I Am What I Am, John Barrowman [smart ebook reader .txt] 📗

shows couldn’t operate without them. Runners are the young men and women, often interns or recent graduates directly out of university, who scuttle around a set taking care of the small details that hold all the big stuff together. Left your script in the dressing room, your phone in the car, your costume change in the rehearsal room, your sister in the wrong hallway miles from the studio? The runner solves these problems and makes everything okay.

My runner for the term of TTN was a terrific, hard-working young man named Alex Bender. I knew we’d work well together and the production was off to a great beginning when I saw the call sheet for show one. My runner’s name was listed next to mine. The sheet read: ‘John Barrowman – A. Bender.’

Even though I was a production virgin,15 Gavin and I had lots of input into the production side of the show, and we worked very closely with Mo, Mel and Paul Domaine, the show’s choreographer, to make the whole ensemble pop.

Paul was brilliant. He could take any show tune or pop song and choreograph it into something hip and flashy and breathtaking. With the talents of the show’s eight dancers, the J8s, the dancing was always fresh, fluid and, well, pretty fabulous, I thought.

I was excited about the entire team. Plus, because I was one of the producers as well as the host, I was in a position to solve problems when they arose, in an efficient manner that didn’t hurt our shared creative vision.

For example, the BBC producers, Gav and I wanted to do a big Bollywood number for one of the last shows of the series, to the track ‘Rhythm of the Night’. The dancers and Paul were up for this kind of lavishly choreographed number. The problem was the budget. No money left. The budget couldn’t cover our chocolate biscuits, never mind the eight additional dancers we required to make the number a true Bollywood piece with its array of colourful costumes and mix of dance styles.

As we sat around the production table, reviewing the past week’s show and planning for the upcoming one (this meeting was a weekly one, and essential to the overall flow and ongoing success of each episode), Gavin and I decided that the Bollywood number had to happen. If the BBC didn’t have the budget, then Barrowman Barker Productions would pay for the extra dancers. BBP coughed up the cash. In the end, the number was worth every extra penny. I think this kind of synergy made for better production values overall and was also great telly for our viewers.

When production started for the show, my schedule took on a pattern that was exhausting and invigorating – and as full of variety as Tonight’s the Night itself. Since each show was taped in front of a live studio audience on a Sunday evening, the Saturday before was a full dress rehearsal for everyone. My work for each episode began early on the Monday at the Dance Attic on the Fulham Road, where I’d rehearse with Paul, ‘Jennie Fabulous’, his assistant, and all the J8s. They would dance through the opening and closing numbers with me, and I’d rehearse my moves in relation to theirs.

Sometimes, these rehearsals took longer than expected. One morning, I couldn’t get my left hand to coordinate a parallel move with my right foot while moving forward in a chorus line using a complicated cross-step. At another session, the dancers were having a difficult time with a complex series of lifts and turns in their routine. I grabbed Jennie and moved to the front, next to the room’s long wall of mirrors. I worked with her to simplify the lift routine – because if there’s one thing a musical-theatre leading man knows how to do really well, it’s how to lift his dance partner. I can’t think of any musicals that don’t expect a lift or two. One of the first dance lessons I had in college at the start of my theatre training was how to lift and turn my partner above my shoulders with ease.16

During these rehearsals early in the week, I would often try out one or two moves of my own to connect my routine with the choreography of the dancers around me. I always appreciated that Paul would let me work through my own innovations at least a couple of times before he would affirm them, critique them or, if necessary, ask me to cut them out.

On one of those busy mornings, rehearsals ran even later than usual – because a children’s ballet troupe was rehearsing in the next room and the children spotted Captain Jack on the stairs. Their dance mistress popped in to ask me if I’d come and say a few words, because maybe then she could settle her dancers down. 17

After rehearsing the choreography for a couple of hours on those Monday mornings, I’d sprint upstairs to another room, where Matt Brind, TTN’s musical director, and I would run through my songs and I’d learn any new arrangements he’d created. I’d repeat this same process the next day at the BBC studios, to make sure everything sounded good, and once again on Friday, the day before the show’s dress rehearsal.

At some point during the morning, usually in time for a cup of tea and a biscuit, Gav would arrive to review my other work and to discuss commitments I’d already made or that had to be made. We’d dash upstairs to a smaller rehearsal room for privacy. As an example of the sort of things on our agenda, during a two-day period one week in April, I was offered a Broadway show, asked to make a number of guest appearances on UK television, finalized a few things for my concert tour, and arranged interviews and photo shoots for a handful of press requests.

When Gav and I had finished, I’d dart back down to the main rehearsal room and run