As a team, we came up with ideas of different styles and Hope and Kay (director and writer) decided on the final five. As we already had the through line of the play, we decided what would happen in each scene, why and how it would contribute to the through line.
Once this was all sorted, it was just over 3 weeks until the performance and Kay managed to write us 2 new scenes a week, meaning we got the full script just over week before show day. Once we had each scene, it was all systems go. First we blocked each scene, then added expression into the lines and watched as the characters developed rehearsal by rehearsal. To add character and physicality to the characters, Hope led an exercise where each actor imagined which animal their character would be and to integrate their traits into their character and performance. Belinda was a llama, Gertrude a gorilla, Cinderella a sly shrew and the Godmother a peacock.

Hope directing Belinda the llama and Gertrude the gorilla

We also had voice over monologues and duologues that would be played at the end of each scene, acting as a summation to the previous and an introduction to the following. We recorded these in the radio studios in MHT with help editing them from Paris, who features in a lovely photo below.

Sweet natured Paris, who is amazing at sound editing

Once we had the whole show blocked (and some lines already learnt) we showed Dom our work. He liked what we had and thought it had potential. The characters needed to be bigger and bolder and the monologues needed to be more and more manic as the show progressed.
We addressed this feedback by re-recording the voice overs, which were edited again by Paris, and doing more work on characterisation. The feedback that we received was what we were expecting- it needs to be more- and our rehearsals for the next (and final) focused on this.

The day before show day, we showed our work to Dom again. This is what he told us:

The characters need to be more physical.
During Cinderella’s monologues and duologues, we had the new addition of the swing to incorporate. As the swing was something we only had since tech day, we wweren’t sure how to do this. We settled on the idea that the swing was Cinderella’s space for reflection, but also a place she went when she felt lonely or disheartened. Because of this and the more manic recordings, she spent a lot of time on the swing, making the scene look static. It was suggested that Cinderella become a more ballet like character, something that would aid the aesthetics of these scenes but also the juxtaposition of her character- a sweet, innocent girl plotting her sister’s murder.
The Godmother also needed to be more fairy-like in her movements.
The sisters’ characters were larger than life and so their physicality and costume needed to reflect this- they needed to be more grotesque.

The best moments stuck to the conventions
His favourite scenes were the silent movie and the fight scene, as they were more loyal to the conventions of their styles. Although it was too late to dramatically change the script or blocking, like his first comment, with more energy and bolder characters, the conventions would be met more.

For a while, we had been resisting the pantomime genre, choosing dark comedy and surrealist aesthetic. However, the comment we received and the way the characterisation work was going, we realised if we embraced the pantomime genre, with its over the top moments, such as streams of ribbon flowing from a small cut, the comedy, physicality and characters would be stronger, helping the gelling of all the different style featured in our piece.