Diary Dress Rehearsal & PreviewsThe first dress rehearsal can often give a distorted view of a production's potential. It comes at the end of a long and sometimes monotonous technical rehearsal that is full of stops and starts and repetition. It is perhaps at odds with the spontaneity and immediacy of the rehearsal room, an environment in which the company work without the fixity of technical requirements and effects. This transition can impact on the rhythm, energy and flow that have been achieved in the final runs in the rehearsal room. In effect the dress becomes the first opportunity to regain what has been achieved in the final stages of rehearsal. However, this can only emerge from the actors re-orientating themselves in relation to the changes in space, sound, lighting, design. Although the actors have been adjusting their performances throughout the tech in order to accommodate new demands, the dress rehearsal is the first time they have to integrate themselves into what can often feel like a very different show from the one that has been developed in the rehearsal room. This company had six weeks to explore the acting-related side of their job. In the technical they had only a matter of hours to practise tasks such as driving a military jeep, negotiating a flight of stairs in high-heels, enacting swift costume changes, throwing hand grenades across the stage, climbing onto the bonnet of a military vehicle whose dimensions were completely different from those of the rostra the actors had been rehearsing with. Inevitably, with so many new elements to contend with, performances were temporarily affected. At the National Theatre, each production has a run of previews in which the performances, although public, are regarded as work-in-progress. The first preview is the first opportunity to test the production in front of a public audience. About 40 members of the production team and National Theatre staff watched the dress rehearsal earlier in the day. This, for some fringe theatres, would be a sell-out performance, but the sheer scale of the Olivier auditorium requires a significant number of people to create a real sense of an audience. Fortunately, the first preview attracted a relatively full house and the presence of the audience seemed to reinvigorate the actors; their performances were considerably more energized and focused than in the dress rehearsal. As the previews continued the actors reconnected to the detailed and layered work that had been built up in the rehearsal room. They now collectively inhabited the fictional world of the play, playing in the moment and reacting and responding to one another. Many of the scenes in Henry V call for the army to communicate through responding to Henry’s speeches and those of their superior officers. At the first preview, the individual and detailed responses mapped out in the rehearsal period were missing. Instead the actors were dissolving into a homogenous mass of generalized glances and expressions, conveying very little specific meaning and doing nothing to distinguish the individuality of the soldiers'/characters' identities. Performing as part of a large group can become a place of relative safety and perhaps, on that first exposure to an audience, the actors sought refuge in the anonymity of the crowd. However, as their confidence grew so too did their individual performances. For example, as the soldiers looked out across the audience to the besieged city of Harfleur, a discernible change in their expressions denoted a range of responses at the possibility of carrying out the atrocities that Henry publicly spells out. Some looked on with obvious relish, some with a forced enthusiasm that masked their reluctance. In the middle of the group stood Captain Gower (Rupert Wickham), whose face expressed obvious disdain and anxiety at what his King was saying, and shock at its effect on his comrades. If the actors seemed more confident as their familiarity with the Olivier grew, there were moments when their new boldness threatened to go too far. Throughout the rehearsal period, Hytner encouraged the soldiers to respond to certain characters and moments in a typically macho colloquial fashion. Thus, Montjoy is jeered off with a chorus of ‘faaaark offs’ and ‘waaaanker’s’. However, Hytner was careful to avoid this becoming too noticeable to the audience by ensuring that the specifics of each insult are lost in the general cacophony of abuse. On the third preview the occasional stray ‘Faaark Off’ slipped out and brought a mixed reaction from the audience. Most noticeably, the outburst caused restrained hilarity, but the odd raised eyebrow and shake of the head suggested not everyone was comfortable with the comical injection of colloquial language. |  | |