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1. What is it called? - On The Rocks
2. Who is it by? - Colin Shelbourn and Andrew Thomas
3. What else have you done? - Natural Causes and Adrian’s Wall, both performed at the Brewery Arts Centre.
4. Who is directing it? - Lynne Gibbons, who recently directed Abegail’s Party at the Brewery.
5. Who is in it? - Mark Skinner, Rosie Wates, Dennis Bland, Simon Yaxley, Emma Aylett and Jacqui Wallace, all members of the Brewery Theatre Company.
6. So what is it about? - 24 hours in the life of Lakeland’s newest, smallest and least well-organised mountain rescue team.
7. Why mountain rescue? - There’s danger, conflict, excitement, death, great scenery, brightly coloured ropes and beards. What more could you want?
8. It’s a comedy then? - We like to think so but with moments of high drama, emotional tension and squirrels.
9. Is it based on ...? - It’s not based on any mountain rescue team we know. The team is fictional, the characters are invented and we didn’t steal any of the jokes.
10. Oh come on, I recognise .... - No, really, we don’t mix with mountaineers.
11. What qualifies you to write it then? - We thought of it.
12. What do the mountain rescue teams think of it? - We hope they’ll come and see it and tell us.
13. When is it on? - 18th to 21st October 2006 at the Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal.
14. And what is this blog for? - To give a unique insight into the production process, from initial casting to first night and beyond. It will capture the ups and downs of rehearsal, the highs and lows, the tears and the tantrums, ... and that’s just from the writers.
15. How often will the blog be updated? - Every week or until the cast throw me out of rehearsals.

Seven years after the original idea, five revisions, fourteen months after the last draft of the script and 24,000 words later, we’re finally casting On The Rocks. Brewery Theatre Company issued the casting call a couple of months ago and we have twelve actors competing for the six parts.

We assemble in the Studio at the Brewery Arts Centre. The director, Lynne, splits the actors into pairs and gets them cracking with improvisations of the snow hole scene. Andrew and I watch these closely - you never know if someone will come up with a line worth stealing for the play. This is followed by a couple of other scenarios before they are let loose on the script itself. Apart from a read-through last year, this is the first time we’ve heard actors uttering these lines. Do they make sense? Are they still funny? Oh god, did we really write that?

Lynne, Andrew and I each compile our own shortlist of the actors we want for the roles - I resolve to strike out anyone who doesn’t laugh at the jokes.

It’s one of the hardest jobs of a production, deciding who does and does not get to be in. Unless you’ve written with a specific person in mind, it’s a fair chance that none of the actors will exactly match the characters as you imagined them, so you have to look for other intangibles - delivery, timing, even mundane things like ability to learn lines and the coolness to deliver them in front of an audience. Most of that is down to Lynne. Andrew and I are trying to fit actor to character as best we can. At the end of the final session, the three of us huddle at the back of the Studio to compare shortlists. To our suprise, they match; we have a cast.

I arrive at the Brewery Arts Centre expecting the second read-through of the script, but Art Room 1 has been reorganised with tables labeled RADIO, KITCHEN, MAP TABLE, OUTSIDE - we’re into a full-blown rehearsal. Lynne and the cast are quickly into the mechanics of blocking out moves, making sure no one shields another actor or turns a back to the audience (very dangerous - you never know what the audience will do when your back is turned). And they’re starting to work on pace and characterisation.

I’m not sure how usual it is for writers to turn up at rehearsals (rare, I imagine, if they’ve been dead for a while) but it’s useful to be around to modify the script if needed. What I love about theatre writing is the collaborative process. It evolves from the relatively anti-social activity of putting words into a computer to working with a group of people to make the script come alive on stage.

Andrew and I had anticipated a couple of workshops prior to full rehearsals, to allow time to shake down the script, get rid of clanky lines which don’t sound right. It looks like we’ve skipped that stage, so we’ll be modifying the text as rehearsals are underway. It will be less adrenalin-fuelled than our first stage play, Natural Causes. That was very exciting - Act 1 was being rehearsed whilst we were still writing Act 2. We tend to redraft as we go along (the advantage of writing in a pair) so there shouldn’t be any major alterations. However, I discover this evening that a couple of the actors have already started to learn their lines. No, no, stop it at once, we might want to change it, take the scripts away from them again ...

