Hello everybody. 

I can’t quite believe that it’s been such a long time since I have done a diary but it’s been a pretty amazing and intense period of time.  As any of you with small babies will know, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of time for anything else.  Life has changed for ever, really, in such an amazing way.

Well, I think it was last April when I last did a diary.  There’s been a few things happen since then.  It’s been a good few months, it’s been very busy.  Just after I last wrote, I was contacted about performing Wizard of Oz at the Royal Festival Hall last summer and choreographing Carousel for a small regional tour and a London transfer and as any of you who follow the theatre scene in London will know, Carousel is currently playing at the Savoy Theatre to very, very good houses, but more of that in a minute.

I was asked to do Wizard of Oz last summer for the Summer Season at the Festival Hall.  As most of you will know, I’ve performed at the Festival Hall a few times.  Last time I performed there was in On Your Toes back in 2003, I think it was.  I had a great summer performing there to packed houses and very appreciative audiences, so I was very excited about going back there because I think it’s a great venue for certain shows.  Also, just a random fact, my first ever professional engagement in this country was at the Royal Festival Hall, dancing in what was then London Festival Ballet (now English National Ballet), in a production of Nutcracker.  I think I was probably 11 or 12, so I have very fond memories of the Festival Hall.  I think I may have seen my first ever ballet there as well, when I was a bit younger so it’s got great memories for me, that place.  Anyway, Wizard of Oz is not something that I ever really thought of being a part of before but when I was approached about playing the Tin Man I thought it would be a nice, fun job to do.  I’ve never done a sort of family show like that before, other than Wind in the Willows at the Opera House, which is directed at kids and the family.  Also it was another chance to do another musical, which was great and to work with some fantastic people.  Gary Wilmot was going to be the Lion, Hilton McRea was going to be the Scarecrow, a young actress called Sian Brooke was playing Dorothy, the legend that is Roy Hudd was playing the Wizard, so it was a great opportunity to do a fun show.  Also to be near Sarah for the ever impending day of our baby being born which, of course, I wanted to be around for, so it was a good time, really.  The show went reasonably well, people had issues with certain aspects of it, the look of it really, but we had a very good dog playing Toto, who got all the good reviews, and it was great to get to know all the company, but particularly Gary, Hilton and Sian.  We became a bit of a nice little unit during our time and had lots of fun doing that, especially the Wizard scenes which were quite interesting! 

Anyway, meanwhile, about half way through the process of performing Wizard of Oz, I started choreographing Carousel.  Carousel is a most amazing musical; it has a great, great Rogers and Hammerstein score.  It’s got fabulous dances, amazing scenes for the actors and just beautiful music, beautiful songs, so I was thrilled to have been asked to do that and I had the most amazing time working with Lindsay Posner, the director.  The choreographer/director partnership can be difficult sometimes, because it very much relies on having a shared vision, it relies on getting on with each other as far as temperament goes and having a good balance between being able to listen, or being willing to listen to each other and give each other ideas, but I have to say, with Lindsay it was a really, really great experience and I’m really looking forward to working with him again because we had such a good time putting the show together, working together as a good unit.  I’m incredibly proud of the show Carousel, I think it’s got some of my best work as a choreographer in it.  Again, incredibly lucky: the cast were fantastic.

But anyway, so I was rehearsing Carousel during the day, performing Wizard of Oz at night and right slap bang in the middle of that, our beautiful daughter Naomi was born!  25th August, and what a beautiful child she is, and how lucky we are to have her.  I’m just loving being a father and you know, at that time I was so tired from not sleeping because of the baby and working all day and all night, but I was on such a cloud really that it all just went away when I looked in her eyes and she’s amazing!

What more to tell you about that?  Sarah was in hospital for a couple of days.  Naomi came out weighing 6lbs 8 oz, she was born … oh, I can’t remember the time now!  I think it was ten to 9, and it was a fairly uncomplicated birth and gosh, it was such an overwhelming feeling, being in the room when this miracle was happening. Wow, I mean, an intense period, Sarah was in labour, we were in the hospital room for about 12 hours and you know, labour’s a very intense time but Sarah was brilliant at it, she coped so well and I was such a proud husband and, as it ended up, father, at the end of it! Just incredible.

So, Naomi came on a Monday which was our day off on Wizard of Oz, and a Bank Holiday so I took an extra day off on the Tuesday, back in the show on Wednesday and back to rehearse Carousel on Thursday so I had a couple of days off and then back on to work, which was kind of mad.  I’d spent the last few weeks hanging by my phone waiting for the ‘all go’ and now it had happened and it was all go in a different way, but fantastic. Carousel was coming on very nicely, the shows of Wizard were going very well, it was all good.   

Once Carousel had finished rehearsing we moved to Bromley where we put it on stage for a week, which was a very testing time for one reason or another, but Lindsay and I stayed strong together, well I should say Lindsay, myself and the cast stayed very strong together and got through it. 

Then the show went off on tour for a few weeks and I started on the next thing which was directing my first show.  It must have been the beginning of last year when I was approached by Paul Kerryson, who runs Curve Theatre in Leicester and who I’ve worked with a number of times before (On Your Toes, Singin’ in the Rain) and who’s a good friend, and he approached me about being a part of the first new show in the brand new theatre.  Surprisingly, he wanted me not only to choreograph but direct it which took me by surprise when he asked but wow, what an opportunity!  So in order to do the job up in Leicester, the Cooper family upped sticks and Sarah and little baby Naomi came and lived with me in Leicester for six weeks which was an experience!  Obviously, it’s difficult moving with a little one but we had a lovely apartment up there, well the second one was lovely, the first one was a bit noisy, and yes it was lovely.  Great for me, because I was working such long hours in the studio trying to get a brand new show on in four weeks rehearsal time.  When I’m choreographing and directing and trying to be at two places at once, it’s not easy, so I was literally at the theatre from nine o’clock in the morning till sometimes ten o’clock at night so it was great to have Sarah and Naomi with me because I had a bit of sanity when I went home in the evenings and I didn’t miss out on my daughter growing up at that time, which was fantastic.

