Hello!  Firstly, big apologies to everybody
for the horrible length of time I’ve waited
until giving you the new update of my life
in my diary, but yes, I finally got round to it.

So I think that the last time I wrote a diary (it was so long ago!) was when I was just doing “The Soldier’s Tale” again at the Opera House and was about to start “Liaisons” in London, so that’s where I’ll start off.

We started rehearsing for “Liaisons” in London. Luckily we had pretty much everybody from the cast that had been to Japan with the show, so that was nice.  We had a couple of new people to teach: Simone Sault who was covering Tourvel and Cecile, and we had Michael Kopinski who was covering Danceny.  It was nice to have them as part of the company and they fitted in very well and were lovely to have around.  We had three weeks, I think, to rehearse which went very well.  Obviously there were some things that I wanted to change from the Japan version.  Whenever I come back to a piece, having to re-stage it, I’m always looking to improve it.  Nothing’s ever perfect so there’s always stuff to do, so I set about making the odd change here and there and trying to get it even better again than it was in Japan.  So we went about rehearsing. 

Unfortunately, during the rehearsal period, we had the horrible bombings in London which were shocking.  The first reports that I heard were that the station closest to where we were rehearsing had been hit.  That obviously sent a huge panic, knowing that a lot of people in the company use that station, but it was a false report and everybody was safe, thank God.  And then we moved into the theatre and started tech’ing.  Again, unfortunately, just as we were opening we had the second of the bomb alerts.  They didn’t actually set off bombs, but it kind of sent a shudder through the whole of London and the South East of England and it meant that the numbers coming to the theatre were not as high as we’d hoped, but we still got a very good turnout on that day and then on the subsequent two and a half weeks that we were performing. 

We had a great run at Sadler’s Wells.  They always look after us very well there, well, look after me in the shows I’ve done there over the last two years and we had a very good time.  We had a lot of well-known faces turning up to see us in London, a lot of friends from Japan came over to see us and from all over the world, which was lovely, so thank you, those of you who travelled so far to see the show.  It was wonderful and we had a great time.  The reviews were medium, so-so.  It’s interesting, I think everybody within the theatre world who came to see the show absolutely loved it for what it was.  Unfortunately the dance critics who reviewed it weren’t as keen but we don’t do it for them, we do it for the audience and they seemed to really enjoy it. From word of mouth as well, people are very keen to see it and so now we’re hoping to take that on and continue performing it around the UK, Europe and other places in the world.  At the moment we’re trying to put together some touring plans for 2007 and beyond, which is very exciting and hopefully they’ll come to fruition very soon!

So, we finished “Liaisons”, I had a couple of weeks off and then my lovely wife Sarah and I started working on a play together.  We did a play called “Wallflowering” which is a two-hander piece, which was a bit scary just the two of us on stage and it’s quite a long play, it’s a good two hours, so there was a lot of dialogue for us to learn which freaked me out completely!  Sarah’s a lot more used to learning dialogue than I am and so she helped me along.  We were doing it at the Sevenoaks Playhouse, which is a lovely theatre South-East of London.  We were working in their studio theatre, which is quite a small space.  It’s like a ballroom which kind of fitted the play very well.  The play was about two suburbanite Australians who have this marriage which has its ups and downs, as most relationships do, but the thing that held them together was their love of ballroom dancing.  So we had to do I think about six or seven set pieces of ballroom dances, but only about 30 seconds or a minute long each, the rest of it was dialogue.  We had a great director, Julian Woolford, who is also the Artistic Director of Sevenoaks Playhouse.  It was his idea to do this play and obviously Sarah and I were thrilled that they wanted us to do it.  It gave us a chance to further our acting and it was the most amazing experience!  It was the hardest thing I think we’ve both undertaken because for me it was new ground.  It was my first play and it was Sarah’s second play, but just to have that amount of dialogue to learn and just being the two of you on stage, as I say, the space in which we performed was very small, the audience were incredibly close to us and all round us, we played it in the round and a lot of the play is directed straight to the audience so it really feels like you’re having a conversation with people, which was very scary and took a while to get used to, but we absolutely loved it and had a wonderful time doing that.  We did it for about three or four weeks, on and off and again we had two visitors from Japan who came all the way to see us in Sevenoaks which was fantastic and various people from all over the country came to see us and supported us which we really appreciate.  It was lovely and we’re hoping that we’ll get to do again because it was great experience for us and it would be nice to be able to show it more widely to people so that would be great.

