I had to... well, I say "had to", I chose to... shave my beard into Harry Flashman-style cavalry whiskers, which looked brilliant in costume, but I have to say slightly less so in the day-to-day, getting on a bus, going into work, all that stuff. But, it was a bit of fun and it only lasted a week.
Shaving the whiskers off was quite a pleasure on the Sunday, I must say. Even though I have had a beard for the best part of seven months now, so it has taken a wee while to get used to the stranger peeping at me from the mirror - but I need to be clean-shaven for Glengarry Glen Ross anyway, so it's all good.
The Sunday after P&P I had been volunteered to do an extract from The Scottish Play at CADArts' Jubilee show...bit of an odd choice for a celebratory evening in praise of the monarch, in that Macbeth is a dark, dark play about regicide and its aftermath...but hey, I don;t make the rules. So, I did the "Is this a dagger..." speech and then (successfully, I think) revived the corpse of the evening's mood (the people on before me were dancers doing the Charleston...) with some further Shakespearean blah, this time in praise of Elizabeth I...so I thought it fitting to address it to the current Elizabeth. Phew. Bullet dodged, more or less.
Last night was opening night (at Shaftesbury Arts Centre) of Glengarry Glen Ross: went pretty well, although the strong language warning put off most of the townsfolk from coming, so we had a smallish crowd - although, to be fair, it may have been Germany v Spain had something to do with it, too.
On to Avonbourne on Wednesday, followed next week by a run at BLTC. Hopefully by then I will have mastered the art of pouring coffee into, rather than in the general vicinity of, my mug whilst on stage. Obviously I blame the Wilko £10 percolator, but....