Six Characters Now Five

Hopefully, McDiarmid is en route to a full recovery and I do hope it's something that'll breeze over and be done with quickly and not come back to plague him in the future.

But it is interesting that they cancelled performances while preparing the understudy. What's going on there? Surely the point of an understudy is so that performances *can* continue in case of cast illness? I notice the understudies are apparently new to the West End transfer, but still.

I'm glad to see the array of good reviews for this one though; having had my head thoroughly broken by it in Chichester, it's a lot less mentally taxing the second time round, and my worries that it was a little too Chichester-specific have been allayed. It's transferred to London a little *too* well.

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I did check my programmes, which is why I can say that understudies are new to the West End run, but still, it's not like they went "McDiarmid's ill! Go find me the first actor you possibly can, he's going on tomorrow". One would presume understudies do know that they are understudies and should learn the lines. :P I guess as there's only one male understudy and the Father isn't the smallest part, the extra prep time was a necessity. Ah well. ^_^

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