After “Wallflowering” the next thing that I did, pretty much straight away, was choreographing the musical “Promises, Promises” for the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield.  “Promises, Promises” is a Burt Bacharach musical written in the ‘60’s based on the film “The Apartment” which starred Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon and it’s a fantastic piece, wonderful show.  The music by Burt Bacharach is very much of the period and fun, the book is by Neil Simon who also wrote the film, so it’s very funny, witty and good.  I had about five and a half, six weeks to put that together, working with a director called Angus Jackson and designer called Robert Innes-Hopkins, who had designed “Singin’ in the Rain” for us at Sadler’s Wells a while ago, and I had some friends in it: Helen Dixon helped me out with the choreography, she assisted me and she was also in the show; Barnaby Ingram who was in “Liaisons” as well; Julia Hinchcliffe who worked with me on “On Your Toes”; and Ewan Wardrop who was in “On Your Toes” with me.  I’ve known him for years, we did “Swan Lake” and “Cinderella” with Matthew Bourne’s company Adventures in Motion Pictures together, so it was great to have him up there as well.  That whole experience was interesting.  It was a tricky time, but the show came off very well and we had great reviews.  Everybody seemed pretty pleased with it.  I was away for about six or seven weeks, the hardest part about doing those sorts of jobs is being away from home for any period of time, being away from Sarah and everything, but I managed to get home every weekend and spent a lot of money on the phone!  But it was nice, it was great having some friends up there as well and I made new friends: Richard Frame played the lead, he and I became good friends. He’s a lovely chap and brilliant in the show.  Sarah Ingram and Jack Chissick as well, and other people that I hung out with a lot up in Sheffield, it was a really nice company up there, a really good feeling about the company. 

We spent Christmas in our new house.  I should say that Sarah and I moved out of London last year. Around the time we were doing “Liaisons” at Sadler’s Wells we moved out to the county of Hampshire which is south of London, and it’s about an hour and a half’s journey into London but it’s worth the extra little bit of time because it’s fantastic!  We’ve always wanted to live in the country and the house we’ve got is fantastic, lovely gardens and it’s nice to be out of the congestion and into the fresh air and a more relaxed way of life, which is great.  When we do get time off, it’s lovely to be in that kind of atmosphere rather than in the smoke of London.  We had a lovely Christmas in our new home with family, which was good, and then the next thing is “Guys and Dolls”.

Just after the run of “Promises, Promises” finished in Sheffield in January, I was asked to audition for “Guys and Dolls”.  “Guys and Dolls” is a production by Michael Grandage, who I worked with in “Grand Hotel”, it’s also designed by Chris Oram who designed “Grand Hotel” and the musical director is Jae Alexander who was also MD on “Grand Hotel” so it is, sort of, the “Grand Hotel” team.  Rob Ashford, an American choreographer, choreographed this for Michael and he’s done a fantastic job.  I came to see the show, at that time Nigel Harman was playing the part that I’m playing now.  Nigel Harman, for those of you who don’t know, played a character in a soap opera called “EastEnders” over here and he’s a very hot property at the moment.  Another actress called Sarah Lancashire was in the show, she was also in a soap opera over here called “Coronation Street”; she’s done a lot of other TV stuff.  A guy called Nigel Lindsay was playing Nathan Detroit and Jenna Russell was playing Sarah Brown.  Jenna was in the original cast of “Guys and Dolls” which opened last year with Ewan McGregor as Sky Masterson and Jane Krakowski played Adelaide.  So I auditioned for it, had a great time working with Michael and Jae and also with the associate director, Jamie, who was actually going to be rehearsing us most of the time because Michael was in rehearsal for other things.  Also I knew the assistant choreographer, Spencer Soloman, who was my assistant choreographer on “On Your Toes” at the Festival Hall a couple of years ago so there are lots of people I know, which is nice. 

They offered me the part of Sky Masterson which was a huge honour because this production is wonderful.  Sarah and I had such a great evening when we came to see it in the theatre and it’s great to be a part of this show.  Every night is a wonderful journey, and there’s also a couple of performers who were in “Grand Hotel” as well so it’s nice to meet up with them again,  Martyn Ellis and John Conroy, so it’s great and we’ve got a fantastic cast.  I play opposite Kelly Price who was Jenna Russell’s understudy in the first cast last year and she was also in the ensemble.  She actually ended up doing the first preview opposite Ewan McGregor because Jenna was ill and she obviously impressed the powers that be so much that they offered it to her this time, which is fantastic.  She’s wonderful to work with, we have good fun. The other two principals are Neil Morrissey who is another TV star and Sally Ann Triplett who’s a great performer who’s done tons and tons of musicals and is wonderful to watch and learn from and also to be on stage with, not that I have much to do with her or Neil as most of my stuff’s with Kelly but it’s great to have them as part of the show and we’re having a really good run.  I’m in week 6 at the moment, I’m doing up until August.  It is great to have such a nice long run at it.  As I say, I’m enjoying it so much at the moment, hopefully that’ll last until August although that seems quite a long way off, but it’s great to be back on stage doing a musical again.  The feedback has been very nice for the show and for me and I’m really enjoying singing on stage again and not dancing very much.  It’s so nice to be doing different things all the time.  I think some people expect me to be dancing more than I am in this show but it’s actually nice for me to be able to concentrate on the singing and the acting much more and not have to worry about other people which I have done before when I’ve performed in a musical. I can just concentrate on me which is really nice. 

So, it’s all going very well.  I’m just trying to think if there’s anything for the future to tell you about.  I think I said before about trying to get the “Liaisons” tour going for next year, Lez and I are working on some other ideas for shows for my company, and there are lots of things floating around waiting to develop so it’s great.

Anyway, thank you all for your support.  I believe the Calendar sold very well for the website so thank you to Karen and Jane for that and thank you all for buying it.  We’re already talking about next year’s. Take care everyone and hopefully see you all soon at the Piccadilly Theatre, if not, somewhere else.

Okay, bye.
Adam
xx