do. It’s surprising how much you can get done with 2 MD’s!
I’m really pleased with the cast we’ve got for this show, there’s a whole bunch of talent to make this show come alive and if the first rehearsal is anything to go by it’s going to sound fantastic.
Our tickets are on sale now and available through the Millfield box office. You can call them on 020 8807 6680 or book through their website here.