It's 31 degrees outside, one of the hottest days since 1911. An ideal day to spend in the dark confines of the Brewery Studio, rehearsing the snowhole scenes.

There are just two characters in these scenes, played by Mark Skinner and Simon Yaxley. Mark is one of the Brewery Theatre Company stalwarts, which is both a Good Thing and a Bad Thing. Good because he is very confident and knows his stuff. Bad because he doesn’t have what I feel is quite the right level of deference towards the writers. For example, one of his lines is followed by Simon saying, “That’s a very good question”, to which Mark keeps ad-libbing, “It’s a very long question.” Eventually, I get the hint and trim the question. I bet Aykbourn never has these problems.

It’s actually quite tricky because you don’t want to undermine the director when you’re doing this so we clear line changes with Lynne first rather than pile in and give them to the actors direct. It wasn’t quite the same on the last play, Adrian’s Wall. That was directed by Sam Mason, who is also a writer, so he was happily modifying things as he went along. We attended rehearsals to make sure we still recognised some of the script.

This rehearsal is notable for sorting out a minor disagreement between the authors. We - oh, all right then, I - had one of the characters slagging off Duke of Edinburgh Scheme participants. Quite unjustifiably, of course, but that’s half the fun of letting your characters have prejudices. Andrew had misgivings (and it turns out the director did too) but I was being bullish about it. (I’m a cartoonist, it’s my job to annoy people.) However, hearing the line said by an actor, it fell a bit flat. So out it went. Andrew and Lynne win this one. But the rude line about the army stays in ...

Full cast rehearsal in Art Room 1. We’re launching into Act 1, Scene 4 and because the character Helen hardly appears in the first three scenes, it’s only the second time we’ve had the full cast together since the initial casting. Whilst everyone is setting up, Emma, who plays Helen, comes over and says, “How do you want me, north or south?” A number of intriguing possibilities flit briefly through my brain but it turns out she’s talking about accent. We go for south - there are already a couple of strong northern accents in the cast.

As the deadline for the Brewery brochure is looming, Mark and Simon are abducted briefly for publicity shots. We spot Mark outside, clambering up the Brewery wall, presumably for a rock-climbing pic (unless he’s forgotten how to get back in). Lynne takes the opportunity to run the remaining cast through their character motivation. “We should listen,” says Andrew, “ we might learn something useful about our characters.”

The rehearsal romps along with considerable energy. The cast are getting used to each other and relying less on their books for the lines. They’re beginning to improvise and develop the characters. Dennis is getting a handle on the bluff, larger-than-life character of the rescue team leader. Simon is developing a terrific line in adoring stares whenever he’s onstage with Helen. I had originally worried that one or two actors might prove to be scene-stealers but I think we’ve got a well-balanced cast here. Andrew and I have worked hard to balance out the script so everyone has a mix of comic and dramatic material to work with. The recent revisions have also tried to play to the actors’ strengths.

This is now the final major script revision of the script (in the idiosyncratic script-numbering system I use, that’s version 1.5). Any changes from now on will be lines which the cast copy into their scripts. Inevitably there will be a few of these but hopefully not enough to make necessitate another print out. The cast are particularly insistent about this; Dennis has produced his script as a very neat, A5, spiral bound copy and now everyone wants one.

Back in the Brewery Studio for the latest rehearsal. Everyone is here for Act 1, Scene 4 again. We now have an official prompt - Jeanette. She laughs whilst reading the play, so that’s a more independent evidence that it is, at times, funny.

One or two logistical problems begin to rear their heads. There is a climbing wall which is crucial to two scenes - so much so that climbing ability was a requirement for four of the actors. At first we thought we had the loan of a portable climbing wall from a local hotel (portable in the sense that you could hitch it to a trailer, not that it was inflatable and you could carry it under your arm). Now it looks as though it might be unsuitable. Andrew and I start discussing script changes in case we can’t get one but Lynne is still optimistic; wait until we discover what the set designer is plotting.

