Bath

October 23rd. A year ago today I auditioned for Curious Incident. The next day I had a recall. Ten days later we started rehearsals. This is what I tell people when they ask me if I've got "anything in the pipeline" for when this job finishes. Things happen fast in this business. And I've never even had a pipeline: I wouldn't know how to go about getting one.

We're at the Theatre Royal, Bath for two weeks. Pretty much sold out, once again. I'd been looking forward to this venue after what a director told me a few years ago: that this theatre is the best one in the country for comedy. This is because the 900 or so seats are divided into 10 or 12 little areas, so that the audience never feels part of a huge, collective crowd; and therefore they supposedly laugh more readily because they don't feel inhibited at expressing their emotions. I'm not sure that's true. Something I've learned doing this play is that every rule and preconception I've had about audiences has been challenged or disproved. As much as we like to think that we can predict these sorts of things, it's easy to forget that every single audience is different. And, as I've said so many times, this play is unlike anything else I've ever done. It forces us to disregard what we think we know.