Having not been involved in any rehearsals of The Wish, any information of the early stages of the production has come from Chris Mundy and Jennifer Smith, the two very enthusiastic co-directors. Since they were two of the few ‘surviving’ (not yet at university/working) members of the original cast, they were very excited at the prospect of helping a new cast perform the Hansel and Gretel reimagining, as they had done ten years ago.
So before I got there on work experience- duties including book painting, leaf cutting, gingerbread selling, buying a specific bulb for James’ music stand and lighting- there was auditions, casting and rehearsals to do. All of which, I’m told, were reasonably successful, and the cast itself was fantastic in the end so there were no terrible mistakes there.
After the technical and dress rehearsals, however, a certain amount of panic was beginning to set in. The children of the witches wood were in an almost permanent state of tense silence- waiting for a prompt that wasn’t there, and the lost children were…lost backstage somewhere for quite a lot of the run. Craig Harris, the normally reasonably calm director can be seen in many of the photographs of the evening either with his head in his hands or mid shout, and all other witnesses, although not caught on camera, wore similar expressions of horror.
I’ll leave out a description of the resulting notes session because I’m sure you can imagine that the cast were totally aware of the mistakes they had made by the end of it. And on opening night, after hours of hair spraying, back combing, vocal warm ups, rehearsing and re-rehearsing, running through of lines and songs and entrances and exits, wishing tree wishes, gingerbread eating and poncho cutting, an almost entirely new show emerged.
The audience, and me, were in awe (mixed with relief in my case) as they watched Hansel and Gretel sing their way through very realistic trees and incredibly well operated lighting, saw them abandoned and found again by both funny and frightening parents and terrorised by, on cue, poncho-wearing jumping and snarling children of the witches wood. They saw the equally impressive and on-time lost children, aided by a flower wielding dew fairy, calmly rebel against a genuinely terrifying witch.
All of this, as well as gingerbread and free orange juice, made for a very successful first show, and a very happy audience and even happier cast and directors left studio one that evening.
The run continued and ended with success, with the odd dropped line and a blackout half way through Friday’s finale being the only noticeable mistakes. Everyone who took part would agree that the show was brilliant, and the heartbroken (and sobbing) cast leaving on Saturday night just proved how much it will be missed.