Tonight’s rehearsal throws up the problem of repetition. Everyday speech contains bucket loads of it (if you don’t believe me, spend ten minutes chatting to a politician) but as soon as you include it in a script, the lines clank about horribly and throw off the actors. One of Helen’s scenes, where she sells her marketing campaign to the rescue team, turns out to have a lot of redundancy and awkward phrasing. Out comes the blue pencil for a blizzard of line changes. It’s amazing how easy it is to miss these when you’re writing. Sometimes, you don’t even realise how difficult the lines are to say. Our last play, Adrian’s Wall, had a classic, where a character refers to his wife as “marching to the beat of her own hormonal drum.” Try saying that a few times and you’ll see what I mean.

Real life intrudes on the drive home when I get pulled over by a police car. I have a headlight out (difficult to spot in these light, summer evenings). But whilst I’m stopped, would I like to take part in their splendid, summer drink-driving campaign by being breathalised? This will teach me to do cartoons about the police in the Gazette. As I haven’t been breathalised before, this is quite exciting. The constable explains how the little electronic box works and what the four LEDs mean: sober, stern warning, as a newt and extraordinary rendition ... or something like that. Despite blowing really hard, I succeed only in lighting up the first LED. Disappointment all round and I’m sent on my way. But at least I’ve gone away knowing how to draw a breathaliser for the next Gazette cartoon.

Who’s bright idea was it to write a play about a mountain rescue team? It must be the most prop-intensive scenario we could have devised. On the other hand, we’re in exactly the right geographical location to source the props. If we can’t find a load of matching rucksacks, ropes, harnesses, crampons, ice axes, head torches, Goretex jackets and bivvy bags round here, we won’t find them anywhere. Ten minutes in Ambleside should do it. The trick, of course, is sourcing them without bankrupting the Brewery Theatre Company. Prop logistics is not something that Andrew and I kept uppermost in our minds whilst writing the play. (Any sponsorship-rich manufacturers out there, feel free to get in touch.)

Take the survival bags. Two of the characters, Neil and Duncan, spend a substantial proportion of the play in these, huddled in the snowhole. At some point, they are supposed to share a survival bag. That’s going to have to be a big bag. For the time being, we’re going to have to improvise and at the last rehearsal, Lynne, the director, turned up with a couple of black bin bags. When she purchased them, she got the biggest she could find and ran the danger of being arrested: “You do realise these are for wheelie bins?” said the shopkeeper. “That’s okay,” said Lynne, “As long as they’re big enough to put a body in them.”

Survival bags are generally robust, plastic things, designed to conserve body heat. So Neil and Duncan are going to be in full winter gear, in heat-retaining bags, under full theatre lighting. Never mind the characters, will the actors survive to the end of the play?

Summer is sliding past, the holidays are over. As befitting such an internationally renowned crew, the cast and authors vacationed variously in the Alps, Turkey, Austria, California, Slovenia ...Wales.

We’re back in the rehearsal room and it’s time to move onto Act 2. Now it gets exciting. Act 2, Scene 1, contains two major theatrical set pieces plus it’s the emotional core of the play. Feelings boil over, relationships unravel and the mountain rescue team begins to fall apart.

We’re walking a tightrope in this scene. A lot of the comedy lies in context rather than funny lines. At least, that’s the theory. We may have written pages of unfunny dialogue and won’t know until it’s in front of an audience. Tonight is the first test: does it seem funny in rehearsal?

Well, yes, so far so good. Lots of emotion, some very funny moments (a few of which were actually in the script) and then we arrive at The Kiss.

Tricky blighter, romance. When two blokes sit round a keyboard and it’s time to write the kissing scene, you have to do more than type THE CHARACTERS SNOG. You’re trying to anticipate the emotional pulse of the audience. If they’re not ready for it - if you haven’t got them leaning forward in their seats, hoping it’s going to happen - it’s going to be cringe-making. It’s even more awkward for the actor and actress. If they’re too tentative, it will look stagey; too enthusiastic and teeth can be lost, stable relationships ruined.

