Christmas show - first rehearsal

I'm a happy man tonight. This year's Christmas show was probably the most difficult thing I've ever had to write, simply because it was the third time we've used these characters, it's with the same actors who know me both at my best and at my worst, and it was also time to bring some sort of closure to these creations of ours so we can move on to other projects, without it being a cheesy happy ending or anything too miserable. Two of the cast (Heather and Kevin) have read the script already, but for Colin and Vaughan it was the first time tonight they'd seen it. As I say, I'm a happy man tonight. It works - big style, I actually feel a little bit smug about how good it's looking, already. Having the best cast around really helps things as well, and I think we're onto an absolute winner here. The banter as well was typically brilliant, it's been a couple months (since Edinburgh) that this team have worked together, and although we're sadly without the always brilliant Victoria Welsh, we have Heather back and the first hour or so of the 'rehearsal' was just spent catching up and enjoying ourselves. This little team has been together for a year now and I really, genuinely, couldn't have asked to work with nicer people, they're friends above anything else. From an artistic point of view, they completely get my humour, completely get what I'm up to with this script, and they're just so keen to do it, and enjoy it, and it's all rather lovely. We're booking the venue tomorrow, then tickets for it go on sale. This is real dejavu from about this time last year when we had this excited idea of putting on a Christmas show. The sweating and literally days of sat staring at a script that didn't work for a long time has really been worth it.