Monday 23rd March

The working week really began last night, when Carlos, the composer, picked me up at 8 and drove me to this house. He’s a slightly shambling figure, who makes a good living from advertising, working all over Latin America. He’d enjoyed the run on Saturday, saying that after seeing it he had to go and have a whisky to recover, which I took as a good sign.

Thereafter it had been his partner’s 40th Birthday, and he’d been up until 8.30 in the morning, before going to another birthday party in the afternoon. There was a host of CD’s scattered around on his table. We listened to some of them, particularly Tom Verlaine, Brian Eno, Miles Davis and Prokofiev, all of which he felt had some bearing on what he was planning to compose.

Before we got down to business, Carlos asked if I wanted a whisky. I decided I was probably well enough to give it a shot. Half an hour later he served whisky #2. His partner arrived fresh from the play she’s performing in, and joined us. The whisky was having no obvious ill-effects, so I figured I was on the mend and had another. By half past midnight we were most of the way through the bottle, having covered everything from the sources of Beethoven’s inspiration to Carlos’ trip to Loch Ness to see Jimmy Page’s castle. He offered to drive me home, and I sort of suggested I could get a bus, but Carlos was having none of it. So we careered down the Rambla, Carlos talking non stop, the river-sea which is the Plate, looming to our left. He dropped me off safely amd vanished into the night. That’s the way to have your creative meetings.

This afternoon I went and drank maté with Anibal, before going to rehearsal. Valentina, Ana and I worked on 3, all detail and precision now as they’re getting to the point where they’re starting to play with the text more, satisfying for all concerned. V is younger that A, and had to work hard to front up to her, without appearing to work hard. (The truth is that I never had the ages of the characters particularly fixed in my mind, but this combination seems to work, although I could see it functioning with their ages reversed.) At the scene’s conclusion, when MC leaves, and CG is left alone, Valentina said that for the first time she realised that what really upsets CG is not the fact of MC’s departure, but that she has ‘lost’ this round. Gradually more things click into place, and more and more these things are discoveries of the actors, rather than the director.

We finished at 11.30, and I apologised for keeping them so late. They were like – this is normal for us. No-one bats an eyelash working until whenever. I explained that if you were to finish rehearsing at 11.30pm in London, the pubs are shut and even if you found a pub that was open, you’d be going home on the night bus.

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