The actors and director discuss how to handle it.Stand here, move here, hand here - on which line do they start to move together, how long do they hold each other? Enough discussion. It’s time to go for it. The dialogue leads them together, the tension mounts, the actors clinch and ... perfect. What a relief. We all lie back and light cigarettes. With a bit of luck, we have our audience “ahhh” moment.

It’s been a while since the last blog and rehearsals have been progressing fast. In fact, I missed a rehearsal last week and was surprised at how performances had gone up several notches next time I attended. Clearly it improves when the authors aren’t around.

It’s amazing the difference a couple of days can make. Last week, Andrew and I missed a rehearsal. The following rehearsal, I was surprised at how far the performances had progressed. Maybe the writers are putting everybody off? Surely not. We sit there happily allowing the actors to change our lines with hardly a cross word. What could be more supportive than that.

Each time I go now, the actors arrive with more and more props. Lynne and Vicky (director and prompt) usually get to the studio first with wheelchair, heart monitor, radios and various medical equipment. Anyone watching in the car park must think the Brewery has a major medical emergency thee times a week. Mark usually turns up with an array of climbing gear, some of it fresh from the crags. The others are all bringing in items of costume and additional bits and pieces. Each rehearsal now begins looking like a car boot sale.

The reason for this is that, rather incredibly, the Brewery has nowhere secure to store any of this stuff, so each Brewery Theatre Company production turns into a mobile props shop. And there’s a limit to how much you can get in your car. I’ve already been stopped by the police once during this production, I don’t fancy being quizzed about having half a dozen radios, a portable splint and some ice axes in the back of the car. (“A play, sir, about mountain rescue? A likely story, perhaps you’d care to come and tell it down at the station.”)

It also means that for director and stage crew, rehearsals start half an hour before the actors arrive in order to set everything up. The actors are now having to handle the props and get familiar with them, so everything has to be set out as it will be on opening night. And mountain rescue is complicated. They have so much stuff!

Andrew and I have resolved the next play will definitely be set in a coffee shop, a front room, or better yet, a desert. No props apart from a tent, a camping stool and an inflatable cactus.

I’ve been wondering or a while what sort of reaction the play is likely to get from the mountain rescue community. Now we’ve found out.

It all came about because Lynne, the director, didn’t have any change when she went shopping. She was collared by someone from Kendal Mountain Rescue, collecting funds outside a local supermarket. To distract him from the fact she wasn’t putting anything in the tin, she told him about this play she was directing ... The upshot was, we go an invite to look around the base and chat over some of the technical details.

Lynne and I went along and were guided round by Chris and Keith. First surprise, the base was much neater and better organised than we had envisaged for our fictional team. Kendal has a very impressive set up. They took us round, showed us the radio room, talked us through the procedures for a call out and were more than generous with lending us equipment for props. Lynne and I staggered out with arms full of gear with more to follow.

As I prowled round the base, taking a few reference photos, I discovered a notice board with the legend, Culture Corner: ‘Anyone interested in attending a group trip to a play called On The Rocks sign up here’. Terrific. Half the team will be in the audience on the first night. No pressure there, then.

We met up with Keith and Chris again a week or so later when they came in to talk the actors through radio technique. There is a scene where we have several of the characters on the mountain, trying to communicate with the person back at base. It turns out we’ve got some of the procedure wrong, especially when it comes to who can hear what. A few modified lines and changes of approach from the actors and we arrive at a believable compromise. This scene has a number of quick, very short lines (“it’s an overhang,” “It’s a snow hole”) which the actors are coming to learn and love (ahem). The idea of this isn’t so much to paint a word picture of what they can see but to keep the dialogue fast, terse and confused. As the actors’ radio technique gets more fluid, it begins to make sense. And we’re assured that there are occasions during a real rescue where it does get confused as this, where base hasn’t a clue what’s going on because no one is feeding back the right information.

In general, the Kendal team are very supportive. (As long as we make very clear that none of the characters are based on them. Got that? All our characters are FICTIONAL, IT’S NOT A REAL TEAM.) As a thank you, Lynne has arranged for them to fund raise during the performance night. A good result all round.

