It has been an extraordinary few days with The Cardinals. The show is very complicated to perform, thus slow to make and hence it came together very late. On Monday evening I saw the first half compete for the first time, On Tuesday morning I saw the second half complete for the first time. That evening the Premiere audience saw the first occasion in which two halves were put together for the first time.

Monday’s run of the first half was everything I had hoped the show would be and more. It was beautiful, moving and at times utterly chaotic. The Cardinals were doing their absolute best to hold the show together and deliver a wonderful performance, but the was too much to do, they were too ambitious with the material, they were running around lost and shouting at each other one minute then delivering some achingly beautiful, naive version of a Bible story the next. I loved it but knew it could be a long time before I would see it as good again. As the actors have started to get on top of the fiendishly complicated show the level of chaos has reduced and I’ve had to start asking the actors to put fake elements of it back up in. Of course because they’re great actors the faked chaos starts to look better than the more genuine kind. Here are Graeme’s thoughts.

I’m sorry there is no photo but I’ve managed to break my camera.