“Dido’s Bar – you tempt him in
In a place he should never be
There to plunder my dreams
Of the best, the only victor of song
And rhyme and story and myth.”

Hattie wrote these beautiful lines for Venus and Juno last summer.

And last week, I was tempted back into Dido’s Bar, voluntarily I should add, certainly by no goddess’ spell. We set up our world temporarily in Falmouth, at the fabulous Poly to work on the second act of the show.

Marouf Majidi, Dido’s composer, Hattie Naylor, its writer and I reunited again to work together piecing together the music and the story for our show. There is some glorious magic when we three meet – a lot of laughter and masses of material generated!

We gathered most of the clan from last summer’s residency at Tuusula in Finland where we worked on the first act – bringing back Riku Kantola who is arranging Marouf’s music and Tuukka Leppanen to work with us on the role of Turnus. And into our magic cauldron, we added the wonderful Manu di Francesco and Georgina White to explore the roles of Aeneas and Matina.

The second act of our show sees the action shift to Latinus’ Bar, the more established venue within Venus and Juno’s music empire. It’s a jazz bar on the cusp of change after Latinus’ death. I wanted to explore the sound of the bar with Marouf and Riku and how it might shift and change as Aeneas and Turnus come to musical blows.

It was a gorgeous week of beautiful music – we wrote at least 6 songs with Hattie’s lyrics. Hattie scribbled away in the corner with serious noise-canceling headphones, turning out song after song, and scene after scene for us to explore.

And slowly we transformed the room at the Poly into Dido’s Bar for the week – setting up little cabaret tables and a bar, letting the story unfold within our immersive world. The drama will take place across the venue – at the bar, at a table at the back of the room, at a mirror by the toilets. There’s a huge amount for me to learn about the story and its drama through actually understanding how to stage the production across the immersive set and Tuukka, Manuel and Georgina were so brilliantly game as we tried out text and song around the venue.

Charlie Bunker, our fabulous Dido’s Bar producer, is based in Falmouth. She invited in some of her mates and colleagues for a taste of the show during our visit. It was both amazing and terrifying to share bits of a show at such an early stage. BUT we loved their responses and again in London at the Finnish Institute when we shared a few other songs with colleagues there this week.

Short of cast members, Hattie and I even got to perform again – we’re beginning to make too much of a habit of it!

Dido’s Bar really casts a spell. And I find leaving it very hard. I can’t wait to return to it later this summer and share the full finished version with you all at the end of September.

Hope to see you soon, in person,
Josephine