Part of the fun of being a cartoonist is that you get involved in the publicity for anything you do. Most of the time, you just can’t help yourself.

When it’s your own play, it’s trickier. You know what it is about but can you sell it to someone else? Can you be immodest enough to tell the world how brilliant it is? Yes. It’s easier when two of you have written the play - you’re not boasting, you’re selling it on behalf of the other guy.

The challenge as an illustrator is to come up with images which capture the feel of the play and entice people to read on. The Brewery brochure advert for the play was not too hard. We had photos of two of the cast which looked just right. The flyer and poster were a little more difficult. How to sum up the play in a few images without giving too much away? In the end, I think we managed it - an ice axe, a route map and an overdue library book. The montage catches some of the elements without blowing the plot apart. I felt quite pleased with it. You can see the results at www.shelbourn.com/rocks - or hopefully all over South Lakeland by the time you read this.

It’s actually good fun taking posters round and chatting to people who are willing to display them. I’m sure all playwrights have had to do this at some stage or other. I wonder how Shakespeare felt about it? Producing individual, hand-written posters with a quill pen must have been laborious but can’t have been slower than some theatre marketing departments I’ve encountered.

Andrew and I couldn’t find a quill pen, so last weekend we had flyers printed and, in addition to pounding the streets, went on a PR blitz. We haven’t been booked by Richard and Judy yet but the Simon Yaxley’s radio show is almost as prestigious. It’s all about getting the message out there and alerting our potential audience that a terrific evening awaits them. So what are you doing reading this? Go and book your tickets now!

The past couple of rehearsals have been chaotic, through no fault of the actors or director. When you have press around, costumes being constructed, sets being discussed and props being sourced, it’s not the most relaxing of environments.

Tonight, everything is more focussed. To build up pace, Lynne has the cast speaking their lines fast and hitting the cues dead on. The effect is bizarre. In fact, I missed the beginning and walked in to discover one of our scenes running at twice the normal speed. I wondered if something had fallen into my tea, earlier in the evening. Once I caught up, it was very invigorating. It certainly makes the comedy snappy and heightens the ensemble nature of the piece. Everyone has to pay attention or the cue has gone in a flash. Even the notorious rescue scene benefited. Simon seemed to regard the instruction to speak quickly as a personal challenge and as his voice speeded up, it shifted register into the ultrasonic and my terrier started howling out in the car.

The other reason for increasing the pace is that the play is running slightly long. Lynne is concerned about this but, having been held hostage in a Ken Dodd show, it doesn’t worry me. It bothers the cast though - they know that if they don’t keep the play moving along, the authors will start cutting lines. With only eight days to opening night, nobody wants that. If any actor sees Andrew or I pick up a pencil and hover over the script, we get the hard stare. In fact, at this stage of rehearsal, the writers are redundant. We’re allowed to get involved in props, stage design and publicity but not to fiddle with the words. The actors don’t need us any more. On The Rocks is flying solo.

Sunday, three days before first night and we’re finally in the Brewery Theatre. The cast spent the morning rehearsing in Art Room 1; it’s faster, slicker and funnier than Thursday’s run through. It seems a long time ago that we all met in this room for the first rehearsal. Although only four months have passed, the play has moved a long way since then.

Whilst the cast is rehearsing, the Brewery technical crew has begun assembling the climbing wall in the theatre. It’s an impressive structure but immediately throws up the first technical problem - it’s much farther forward than we anticipated. As a result, the rest of the set has to move forward and we’re concerned that there won’t be enough maneuvering room for the cast. The actors are less worried - over the past few months they have rehearsed in a variety of rooms of all shapes and sizes and what seemed, at the time, to be a pain in the neck, now works to their advantage They’ve become so adaptable to different spaces that they can take the new stage space in their stride.

As I follow the cast onto the stage and see the rows of seats in front of them, it seems real, at last. In around 80 hours, they are going to be doing this in front of the first night audience. As one of the authors, I suppose I ought to feel nervous too. But I’m more relaxed about On The Rocks than any previous play. For the few weeks, each rehearsal has been better than the last, with better timing, more energy and greater fluidity. Today’s rehearsal was spot on and I’ve no doubt that Wednesday’s performance will be even better. They are going to romp it.

