Hi everyone, and welcome to the latest instalment of the Spamalot blog! My name is Ellie and I’m playing one of the Laker Girls to our fabulous Lady of the Lake. As we get into show week the blog entries will be coming thick and fast, so I’m writing this at 11:40pm in my pyjamas fresh home from the Millfield.
Today’s blog is all about our favourite day, Get In, where we move all of our set into the theatre, hang our costumes in dressing rooms, work out where we all need to stand on stage and, most importantly, interrogate newbies about their personal lives over lots and lots of snacks.
Get In is always very exciting for lots of reasons, but for me started with the vexing task of ironing my many costumes. If you’ve ever tried to iron a lederhosen dress (which I assume is unlikely) then you’ll understand why this was such quite a confusing job for 9am on a Sunday morning. Speaking of 9am, that’s when a lot of our fabulous crew started their day at our theatre, constructing the incredible set built for us by Matt McManus.
We’re very lucky to have him on board and so grateful to all of those involved in constructing our set for the show, which is the best I’ve ever seen. Getting the first glimpse of the set as we arrived to sing through today made everything seem so much more real and exciting.
Most of the afternoon for the cast was spent singing and dancing through numbers with our MD extraordinaire Stuart Piddington-Wall, our fabulous choreographer Miss Fay and wonderful director Paula Bland. After running everything twice we’d really worked up an appetite, and decided to break from the Get In pizza tradition and get a silly amount of fried chicken delivered instead to inspire us in our questioning of our new members about their lives. One of those very lucky people/victims (sorry) was lovely Maroulla, who also happened to have a birthday today and brought in the most delicious cake for us all to enjoy post-KFC (excellent pre-show diets for those of us shimmying into leotards for the week!) Happy Birthday Maroulla!
When the crew were ready we got lots of time on stage to practice set pieces and a few routines, getting used to scenery, props, space limitations and each other! It’s always a special moment seeing things come to life and the show is in great shape.
I can’t wait to see how much better it will be tomorrow and Tuesday as we add full lighting, effects, costumes and sound. You really don’t want to miss this one, so grab a ticket while you still can! See you in Camelot
You can book your tickets here:
