11-show week

The Matilda company survived Bradford! Not that there’s anything explicitly wrong with the Yorkshire city (indeed the city centre continues to improve and the curries were absolutely fantastic) but we hit cast change hard at the end of a gruelling 16-week run non-stop. Our final week saw 8 performances and 3 dress rehearsals - an 11-show week!

Once the curtain came down on that 11th performance, however, a week’s holiday awaited us. The tour has essentially been paused for 7 days. No emails, no WhatsApp messages, just everyone enjoying some away time before hitting the next venue. Next? Edinburgh!

I have arrived two days early into the Scottish capital, largely to enjoy the sights of the city before our busy first week setting up the show here. We are still busy rehearsing the new children - they have each done one performance in front of an audience, so to ready them for the change of venue they get three days in a rehearsal room first. As ever, these new kids have amazed and humbled me with their work ethic. Every single one pulled it out of the bag in that final week in Bradford. Our 3 new Matildas - Sophie, Olivia & Freya - totally stepped up and should be rightly proud of their achievements after ten weeks of rehearsal.

We are only in Edinburgh for 4 weeks. I could have easily done 10 weeks here! But we’ll make the most of it and I can’t wait to seek out the social life here to see what’s changed and more importantly which of my favourites are still here.

So it’s the end of my week off - a week where I purposefully didn’t make many plans and ended up hiring in a hot tub for Mother’s Day! I had one of my usual Cheshire Chill-Outs, made extra special by the fact that my new niece was around for the week. I thought about heading off to a nearby spa hotel, before deciding that I could bring the spa to my parents’ house instead…! My mum was rather pleased, as you can imagine. Cheers mum!