Right now, at 5.20 on Sunday afternoon, from the perspective of Row F in the Brewery Theatre, I’m feeling rather responsible. There are around a dozen people working on the stage, lights have been positioned, flats are being painted, the snowhole is being constructed. In one corner is an unfeasibly large pile of props. Two of the crew are swarming up the plywood climbing wall, testing out the climbing holds. Even Lynne, the director, has been roped in to finish off the snowhole. This is all Andrew and my fault. All this activity, all this time and energy, sprang out of one evening sitting around Andrew’s dining table when one of us said, “What about a play about mountain rescue?”

It’s Monday evening, 48 hours to go and we’re all in the theatre for the tech rehearsal. There are about twenty people in the darkened theatre, including several that I don’t recognise. These are Steve Parnaby’s technical crew, who are responsible for rigging and setting the lights, assembling the set and running sound effects.

The actors have a rather tedious job to do this evening. Instead of a complete run through, they have to deliver those lines which lead up to end of scenes, cue sound or lighting effects. It’s a bit of a shambles but this is, apparently, normal. It’s the first time the technical team have had a chance to run this so there’s a lot of repetition. Simon, who plays Duncan, is a Brewery pantomime regular and an old hand at this game: he’s come equipped with sandwiches and a thermos and clearly isn’t planning to get out of here any time soon.

The play is still evolving, even at this late stage. Effects are dropped, costumes are modified and, in one case, a major set piece is reintroduced. This latter feature is Mark’s fault. Confronted by a climbing wall, he can’t resist swarming up the holds. The next thing we know, he’s found a harness and is chatting to Lynne about reinstating the abseiling scene. We try it out. We have three cast members involved in the abseil. Mark is an experienced climber and looks quite at home at the end of a rope. Jacqui, who doesn’t climb, is less familiar with the harness and ends up swinging in mid-air, revolving forlornly. It’s funny but not the effect we intended. Denis, the third member of the abseil team, is wandering around dressed as a giant rodent and deemed unsafe for aerial work.

Well, it was a first attempt. We move on and put off having another go on Tuesday, just before the dress rehearsal. It’s all getting tight now and we’re running out of time to try new stuff. This is worrying but, just before we leave, we have some welcome news which cheers us all up. Ticket sales are moving fast and we look like having at least one sell out.

I lied a couple of blogs ago when I said I was feeling relaxed about the first night. I reckoned without the dress rehearsal.

It’s a tradition that a poor dress rehearsal means you have a good first night. Fortunately, this proved true in our case. The dress was unnerving for everyone. Lines went astray, technical cues were missed and the pace was slow. As I drove home afterwards, I found myself looking round for posters to take down. It was only when I’d calmed down I realised that the actors had never performed on set before and it was the first time the technical crew had seen the entire play.

First nights are weird for a writer. You wander around in the foyer, greeting various people you know, the kinder ones congratulating you ... but at this point, it’s not really a lot to do with you. You feel a bit of a fraud. It’s the actors, director and crew who have put in all the hard work. The most Andrew and I have done lately is publicise the thing.

Ticket sales have rocketed in last the 24 hours and the theatre is nearly full. A long piece on Radio Cumbria included an interview with members of the mountain rescue team association. Nothing like a little added controversy to boost sales. Milling about in the foyer, I realise that the mountain rescue brigade are out in force. Kendal team has a fund-raising display in the foyer and there is an unusually large presence of fleece jackets heading into the theatre. The mountain rescue bods are easy to locate from the loud laughter when the script slags off a rival team.

As the play gets underway, it proves unnecessary for me to hang onto the chair arms in order for the actors to remember their lines. So I sit back and enjoy the audience reaction. Most of the laughter seems to be coming in the right places. There are a few bonus laughs, the odd gag sails past without a murmer (note to self - cut in the next draft) and everyone goes quiet in the serious bits. I’m surprised at the number of times there is applause at the end of a scene. This is very gratifying and attributable entirely to the performances. The actors have got the audience on their side.