The show went well, rehearsal period was very testing, it was hard but I loved every minute of it.  The tech period when we got on stage to get the show actually set up was very, very difficult.  We only had two or three days to get the whole show up and running and technically it was a very difficult show, big set pieces, lots of costume changes, brand new theatre so new automated system for the flying of the scenery in and out.   It was too short really and we suffered for that, I think.  We had to cancel the first preview but we got a show up eventually at the end of that week and I think in the long term, I’m very proud of what we achieved.  I think the piece has some problems which need sorting out if it’s ever done again but I think, considering the time frame we had, considering the piece was only written a few months beforehand, we all did really good work.  The sets and the costumes by Francis O’Connor were fantastic, he did a brilliant job, Chris Ellis’ lighting was really good, the music by Grant Olding was great and the book by Toby Davies was very good as well so we did well, I think, and although when I immediately think back to it I think “oh god, how did we ever do it?” and “that was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, really”, I think the sense of achievement overruns that in the end.

So, that went well, we had a great cast for it too, especially Savannah Stevenson who played Cinderella, a very talented young lady, she was fantastic, well the whole cast were good and we used some students from the Leicester School of Performing Arts which was great. They did very well and did themselves and their college proud and did me proud and they worked really hard.  So it had its problems, but in the long run it went well.

Meanwhile, Carousel was transferring to the West End in London which I missed because I was in Leicester but that opened at the Savoy Theatre on the 2nd December and I managed to get to see a preview before it opened and it looked great on the stage at the Savoy, I must say.  That opened the ballet up to the full stage, which we hadn’t done on tour which makes it look even better, I think.  Carousel is still running to this day, it’s doing very well, I’ve seen it a number of times and it’s a show I’m very, very proud of and a show that I love going to watch.  It’s never a chore watching that show, it’s always a pleasure, which is mainly to do with the amazing cast we’ve got in it who bring so much energy to it every time I go and see it.  Both myself and Lindsay Posner, the director, are incredibly proud of it.

Anyway, I had Christmas at home with the family.  Sarah’s parents and my Mum were over for Christmas day.  We saw my Dad just after Christmas which was nice, and it was lovely for the grandparents to spend a lot of time with their granddaughter.  I had a few days at home as well, which was lovely so I could really play Daddy and help out, which I love doing. 

Recently, I’ve been working on a workshop for a new musical.  I’m not going to tell you much about it at this stage but it’s a three-hander musical, so only three performers, and I took part in the workshop as a choreographer and a performer, so that’s very exciting and more on that later, I hope.  We did three weeks on the workshop with two performers that I’ve worked with before: Alexandra Silber, who plays Julie Jordan in Carousel, who’s a fantastic, wonderful, wonderful performer and why she didn’t get a nod at the Oliviers for Carousel I don’t know, and Alisdair Harvey, who I worked with on Side by Side a couple of years ago, so it was nice to work with those two again and we had a great three weeks working on that, so that was good.

I’ve been working with Russell Maliphant, getting my body back into shape.  The piece that we’re performing in at the Coliseum is one of his trade-mark pieces called Critical Mass.  It’s a 30 minute duet for two men and I’m dancing with Russell.  Luckily, he’s done it before many, many times so I can rely heavily on him, but it’s a fantastic piece to do.  It’s a wonderful feeling, dancing his choreography, and it’s so nice actually, just to be dancing again and not having to worry about other people and just, you know, enjoying the movement, enjoying the thrill of dancing with another fantastic dancer, so I’m really enjoying that. 

I’ve been doing that quite regularly, and I’ve been holding auditions for a show at Sadler’s Wells in the summer.  The show’s named Shall We Dance? or The Search for Love, which is the title I prefer.  We’ve been holding auditions for that and hopefully, that’ll be cast in the next two weeks, which is good.

What else has been going on?  Oh, I’ve been having meetings about the opera I’m choreographing with Lindsay Posner at Holland Park and coming up with ideas for that.  Just a word about some reports that I was perhaps going to be performing in Japan later on this year.  I hope that I will be, discussions are still underway.  Nothing is signed and sealed yet, but I hope to have news of that very soon.  Hopefully, positive news but of course, you know with the state of the economy in this country and in Japan, it’s very hard to make things work financially, putting money into shows, so people are working very hard to make it happen.  Let’s just hope it does, because it’s been four years since I’ve been in Japan performing, and as I’ve said before in these diary pages, I consider Japan to be my second home, somewhere I’m incredibly fond of performing, and I’ve a great following there and I really hope to be performing there later on this year and possibly next year as well.  If we can get the summer show over there it would be fantastic.

Anyway, I think that’s me up to date, can you believe it, after all this time?  I promise next time not to leave it so long (famous last words, hey, Jane and Karen!).  Anyway, lots of love to everybody, hope everybody’s well, thank you for all your messages of support, your Christmas messages, your messages about Naomi’s birth, and the presents that have come through, you are amazing, all of you, so thank you, it’s much appreciated.  I shall give some photos to Karen and Jane to put up on the website of little Naomi so that you can see her.

Anyway, much love to all,

Bye xxx