Anna Coombs's Page

I’ve just had a week off, making the most of the fabulous summer weather (well you have to think positive). It was good, despite the Rain (capital R), to recharge my batteries a bit, have some time away from the busy roads, and a bit of space to see loved ones and walk on the beach and up the hills with the dogs (in the rain, again, and again).

It’s almost impossible to keep your mind off the job in hard, though; it’s like an itch. During the course of the week I read Charles Nicholls’s excelle… Continue

It’s extraordinarily nasty weather, real autumn weather, even though it’s August. This, plus the sudden increase in traffic due to the holiday season, has made my 60-mile-a-day commute pretty hair-raising. I’ve started to mitigate the tedium, not to mention the danger, of being stuck on a dual carriageway behind cars going at a dogged 30, or alleviating the slowness of being caught behind a combine harvester by developing a new specialist subject – tractors.

I’m not quite sure when it all start… Continue

I’ve been suffering from a terrible attack of ‘pre-match nerves’ over the last few days. It’s something to do with having had more time than normal to prepare for this production, which means there’s too much time to think (navel-gazing). There is nothing to be nervous about – all creative aspects are well in hand – but over the weekend my nerves reached a kind of jangling point.

On Saturday evening, in the mist and the rain, we took the dogs for a long walk; it never ceases to amaze how much o… Continue

I’ve spent a large part of this week squashed (or standing) on the train to and from London, where I’ve been to see Dominic Dromgoole’s KING LEAR, in which Joseph is playing Gloucester, over at Shakespeare’s Globe.

Unlike Cornwall, which has been wet and windy, London was basking in sunshine – and with a bare 20 minutes to dump my laptop and overnight things, I raced off to The South Bank to meet Colin and see the show.

I love The Globe. Dominic’s doing a great job to widen the creative vision… Continue

I’m not quite sure how, but I seem to have taken it upon myself to become a song writer. Actually, that’s a joke; I have two friends who are brilliant singer-songwriters and I know how difficult it is and have the greatest respect for a job I’d never have the guts (or skills) to do. But I’ve been experimenting with song lyrics for BARABAS.

Some time ago, when Phil and I were starting to map the musical complexion of our play, we had an instinct that whilst they are not written in to the origina… Continue