The play goes very quickly. Lights go up and we all leave to the sound of Splint Radio, Simon’s improvised hospital radio piece in the role of Duncan (fortunately most of the audience are out before they get the chance to discover that some of it is funnier than the play). Andrew and I meet in the bar, shake hands and head off to pick the friends most likely to say how brilliant the writing was. Egos suitably massaged, we then wait for Lynne and the actors to emerge so we can congratulate the ones who have done all the real work.

I do wish people would stop telling me that. Firstly, I’m not an actor so it doesn’t apply. Secondly - um, I’ve already fractured an arm since the play began rehearsing and I’d rather not do anything more adventurous.

Last night was the second run of the play in front of an audience. And what a difference. Some of this could have been down to one of the authors (i.e. me) being less uptight than the evening before but a lot of it was to do with the audience. We had a few more in than first night (215, I believe) and a fewer mountaineers, which raised the tone considerably. Instead of mountain rescue teams, I spotted Lindale Book Group and members of Lakes Tai Chi, to name but two. As a result, the performance was different.

The first half went a little slower, despite a flying edit from two of the actors. It is always galling when they do this and there is no discernible detriment to the play - I think they’re trying to tell the authors something. In fact, this author didn’t even spot there was anything missing until the interval came round. The second half was much quicker, with a lot of confidence and energy. It was good fun. And the audience reaction was different again to the first night. Laughs came more or less where expected, but I didn’t anticipate the joke about heart consultants getting applause. Looks like we may have swopped mountaineers for doctors in tonight’s crowd.

Being a cartoonist, I worry when I don’t provoke a reaction, so I was a little concerned at how quiet the audience was during one of the serious sections. When I mentioned this to Lynne, the director, she laughed and said it was a good sign. “It means they’re listening, they’re following every word.”

So that’s it, I can relax and enjoy the rest of the run. Tonight is a sell out, Saturday is close. I hope the cast enjoy it as much as I plan to. On to the last night ...

PS On the subject of heart consultants, we make a passing reference in the play to a character called Bennet-Jones, so it was alarming to discover that there really is a Cumbrian consultant called Bennett-Jones, a specialist in nephrology. I thought this was something to do with nephews but apparently it’s a kidney specialist. Phew. Close ... Any resemblance to any consultants or mountaineers living or dead is purely coincidental.

We have a sell out tonight, so my expectations of the audience are high. As usual, I sit somewhere at the back. This is not so that I can make a fast escape if the crowd turn ugly but so I can watch the audience as well as the stage. It’s very informative. Looking along the rows, I can watch faces as they follow the action and concentrate on the quieter, emotionally tense scenes.

Tonight is very different from the previous two. The energy level from the cast is greater but the audience reaction is much more subdued. Very little applause after scenes. All the laughs in the right place but they miss one or two jokes. They’re concentrating as if someone has told them there’s going to be a test afterwards.

Afterwards I discover that Lynne has been playing fierce director with the cast, urging them to push their performances harder and get more feedback from the audience. The authors rush to their defense. We thought the performances were fine. After all, this is the first time Brian and Jenny have nearly destroyed the set during the mock sex scene at the beginning of scene 2.

Speaking of the set, we have a new addition this evening. Mark has brought in a photo of himself on the summit of the Matterhorn, taken a few weeks ago. It’s ideal to go on the rescue base noticeboard - Neil on the summit of Europe. If only we’d thought to mock up a squirrel bar before Mark set off.

After the play, I head to the bar where I am cornered by the chairman of the Wasdale mountain rescue team. This turns out to be a less threatening experience than I feared. He likes the play and claims to recognise all the characters portrayed on stage. Memo to self - don’t get lost on a mountain near Wasdale. Andrew and I are chuffed - it looks like we’ve got the characters and the background just right.

Rosie and Lynne are also in the bar, discussing their next production. This is quite poignant for the writers. The actors can move onto other productions relatively quickly. We both know that, unless this script is picked up, it’s going to be at least two years before we have a new script ready for production.

And so to the final performance. This is both exciting and sad. We all know the cast are going to enjoy this one. It’s a sell-out audience and expectations are raised.

