All in the name of research

One or two of the cast have never seen a James Bond film or read one of the books so we decided some group research was necessary in order to get a feel for their parts and, you know, maybe the stunts.

So we all headed off to here:

Teaching the cast a thing or two about Bond at the Barbican.

Designing 007: 50 Years of Bond style – an exhibition at the Barbican in London.  To ogle at:

Look at the length of that gun…

Check out those flippers…

Of course, I was eyeing up the props. Mainly because some of the cast had come up to me and said: “We need props. We must rehearse with props.” Don’t worry, you’ll be miming a lot, I said. A lot, I said again to reinforce this is an austerity play in austerity Britain.

But I was actually thinking: if only I could pilfer these:

Look at that action man…

Aren’t they fab? But probably a bit too big to stick under my coat. I was tempted to drive off in this…

Taxi! Now that’s what I call a cab driver

With him. But then I realised none of it was real. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photos in the actual exhibition – of the golden girl in Goldfinger, the dazzling golden gun or gold bar signed by Sean Connery. And the gadgets, the dresses, the ski suits and of course the villains. It was iconic Bond.

“The script makes sense to me now,” said one of the cast. (What? It didn’t before?) “I get all the references.”

There was only one way to finish off the day so we headed here:

Shaken… yes it really was £9 for a Martini

For one of these:

OK, we had one anyway. Perhaps it was two…

And our very own pub quiz on Bond. “Who was the only singer to appear in the opening credits singing the title song?” said a new member of the cast – the props person. “Sheena Easton,” said one of the actors who had known nothing about Bond only hours earlier. She had beaten us to the answer. We couldn’t believe it. The research had paid off.