Diary

14 March 2009

Deborah MacMillan opens her diary

The conductor Barry Wordsworth at last has the orchestra on Friday, bringing in all the emotional subtext — the romance, passion, power you can’t get with just a piano. The cues are really starting to work: the piece is getting tighter and tighter. We have two casts, the two Isadoras, Tamara Rojo and Isabelle McMeekan, each relishing the part, each very different, both marvellous. Merle Park, Kenneth’s original Isadora, was in the house, giving her input to the girls, passing on her experience. She said that the heart of the ballet is all there. What a relief. She also told me what she’d heard from an old Russian ballerina who’d seen Isadora dance. ‘She vos scandal, she had no knickers...’

One more run-through for each cast before the first night on Wednesday: if this were a commercial production, we’d now be going into weeks of previews before allowing the critics in. It’s madness that after four or five years of serious work, it goes on stage in under a week, to be saluted or damned in a single viewing.

Practically everything Kenneth did was savaged when it first appeared, and so he’s roaring with laughter in advance of this production. I’m sure of this as I’ve been getting regular spirit messages!