It’s sad because you all know that after this one, the team disbands and the cast disperse. It’s even worse for the writers. Over the rehearsals and performances, we’ve come to hear the cast’s voices in these roles and we’ll continue to hear them when we work further on the script. Despite this, it is the last time we’ll be in the company of these particular characters, unless the play is picked up by other theatres. Will Brian and Charlotte get back together? What does the future hold for Neil and Helen? Does Jenny get to the summit of Everest? Will Duncan ever appear on I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here? Through the skills of the cast, all these characters have become real in a strange, slightly removed fashion. I’m going to miss them.

The show itself is terrific. The cast have relaxed into the roles and I can tell they’re enjoying it. There are more ad libs from Simon, more relaxed performances all round, even some experimentation with the rhythm and how lines are played. They’re working the audience more, riding the laughs and getting the timing just right. It is frustrating to have such a short run and see everything come together on the final night.

The audience clearly felt it too. There is applause at the end of nearly every scene. At one point, Rosie’s character, Charlotte, is applauded as she leaves the stage after a particularly emotionally-charged scene. And the squirrels go down a storm.

The cast take their final bows. They even get a set of score cards from one row. (Okay, I admit it, I may have had something to do with this.) The audience filters out for the last time to the sound of Simon’s portrayal of Duncan on Splint Radio, his hospital radio station. (“And coming up next, for Brian, who is in hospital after a heart attack, it’s Fergal Sharkey and A Good Heart is Hard to Find.”). Afterwards, it’s hugs all round, a few speeches and then the cast and crew go off for a meal. The rest of us head out into the night and home.

The 48 hours after Last Night felt peculiar. The house seems empty without a bunch of squirrel heads and climbing props. Suddenly I’ve got all these evenings back again. What on earth did I used to do to fill them up?

The aftermath of On The Rocks has been fun. The cast has been emailing back and forth and Duncan - sorry, Simon - has been on the radio every day, so I’ve felt less cut loose than after previous productions. There have been lots of positive comments from friends, plus the inevitable IDWIBs (I Didn’t Write It But ... “I think it would be better if you changed this, this and this”). Twenty years as a writer and cartoonist has made me immune to IDWIBs - take on board the useful stuff, shields up for the rest.

At the end of 90 hours of rehearsal, the play has been on stage for eight hours and been seen by over 900 people. It’s also raised £500 for Kendal Mountain Rescue, £300 of it on the final night when Denis - or do I mean Brian? - gave a rousing curtain call speech, exhorting the audience to dig deep. A few West End producers in the audience would have been handy but we got the next best thing; we invited several local theatre directors to attend and two TV companies have requested the script. We even got a nice, handwritten postcard from Alan Bennett, who couldn’t make the performance but wished us luck (I had to keep quiet about the fact that we’d invited him in case the director fainted).

The Brewery Theatre Company and the Brewery Arts Centre are invaluable resources for local writers new to the stage and Andrew and I both feel very grateful to them. It’s been an exciting experience - there is absolutely no substitute for getting your writing in front of an audience. You soon realise what works, what doesn’t, what the audience finds funny and which of your precious, much-cherished jokes disappear without trace. I still don’t know why the golf balls got such a big laugh. Or the funeral march. But they’re both staying in.

Andrew and I will be working on the inevitable rewrites to fine tune the script. Then begins the long process of sending it out to other theatres, trying to give it a life beyond these four nights in Kendal. It will sit on the www.shelbourn.com/rocks website as a downloadable file from the end of October, in an attempt to seduce those elusive producers.

After the rewrites, it’s on to the next project. We have an idea in mind, a good title and a set of six characters. Lynne, the director, made us promise to keep the props to a minimum on the next one but I don’t think I told her that there’s a riot in the middle of it.

This blog will remain open for the foreseeable future, in case there’s anything more to report. You never know, there might be an exciting sequel. Failing that, I’ll start a new one. Perhaps I’ll begin it earlier, as soon as Andrew and I sit down to write the new script:

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Note to any theatre companies or directors reading the above ... get in touch NOW for a copy of the script!

Visit the On The Rocks page for original publicity, programme and cartoons of the main characters.

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