As Assistant Director to Michael Attenborough, Jane Fallowfield tells us how the play has come together in the last few weeks, from refining a fight scene to finding just the right 1940s-esque props… 

Samantha Spiro at The Almeida Theatre

In the third week of rehearsals, the three acts start to take shape.  We work through each act in turn.  As we work through, moment by moment, Mike and the actors keep making discoveries.  They refine, question and cement the work we have done so far.  After working through an act, Mike gets the actors to run it.  He gives them detailed notes, sometimes going back over small sections to ‘work’ the notes.

It’s exciting to start to see each act as a whole, and to begin to understand the journey the characters go on.

Terry King, our fight director, comes in on Monday to stage a fight between the actors who play Filumena’s three sons: Luke, Richie and Brodie.  The actors talk him through the dynamics of the scene, and he builds the fight very slowly, move by move, refining it, coming up with ideas, scrapping them, coming up with new ones.  We work the fight into the act, and Terry comes back in on Friday to see how it’s going and oversee the addition of a final undignified tumble onto the floor.

The cast have started to disappear occasionally from the rehearsal room for costume fittings with the designer and costume supervisor.  Bits and pieces of props have started to arrive in the rehearsal room, as our Company Stage Manager Tamsin and Assistant Stage Manager Annique trawl around for just the right piece of period (late 1940s) furniture, jewelry, or object.

By the end of the third week we have run each act; the actors are coming off book; and the shape of the play is becoming tantalizingly clearer.

By Jane Fallowfield

Read more of Jane Fallowfield’s rehearsal diary here. Find out more about Filumena or book to see
the show here. 

“In the balmy heat of late ’40s Naples, Filumena Marturano lies on her deathbed waiting to marry Domenico Soriano, the man who has kept her as his mistress for twenty-five years….” MORE | BOOK