Contents page Hergé Biography 2

WEEK FIVE

We work on the first Tharkey scene, exploring ways of using the space to tell the story visually as well as through the text. The main metaphor is Tintin trying to get on the same level as Tharkey, in order to convince him to lead the rescue expedition. We explore visual ways to express this: Tintin sits when Tharkey sits, or stands when he stands.

A good part of the afternoon is spent on improving the on-the-spot walk of the porters in the expedition. At the moment everyone is doing slightly different things and the image doesn’t yet read clearly. We break the walking movement down to see what works best and to try and get everybody using the same technique. By the end of the afternoon the sequence is already much stronger.

In the afternoon a class of seven to eight year olds comes to watch a run of the first half-hour of the show. It’s nerve- wracking for the actors to have an audience at this early stage, but is an incredibly useful exercise for the whole team. The overall feeling from the children is that they enjoy what they see, which is encouraging for everyone. They’re a brilliantly transparent audience, feeling free to talk amongst themselves the moment they lose interest. It’s also obvious that they engage more readily when the story is being told visually. Minimal text seems to work best (one of the children, when asked if there was anything he found boring, replied ‘when they were talking’), but it’s striking that when the text is very strongly supported physically, the children’s attention is held far longer. This is most obvious in the scene where we first meet Tharkey, where the tensions in the space between the main characters are very strong. Tom Wu (who plays Tharkey) has a very focused physical presence that seems to mesmerize the kids.

Stephen and Tom choreograph the fight scene between the monks and Haddock. The whole fight is based around Haddock mistaking the monks’ appeasing movements for gestures of attack. The choreography is great but it’s not yet clear what the catalyst is for all the commotion. Is it enough for Haddock to be unsteady on his feet because of frostbite? The fight ends in a very satisfying moment of Haddock head butting a large gong, which surely does Hergé proud.

What is the dynamic between Blessed Lightning and Overcast Day? Overcast Day is played by Graham who also plays Pandit, the grumpy half of the Expedition Agents duo. Overcast Day is written as a similar character to Pandit, but while exploring the scene Graham hits upon a much more naïve, anxious character, who can’t stop eating. Rufus decides that this is more interesting and wants to try putting him in a fat suit to push the character further.

A number of dramatic character haircuts today – Simon’s bleached white for Snowy, Sam’s and Kenny’s black for Haddock and Chang. Sam now has flashes of looking quite uncannily like the Haddock of the cartoons. The new images give a boost to the company – it feels that we’re one step closer to the show.

It’s been decided that Snowy’s attitude in the Snow Dog song is a bit too macho to suit the character and could be less self-assured. Rufus wants to try Snowy being more drunk. Simon professes to being the world’s worst drunk actor and Mark Lockyer is called in to give a master class. Mark is a ridiculously convincing drunk - even when he’s demonstrating how not to do drunk acting, he’s believable. He’s also able to break down what he does into very technical stages and has Simon looking legless in minutes. We work with the Snow Dog backing band on the theme of drunkenness to create a general swaying, unstable world to support Snowy.
The scene in the Yeti Cave gets to the very heart of what the play is about, and several fundamental questions come up. What stops Tintin from striking the Yeti? How would this moment be different if Tintin hadn’t first met the Grand Abbot and been told to stop fighting? Is that what gives him the strength not to fight the Yeti? It’s important that Tintin comes to the cave in some way wiser than before his time at the monastery, or at least more open to learning something new from his encounter with the Yeti.
Should Chang have a Chinese accent or is the range of accents in the piece eclectic enough to accept a UK accent (in this case Welsh) for this character?
The scene feels a bit wordy and we work on making the storytelling more visual (for example Chang runs in front of the Yeti to stop Tintin from striking him, in support of the line ‘He’s my friend!’).
We run Act Two. Afterwards Rufus decides to cut the Haddock versus Monks scene, feeling it doesn’t add to the story. He also feels the monastery scenes should happen one after another. The restructuring creates a technical problem, as the family will have less time to get down from their flying positions during the Marlinspike Song. It also means there’s now nothing between the avalanche and the scene of Snowy carrying the unconscious Tintin. Rufus asks David to write some extra lines for the family, a kind of interlude, or outside commentary, on Tintin’s predicament. Something along the lines of an obituary.
Thursday 17th November

The decorated bikes arrive – an exciting taster of the visual world of the show that’s being prepared outside the rehearsal room. Company warm-ups have had to fall by the wayside a little as time pressure mounts and at least half the cast has been unwell, so there’s been a bit of winter hibernation feeling. Bringing new props into the rehearsal room helps lift the energy.

Rufus spends some time with Nicky (Blackwell) on the air stewardess character. She creates a character that’s jaded by the job and wears a fake smile for the customers. She becomes an interesting character, but when we run the scene, it feels that developing her downbeat side hasn’t helped the rhythm of the scene. All the minor characters in the show are very engrossing; there’s a constant process of having to find a balance between adding colour in a way that serves the scene’s narrative, rather than distracting from the overall rhythm and focus.

We return to the Pundit and Pandit scene. This scene and the preceding Ramas’ scene are too similar in their dynamic.

After a fairly exhausted few days, everyone comes in with a bright energy this morning, excited by the prospect of the first full run-through of the show today.

The flying family after the avalanche: it feels wrong for them to tell Tintin that he’s “useless and helpless” here. It’s repetitious and doesn't fulfil the function of the scene, which should be about Tintin being tempted into giving up the fight. David will rewrite the lines.

It’s clear that there’s still a lot of work ahead and that the show will go through many mutations during the upcoming technical rehearsal and preview period. Above all though, it feels that the arc of the piece is very strong and that there’ll be a lot of fun to be had with the show. The main characters have also made a big step in the past week in terms of their emotional journeys through the piece. It feels that for all the fun and chaos and bright colours and loud noise, the weight of the story and the characters’ relationships give Tintin the potential to be a very moving piece, as well as an entertaining one.