A marathon eight hours of rehearsal at CBC Studio 700 completed today; I am about ready to drop.

I forgot to mention in my previous post that our leading man, Nick Fontaine, who was playing Tom Marlowe, had to drop the show yesterday after catching the evil death cold that I had during the run of Sweeney. So, six days before opening, we found ourselves without a star. Luckily, the very talented Lucas Blaney stepped in yesterday. However, this morning, after last night's snowfall, Lucas was stuck in Langley, and so we found ourselves once again without our Tom. We all fuelled ourselves with buckets of free McDonald's coffee, which was being handed out across the street at the VPL, and trudged on without him for the morning.

In today's rehearsals we managed to block the entire show, learn choreography for several numbers, run the entirety of Act One, and a few select numbers from Act Two. What I'm finding the most difficult is carting around my black binder of music. The score is relatively simple and I'm off-book for most of it. I find the binder cumbersome. I tried to offload it, but apparently it is an Applause! rule that you must perform with your binder (since it's a musical "in concert"), so that was nixed. Ah well.

Another marathon rehearsal tomorrow, a day off, then dress rehearsal!

Daniel (Bobby) and Jaclyn (Babe), who sing "Button Up Your Overcoat." Also pictured: Unamused Hal and his giant cup of McDonald's free coffee.

MD Caitlin, Jen (Connie Lane) and...finally...Lucas (Tom Marlowe) figuring out "The Best Things In Life Are Free."

I made Caitlin pretend to be happy here.

Directing is easy, right, Cath?